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Ask HN: Has anyone used dual n-back and found an impact?

2 points by jeffshek ↗ HN
I've read through most of https://gwern.net/DNB-FAQ. Looked at most of the published papers. Reddit is pretty silent on the matter. I'm curious if anyone here has trained dual n-back and found an impact in their day-to-day.

I'm debating (probably) of trying a daily dual n-back routine. My biased experiment is multiple online IQ tests and then doing an assessment after a month of daily dual n-back. Love to know if anyone has suggestions or anecdotal results.

2 comments

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usgroup
I think you’ll be wasting your time if you’re looking for actual impact on your life. Try spaced repetition and/or incremental reading instead: they have much clearer and more substantive effects that you can experience directly.

You can’t measure your IQ using online tests.

ksaj
I'm really bad at working with numbers (I get computers to do that for me).

I read that the new Japanese craze "Sudoku" would fix all that. They claim it is a good brain exercise.

Years later, I still suck at dealing with numbers (and still get computers to do it for me) but I'm really good at Sudoku.

Useful? Only if Sudoku was my end goal. The skill hasn't impacted any of the traditional targets you'd expect if you believe the mind games vendor claims. And the skill is definitely not connected to math/numbers/etc or any part of real life outside of personal entertainment. Replace the numbers with fruit or emojis or whatever, and you quickly notice its an advanced pattern matching game like they use to train parrots. A toddler's game re-jigged for adults.

Dual n-back is a hard game/puzzle/skill test, and I never used it because I expect it to be more of the same. You might get good at the game, so do it if you want to be good at that game. But we already know how focus works, so you just might develope a strategy for this one way the puzzle purposely distracts you. It doesn't translate to the real world. Try to come up with a real-world situation that mimics dual n-back's mental process. There are some, but the moment you change the objects and context, it all goes out the window.

I believe the "lab" results only prove people can answer questions better when in a really focused state of mind, and nothing more. No new skills added outside a new strategy or two that don't affect your day-to-day.

tl;dr dual nback is the same as that audio jammer toy. You might master it, but the moment someone changes the context (eg: inserting wrong words) you'll be back to babbling like a buffoon.