The future promise of Cogmed working memory training

The idea that working memory capacity (WMC) might be mproved following adaptive training interventions has received onsiderable attention from researchers over the past decade, s evidenced by the publication of at least seven major reviews ithin the past two years. Although several of these reviews ave expressed varying degrees of optimism about the curent state of the field (Buschkuehl & Jaeggi, 2010; Diamond & ee, 2011; Klingberg, 2010; Morrison & Chein, 2011), several ther, more recent, reviews have been considerably more pesimistic (Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, 2012; Shipstead, Redick, & Engle, 012). In their target article, Shipstead, Hicks, and Engle (2012) ontinue this latter trend by concluding that one well-known nd widely used WM intervention known as Cogmed does not rovide effective training of WMC or associated higher-level abiliies. Rather than focus on the strengths and weaknesses of previous ogmed WM training studies, the main focus of this commentary ill be to discuss the future promise of Cogmed WM training. n their concluding remarks about the future of WM training, hipstead et al. state, “we do not rule out the possibility that M training could be made effective. The largest issue seems o be that, while there is logic to WM training (increase WM nd improve related abilities), this literature is still struggling to nd a theory” (p. 22). We agree wholeheartedly with this assessent. Fortunately, there are several prominent theories of WMC hat could be used to guide future studies of WM training, and elow we will describe our own attempts to apply one such thery to WM training. Based on our preliminary findings, we will ttempt to make two points in this commentary: (1) there are ood reasons to believe that the full potential of Cogmed WM