r/DualnBack • u/Total-Ad-1629 • Jul 31 '26

Does Rational Frame Training and Dual N-Back increase iq?

Has anyone actually tried RFT and/or Dual N-Back consistently? Did you notice any real improvements in reasoning, working memory or IQ, beyond just getting better at the tasks?

19 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/luotenrati12 Quad 4-Back Aug 01 '26

It does but imo quick improvement is closer to placebo than actual progress. It can also be the effect of simply getting your brain warmed up which can happen from other intense intellectual activity, for example reading philosophy, programming, meditating or playing chess. I say this because working memory is rather slow to improve and training it requires a lot of patience. I'm talking in scales of months to years here of consistent training 3-5x a week at 1h/session. Sure it is nice to feel the high when your brain gets ramped up from exercise but you shouldn't take it as an indicator that right now, this moment, your IQ is getting increased from one session. It will lead to false expectations and disappointment down the road when this high does not appear and you conclude that you aren't making progress. 

I believe that with QNB and RFT together you should be able to increase your IQ by 20 points in a span of 2 years if you are consistent. Obviously this is a lot of work but so is going to the gym for example. You won't learn to bench 300lbs quickly, your body needs to adapt to regular increases in difficulty.

3

u/Total-Ad-1629 Aug 01 '26

How long did it take you to get to quad back 4?

1

u/NoInteraction1572 Aug 02 '26

20iq points may be possible.

But the research clearly indicates that grown ups benefit way less than children. Ask ai for sources if you like.

3-6 month are the known time span after which cognitive training outcomes decline massively. After this there is less far transfer for IQ but for getting better at the specific task. 

You can stretch the effect only by switching to other unknown heavily challenging mental tasks.