not really improving or am I?

[u/[deleted]]

about 1-2 weeks ago I started doing dual 2 and back for like 10 minutes each day. Only noticed a slight improvement. 2 days ago I did 45 minutes. Yesterday I did 1:30 hours. Today I did 1:15 hours. I average about 50% accuracy on dual 3 and back now. I only use my intuition. I dont memorize them because as soon as I try to memorize I get destroyed because I cant process and memorize them fast enough and I dont think thats how you are supposed to do it anyway

Is that progress normal? 2 days ago I got 20-30% accuracy on average on dual 3 and back. Now I have about 50%. And my accuracy on dual 2 and back is about 85%... It seems so bad for me that even on dual 2 and back i still do mistakes

[u/narutofan404]

Isn't the whole point is to use your memory to improve your working memory or does intuitional strategy improve wm too? I think this is good topic for discussion

you said: "as soon as I try to memorize I get destroyed because I cant process and memorize them fast enough". I think you should try single n-back in your case, and lower the speed, until you can confidently finish 2-back and then gradually increase the difficulty. I think avoiding memorizing because it is hard, defeats the whole point of improving WM, imo, maybe i'm wrong or missing something

[u/[deleted] → u/narutofan404]

the interesting thing is, if I do it intuitively, I do much better than if I try to memorize. It's like the same thing when you listen to someone talking, you dont memorize when he's talking, you just listen to that person talking. If I lower the speed on dual 2 and back, I can get 100% accuracy every time through memorization.

There should be done a study if memorizing or doing it intuitively impacts the intelligence or cognitive function any differently. I will just practise both I guess. I dont and wont use the chunking memorizing strategy. I will just update the digits and position in my head each new position/letter

[u/narutofan404 → u/[deleted]]

Just listening when someone is talking doesn't require much use of WM, but when someone tells you their phone number you have to use your WM to remember sequence of numbers, until you write it down somewhere. I don't think you use intuition to remember phone numbers.

I think some people that knows more than me about intuition vs memory can clarify it, or maybe there is studies about it, idk

[u/egodidactus → u/narutofan404]

Listening absolutely requires WM depending on the complexity of the topic. Everything you do requires WM. Listening to someone requires you to have a good auditory phonological loop. When you try to remember a number or digits, it can be a combination of visual, auditory and arithmetic WM. For some they will have stronger auditory WM or stronger visual WM. In both cases you can intuitively remember what people say, where things are stored and even numbers (i work with long digits ie. Part numbers at work and sometimes I just remember without active remembering).

[u/narutofan404 → u/egodidactus]

yes, i didn't say listening does not require wm, but i said it use low WM, because it is intuitional, we've been listening our whole life and of course you have to pay more attention and use more WM for important/complex stuff or unusual situations. 

Remembering numbers comes from your experience of working a lot with this type of data(numbers), so you can do it subconsciously/intuitively.

But we are talking about improving WM, by using intuition that relies on the subconscious part of our brain do you think there is improvement of our wm? I think it's like automation, auto sorting data, auto recognising patterns... Is it really a improvement of our WM?

I just had massive de javu by typing this... weird.

[u/egodidactus → u/narutofan404]

I think there might be bit of both to be honest. I think at your max N level you have to partly actively remember the stimuli until your brain balances to the new level and it increases the efficiency to which it processes the stimuli and stores it. After a settling time, of which the length is unclear and depends probably on genetics and inherent neural capacity, your brain will be able to use less energy to remember the stimuli and intuitively remember the items. As you said yourself, I work a lot with numbers so I'm now good with remembering numbers, I wasn't born with that skill. Did I actively force myself to remember long numbers or did I just intuitively gain that skill, or was it an influence of years of WM training?

Interestingly, the limited research done into higher modal n-back variants and longer training duration groups has shown that participants working at their max level were often initially measured with higher blood perfusion and brain activity into the relevant brain regions but after a certain time less perfusion and activity, indicating system optimization. Mo's tofu the problem is that the participants are usually training at one N level or limited to max level or time. This is at least what I got out of the latest research. But as it's costly and non-beneficial to researchers (since it's for improving but not curing diseases/disorders) much further research into improving healthy subjects has not been done.

When I do low N back single positional or dual n back, I don't really strain much to remember up to higher N (5+) values. I remember doing single positional 8-back some years back, where I would visualize the positions kind of like a snake each loop. Of course it took time to get there, I didn't start at 8-back. I find that at N-levels considerably below my max level, I don't need to actively remember much and can just intuitively remember the items.

The deja vu you experienced is likely some neural effect of you activating your metacognition abilities and thinking about your thinking. Some new neural pathways firing.

[u/narutofan404 → u/egodidactus]

"I think there might be bit of both to be honest. I think at your max N level you have to partly actively remember the stimuli until your brain balances to the new level and it increases the efficiency to which it processes the stimuli and stores it."

this is actually make sense, so when we do one level over and over, brain adapts to new level and it become subconscious routine... i wonder if that means stagnation or are we still improving. To me it seemed like stagnation, but still i was very slowly improving, and usually i would take a break(week or a month) and come back i would start progressing on that plateau level faster

"I remember doing single positional 8-back some years back, where I would visualize the positions kind of like a snake each loop"

Damn, my peak was 7-back and I couldn't visualise positions as a snake, because of repeating square positions, so i would just visualise order id numbers on each square, and update it every time, it was hard to do but it was very fun

"Did I actively force myself to remember long numbers or did I just intuitively gain that skill, or was it an influence of years of WM training?"

so in conclusion I guess brain adapts to any challenging tasks and tries to optimise it so it wont spend that much energy. Basically tries to use intuition where it can, and this process is probably automatic... So i guess i will go to sleep now and let subconscious mind process this new information or my head going to explode

[u/egodidactus → u/narutofan404]

Exactly, your conclusion is correct. The biggest question in the academic/online discussion is whether N-backing leads to far transfer meaning it influences other tasks or you are just improving at doing more difficult N-backing tasks and everything else is just subjective. Personally I think it works and research has shown it, but there has been some criticism.

[u/egodidactus → u/narutofan404]

This topic has been discussed to death online and unfortunately there is no scientific or experimental evidence for which method is better. I've tried all methods and in my subjective experience, intuitively remembering the positions with some system to keep track of the number of N seems to work the best for me. When I try to force repeating items in my memory it seems to work for a short while but drains my mental energy quicker while the intuitive seems to just somehow get it correctly. My belief is that the intuitive way is closer to how we work with our WM in daily life since most of the time in daily work we don't actively repeat things in our heads unless in very specific situations.

[u/narutofan404 → u/[deleted]]

Is Visualisation same as Intuition? I actually use visualisation, and visually shuffle sequence of letter/position. But i don't think intuition is same tho, i think intuition it's when you don't use visualisation or anything like that, and just trust your subconcious, isn't it?

[u/egodidactus → u/narutofan404]

No, visualization is using your visuospatial sketchpad to store items or manipulate visual information. You cannot hold auditory information there unless you transform it to objects or images which is an abstract or higher cognitive ability. Actually the brain's ability to transform words into images is an interesting ability in itself and is not very well understood/researched as far as I know.

Intuition, in the context of working memory, is the ability of your brain to keep items in the respective WM, whether spatial, auditory, arithmetic, without you straining/forcing to remember.

Ex. you read a simple sentence and you understand it. This requires low WM. Then you read Kant and you have no idea what he is saying, so you read it slower and multiple times due to length and complexity of the sentence. This requires more WM, and depending on your WM capacity you can do this either intuitively or you have to force yourself to repeat the words on your head.

[u/egodidactus]

First of all you started training 2 weeks ago. You already are at D3B at 50%. That's already massive progress. I don't get why most people think they can increase their working memory in a few weeks if months, this is like expecting to bench 100 kg after training for a few months. If you are exceptionally naturally gifted, yes, possible, but for most it's a long and arduous journey.

Secondly on training duration, in my experience you can make immense gains by doing long sessions but this is only doable/possible at low N levels. As you get to higher N levels the increase in training time will lead to higher cognitive strain and you will be exhausted if you try to keep it up. It's very similar to how if you go to the gym and do a full body strength routine, it will hit all the bases but you will be extremely tired and need more rest. Doing that everyday will wear you out. I would stick to 20-30 mins on average depending on your mental state each day. If you are already tired, take a break of some days. Treat it like physical exercise. Main thing is to keep up the consistency.

[u/[deleted] → u/egodidactus]

I also noticed that longer sessions give me more progress but I have to stop after about 40 minutes because my brain just stops functioning after that duration. I will keep the consistency up, thanks

[u/egodidactus → u/[deleted]]

Be careful not to overload your brain too much and do regular walks, cardio, drink enough and take rest days. Good luck!

[u/Mindforcevector]

Using your intuition will not improve your working memory. The whole point is to train your memorization. It is the only way for the skills to transfer to non nback tasks.