Subjective Difference

[BamaDoc]

In an earlier post, someone invoked placebo. Maybe. Over the past 23-
days I have completed 15 trials of 20 sessions. I note a subjective
difference in recall. There might be some increase in attention, but
I certainly do notice a difference in recall. It might be placebo,
but I am convinced enough that I continue to find time to use the
program.

Why do I still have doubts? Because this is a fairly painless (and
fun) therapy.

[Frank Licea]

I'm curious about the type of recall that you see an increase in. Specifically, in what context have you noticed an increase in your recall?

[chinmi04]

I agree. I once thought that n-back had learned me how to focus, but I
noticed that not being entirely true. Still easily distracted.

It just feels that now I'm more easily able to hold different ideas in
my head at the same time, playing with them, analyzing and drawing
conclusions.

On Feb 3, 4:52 am, Frank Licea <francisco.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm curious about the type of recall that you see an increase in.
> Specifically, in what context have you noticed an increase in your recall?
>

[BamaDoc]

I am really into history and trivia. Usually when I try to impress
someone with an interesting fact, I usually cannot put the detail I
need to look smart. I usually recall what I need, but in a general
way. Since doing N-Back, I pulling some strange facts out of my a*s
(butt). It really set off my internal dialog, "wow! how did I
remember that?"

Unfortunately, when I needed to use my new skills at work (school) I
was back to my old self. But, I was making the effort to listen to
directions like I was doing an N-Back. I am not going to stop. I
will share when the real payoff is noted.

> > fun) therapy.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[BamaDoc]

Yes. That is a good description of the return I am getting for
practice on N-Back.

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 8:59 PM, BamaDoc <bama...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am really into history and trivia. Usually when I try to impress
> someone with an interesting fact, I usually cannot put the detail I
> need to look smart. I usually recall what I need, but in a general
> way. Since doing N-Back, I pulling some strange facts out of my a*s
> (butt). It really set off my internal dialog, "wow! how did I
> remember that?"
>
> Unfortunately, when I needed to use my new skills at work (school) I
> was back to my old self. But, I was making the effort to listen to
> directions like I was doing an N-Back. I am not going to stop. I
> will share when the real payoff is noted.

That's an interesting observation.

I've only just started the other day with n-back, but that reminds me
a lot of Mnemosynehttp://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/ : I started using
Mnemosyne back in July, and have been using it fairly regularly since
(up to about 7000 cards).

I noticed about August that a few times a day one of my cards would
randomly flash into my mind for no reason whatsoever. (Today I was
cleaning the catbox, and my vocab card for 'noctilucent' suddenly
jumped into my mind. Absolutely no connection with feline feces, but
there you go.)

Speaking of which, do any of you n-backers use Mnemosyne? Are they 2
great flavors which go great together?

--
gwern

[allan bailey]

I wonder if this is just increased sensitivity to the subconscious hypnagogic imagery?
This is also similar to Image Streaming.  I forget who the developer of that is off hand though.

-z

[Ron Williams]

Win Wenger.

There's no independent research that even addresses the validity of
Image Streaming, as I recall. Wenger always adduces research done by a
mate of his (a chemist/physicist) that was done ad hoc (and under
uncontrolled conditions) on some of his students.

Citations of Wenger's work are as far as I can determine only from his
own publications...

That doesn't of course mean that Image Streaming doesn't work, but it
does mean that there's no independent evidence that it has any effect.

He makes other claims, such as that depth of breathing has a
correlation with attention span, and so advocates underwater swimming
(in cold water?) as a way of forcing the body into a new mode.

I looked at IS a long time ago, and remained unconvinced that I should
devote many hours of my life to a practice that has effectively no
substantiation other than the anecdotal. OTOH, I think any concerted
effort at any kind of mental activity will have a beneficial effect.

OK, not _any_ kind, but I recall that my ability to create crystal
clear 3D images improved markedly with the onset of puberty...

[SemiDecent]

I must say that image streaming sounded like a complete scam to me at
first as well, since I'm specifically allergic to rogue online health
advice, especially when a product is being sold on the same html page
as the unconfirmed informative content, but then I went ahead and
tried it for a month or so, enjoying the visual aspects of the
exercise, looking at it more as a meditative, stress releasing process
as opposed to an intelligence enhancing exercise, it took me probably
a few weeks to come to the somewhat surprising realization that there
is some truth to the hype surrounding it, and as much as I tried to
convince myself that there is a magical placebo factor involved, I
couldn't deny the fact that there is more than one tangible undeniable
evidence that it worked for me, this was about six years ago and I'm
still completely clueless as to why it worked, I suspect that the
officially published reasons are not the real reasons, since they
didn't make a lot of scientific sense back then and they still don't
make any more sense right now.

On Feb 10, 9:40 pm, Ron Williams <rhwil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Win Wenger.
>
> There's no independent research that even addresses the validity of
> Image Streaming, as I recall. Wenger always adduces research done by a
> mate of his (a chemist/physicist) that was done ad hoc (and under
> uncontrolled conditions) on some of his students.
>
> Citations of Wenger's work are as far as I can determine only from his
> own publications...
>
> That doesn't of course mean that Image Streaming doesn't work, but it
> does mean that there's no independent evidence that it has any effect.
>
> He makes other claims, such as that depth of breathing has a
> correlation with attention span, and so advocates underwater swimming
> (in cold water?) as a way of forcing the body into a new mode.
>
> I looked at IS a long time ago, and remained unconvinced that I should
> devote many hours of my life to a practice that has effectively no
> substantiation other than the anecdotal. OTOH, I think any concerted
> effort at any kind of mental activity will have a beneficial effect.
>
> OK, not _any_ kind, but I recall that my ability to create crystal
> clear 3D images improved markedly with the onset of puberty...
>

> On 2/10/09, allan bailey <zirpubo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I wonder if this is just increased sensitivity to the subconscious
> > hypnagogic imagery?
> > This is also similar to Image Streaming.  I forget who the developer of that
> > is off hand though.
>
> > -z
>
> > On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

[Confuzedd]

Hehe, Mnemosyne. I actually have both Anki and Mnemosyne but I prefer
Anki. They both originated from supermemo (google it). Supermemo's
homepage has a bunch of long articles about the mind's creativity,
genius, learning, memory, how to "learn"; i.e. about how you should
never memorize anything unless you already know the concept.

I only got about 40 cards. I just recently started using it to study
simple facts for my science class. I heard it's no good for math, but
I think I might put some definitions and formulas in there. It's a
pain in the *** to stay consistent with it though, you gotta choose
between cutting back on doing homework or using anki (takes a bit of
time setting up the flash cards too).

[Confuzedd]

And let me add, about the placebo:

If you're interested, watch this 4 parts long interview with Richard
Dawkins and Nicholas Humphrey about how powerful a placebo effect can
be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1AQPue7FEM

[Matthew Chadwell]

Just out of curiosity, did you describe the images out loud? I find this requirement of image streaming to be arduous. IS lost its appeal to me as I realized that I did not want anyone to hear about the random images that popped into my head.

[Ashirgo]

I have given some thoughts to the conception of "placebo" connected
with n-back and all I can say is that it does not matter at any
point.

You may find that interesting: a team of researchers (I do not
remember exact names and references you would like to see) discovered
that the effectiveness of placebo peaks 50% with participants unaware
of the trick. The exciting thing is that it has 30% effectiveness
despite people being told they are given sugar instead of medicine.

Trust, believe and heaven shall be yours;)

Ash