Episode 22: Spotlight on the Wrong Target

Randall W. Engle, went to W. Va. State College because it was the only school he could afford to attend but it was one of the transforming experiences of his life. State was a public all-black college prior to 1954. As a consequence, most of his faculty were outstanding scholars who could not get jobs at top universities. One of his psychology professors was a marvelously well-read scholar named Herman G. Canady, a 1929 Ph.D. from Northwestern and one of the first black ABEP’s. He worked his way through graduate school as a butler. Engle had a Harvard graduate for his math courses, a Yale Ph.D. as a drama teacher, and his French teacher was a black female who received her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne.

He graduated with nearly as many hours in zoology and math as he had in psychology so it was probably inevitable that he gravitate to experimental psychology. He was admitted to Ohio State to work with D.D. Wickens. Wick was a wonderful mentor and was exceedingly patient with a student that wanted to do everything but did not focus on anything long enough to do it well. The job market was tough in 1972 and Engle was lucky to land a job at King College in Tennessee. His two years there, with 10 classes per year, made him a teacher. Fortunately, two of his classes each year were senior research seminars, which he used to conduct experiments. He was limited in equipment to a tape recorder and slide projector, so he did research on modality effects in short-term memory. At the end of two years, he had two publications, enough to land him a job at the University of South Carolina where he spent the next 21 years.

He moved to the School of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology as Chair, a position he held for 13 years. He stepped down as chair to found the GSU/GT Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI) on the Georgia Tech campus. He is editor of Current Directions in Psychological Science and has been on the editorial board of numerous other journals over his career. His research for the past 30 years has explored the nature of working memory, the nature and causes of limitations in working memory capacity, the role of those differences in real-world cognitive tasks, and the association of working memory capacity and cognitive control to fluid intelligence. His work has been funded by various agencies including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Office of Naval Research. His work has been highly influential across a wide array of areas including social psychology, emotion, psychopathology, developmental psychology, psychological testing, and has contributed to modern theory of cognitive and emotional control. Harzing’s Publish or Perish shows that Engle’s work has been cited over 17,000 times. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association of Psychological Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society of Experimental Psychology, and the Memory Disorders Research Society. He has served as Chair of the Governing Board of the Psychonomic Society, Chair of the Board of the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP), and President of Division 3 of APA. He received the first APA Division 3 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Todd Schnick: Alright, welcome back to Full PreFrontal where we are exposing the mysteries of executive functions. I am here with our house, Sucheta Kamath.

Good morning, Sucheta, it was good to be with you. Am I to understand today, we’re going to talk about Impractical Jokers? If that’s the case, oh, dear lord, does that mean I’ll have to recite a limerick or something?

Sucheta Kamath: You got that right, Todd. Good morning to you. So for a while, my son was obsessed with the show Impractical Jokers. It always begins with a warning that says, “The following program contains scenes of graphic stupidity among four lifelong friends who seek to embarrass each other.” You can see clearly that these four men are good friends and they push each other to do things that an average person will not agree to do. Some are funny and some are silly but many are clearly awkward and some are even socially frightening. You can’t help but imagine yourself in those situations doing socially embarrassing things and making a fool of yourself. That’s why the show is so good. In one such episode, one of their assignments was to memorize and recite the silly limerick right after you heard it. It went something like this. Ready?

Todd: Uh-huh.

Sucheta: “Hey, Buckaroo, how are you? Whipped cream on top and cherry too. Pleated pants, yes, I do. A steam engine goes choo, choo, choo.” Go ahead. Go ahead, Todd, try it.

Todd: Oh, my. Hey Buckaroo, how are you?” And then something about a cherry on top, that’s all I can remember. Good Lord, you wouldn’t think it would be that hard but yes. Wow.

Sucheta: Well, sorry, Todd, I didn’t mean to blindside you like that but it’s hard isn’t it? Do you know why it’s hard? Because it involves working memory. We use working memory to recite things, to follow multi-step directions, to listen to a presentation while taking notes, and even while we are problem solving. I gave you a very silly example but take a look at these interview questions. I’m going to read a few questions to you. These were the kind of questions that many firms ask of their highly capable candidates. For example, MacKenzie, a business analyst, was asked this question: “How would you calculate the annual carbon emission from electric versus gas vehicles in the EU?” That’s one question. Another question was, “You have three seconds: list as many uses for a basketball as you can think of.” Another question – by the way, this question was asked by a Gartner client partner interview, another company interview – “Try to estimate the revenue of sales of tickets at Olympics 2012.” So the interviewers were looking for candidates’ capacity to think on their feet and showcase their talent by responding in a thoughtful and clever way. This requires understanding the problem, staying engaged, being laser-focused, imagining possible alternatives, calculating things in your head, and spitting back the answer as quickly and swiftly, and correctly, of course. One has to do that without much time to plan. Their answers will work things out by writing down. All this magic happens in working memory.

So brain’s prefrontal cortex is very much involved in handling demands on working memory. In my practice, majority of people with diagnosis of ADHD or learning disability have difficulty with working memory. They find themselves struggling in following directions, losing mental train of thought, and often need aid to organize their thinking. Any task or work that needs spitting out answers or thinking on their feet while solving problems poses a real challenge.

I’m excited that today’s podcast will explore this topic of working memory further and how can we help those who need help with their working memory. I bring you an expert guest from my neck of the woods who is Professor Randy Engle.

He’s the primary investigator at the Attention & Memory Lab at Georgia Tech School of Psychology, and his research interest centers around working memory capacity. He is the one who founded the GSU and GT Center for Advanced Brain Images known as CABI on the Georgia Tech campus and is currently serving as the Director of it. Professor Engle is an adjunct professor and a professional fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh as well.

For the past 30 years, he has explored the nature of working memory and the association of working memory capacity and cognitive control to fluid intelligence. His work is highly influential across a wide array of areas including social psychology, emotion, psychopathology, and developmental psychology, to name a few. Harsax published or Piers shows that Engle’s work has been cited over 17,000 times, pretty impressive.

Todd: 17,000 times, wow. I’m still trying to think also of other uses of basketballs. That’s going to occupy my mind for quite some time.

Well, this promises to be yet another great conversation between yourself and Dr. Engle. Very much looking forward to it. Let’s get right to it. Here is Sucheta’s conversation with Dr. Randall Engle.

Sucheta: Welcome to the show again, Dr. Randall, and we are so delighted to have you. Today, we are going to talk about how to handle challenges with working memory and possible interventions. Let me get started with something interesting that I recently read, that one of the common reasons and the highest ER visits in Manhattan on weekends is bagel-cutting, bagel-cutting injuries, and so what comes to my mind is this mindlessness about doing daily mundane activities that people are taking for granted, and then not paying attention to that because they are really good at it. So when we think about working memory, can you please define working memory one more time and the bagel-cutting example I gave you, and how can we start by being more mindful?

Professor Randall Engle: Well, working memory is, the way I think about it, is this temporary information that we have attended to at some point, but the critical element here is attention, and so the example that you gave of bagel-cutting – and I can speak to that very, very personally, an injury of myself, not with bagel, it was with something else – but it turns out that an awful lot of industrial accidents are a result of momentary lapses of attention and it’s usually something that people have done many, many, many times, and so they have a momentary lapse of attention, relying on the automatic aspects of their system to take care of that, and it doesn’t work. So let me give you my example. I’m a woodworker; I build furniture.

Sucheta: You do?

Randall: Yes, and I had a shop at the University of South Carolina at the time and I was making these items that I was making 200 of them, so it was just a lot of repetitive work, and it was at a New Year’s Eve many years ago. It was cold and I had gloves on, and I had made all of the cuts and at some point, clearly, before I got to the 200th cut and it was with a radio arm saw which is a typically dangerous saw anyway, I clearly had sort of zoned out, if you will. I had done this so many times and I made the 200th cut and I turned the sawed-off, and without even thinking about it, I reached for a piece of scrap that was near the blade. That blade cut my glove and it cut the ends off of two fingers, just very quickly. It was that momentary lapse of attention that did that. Now, fortunately, I got the fingertips out – you might want to edit this out, it’s gross – I cut the two fingers out, they sewed them back on and I have the use of them today, but that momentary lapse of attention, and as somebody who I’m working with dangerous tools all of the time with chainsaws and table saws, and so forth. All of those are quite dangerous if you are not attending all the time, and so many accidents are a result of that momentary lapse of attention, just momentary lapse of attention, and even in people that are highly-skilled in that device, if they just let their attention wander for a moment, then that kind of thing could occur. So it doesn’t surprise me at all about the incidence of bagel-cutting accidents, because you see it in all industries, all industries.

Sucheta: Because to me, it’s very interesting. If you look at mindfulness practice as a way to circumvent this temporary lapse in attention and particularly when its mindless, the problem is to be mindful also requires you to commit to being mindful and rein back that attention.

Randall: Absolutely.

Sucheta: What are the strategies for that?

Randall: Well, I think we can get better at it. Another personal story here is about five years ago, I’m really interested in this idea of mindfulness and the ability to prevent mind wandering, and so I started reading Zen Masters and the author that I read the most is a Vietnamese monk by the name of Thich Nhat Hahn.

Sucheta: Oh, yeah, I’ve read a lot of his work.

Randall: Pardon?

Sucheta: I have read a lot of his work.

Randall: He’s got wonderful books on the idea of mindfulness, and when you think about what Zen masters do, they in fact have incredible control over their executive attention, and so they will teach you to focus on a breath and maintain your focus on something as mundane as taking in a breath, and focus on that breath all the way in and all of the way out, and you do that repeatedly. I think all of us – and my students thought I had flipped out, that I was reading all this Buddhist literature – but in my opinion, these people know more about how people control their own mind and their strategies for doing that than we cognitive scientists will ever know, so clearly, we can get much better at that. I’m just convinced of it.

Sucheta: Yes, I’m a student of Hindu vedantic principles and Hindu spirituality, and I’m an ardent practitioner of mindful meditation. It’s actually integrated mindful meditation which involves physical movement as well as breath control, and chanting of mantras. Now, mantras, my study and my understanding of neuroscience had made me believe that one of the – two researchers from UPenn have studied this – that the chanting of mantra is literally occupying your mind with this repetitious action of whatever the sound syllables that you are focusing on, but it is to really block the other things from entering your mind.

Randall: And maintain your focus on that chant.

Sucheta: And maintain your focus, yes. I see that to be very effective in my practice. I have incorporated mindfulness practices. The reason I wanted to just get that out into open and for conversation, because I feel there is a ‘marinating a turkey before you bake it,’ so to improve your working memory and attention skills, you need to kind of have some fundamental framework of how mindlessness is invading your attention system.

Randall: That’s correct. I think that’s essentially correct. So trying to train people to remember better or to attend better without some understanding of how easily our attention is captured by mundane thoughts, either, yes, external things – people talking next to you in a theater, or internally-generated thoughts, so as I’m sitting here, I have thoughts about what I’m going to do for the weekend, lots of thoughts will just automatically sort of come to mind – my dog walks by and he’s trying to remind me I haven’t fed him today. Yes, all of those things are competing so we’ve got these internally-generated thoughts, if you will, and externally-generated thoughts, both of which compete for our attention. Attention is a unitary thing; it’s not easily divided. We can switch it back and forth quickly sometimes but it’s a unitary thing. So if I’m attending to those things and I’m letting myself be captured away because I don’t know that I should prevent it that, that I’m going to do less well at whatever task I’m doing at the time.

Sucheta: Got it. So research shows that there’s an overlap between the networks that control the classes of cognitive ability, including working memory, attention, goal management. In my practice, I find that designing therapeutic processes around their metacognitive ability or their awareness ability such as ability to reflect, ability to self-assess, can have a positive impact on their performance, and then the current literature also suggest that inclusion of strategy or metacognitive training as part of direct attention training increases training effectiveness. Can you talk a little bit about – you have done a lot of evaluation of therapeutic methods that have a positive impact on working memory and attention, what is your observation?

Randall: Well, I was run into this controversy several years ago when I had a grant pending before a federal agency, it was one of the military agencies, and the program called me up and a paper had just been published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science suggesting that if you had people practice a working memory task repeatedly for 15 to 20 days, that they got better on task that did not have anything to do with the task they were practiced on, and suggested that there were improvements in something called fluid intelligence, and so the program officer said, “I’d like to fund your grant but for the first study, I would like you to replicate that study and see whether there’s anything to this.” So I had read that paper but really haven’t paid much attention to it, so it’s got me into this and I told him, I said, “Well, I will do this but it has to be done right, and so many of these studies suffer from a serious scientific flaw, several flaws, actually. One is that they are seriously underpowered. They have very few people, very few people are tested. Secondly is that many of them don’t have a control group, so they bring people in, they’ll give them a test, give them some training, give them that test again, and some have gotten better on that test, but they don’t have a control group that gets the test and then does something different or the same number of days coming into the lab, same number of days being attended to in some way, for the same number of days, and then getting the test again, so I told him that I would do this but I needed to do it right and that meant control groups and it meant lengthy sessions, and it meant a large sample. Well, I did that study and took a long time and we found absolutely no evidence for what that study had shown.

Sucheta: And is this – what type of – was it games that you tested? The system?

Randall: Well, all of our tests – the test that they used was something called the Dual and Back Test, and so that’s the one we used because we were trying to replicate it, and it is, so you are seeing a letter and you are hearing a tone. You got two different things: when the letter is the same as the third one back, you are to press a button and say it’s the same. When the tone you hear is the same as the third one back, you are to press a button, and so it’s a test of working memory but there was no training. It was referred to as a training study, and like a lot of these so-called training procedures, just like those found in commercial products like Lumosity and so forth, there really is not training. They are practiced and they rely on the person getting better which is simply practice and there’s nothing to tell them “Here is how you should do this task better.”

Sucheta: So the training should have, in your opinion, some instruction regarding engagement and then certain strategic utilization that is then monitored, is that right, the way you think about it?

Randall: Yes, in my opinion, if you want to call it training, it has to have that. Otherwise, it’s just practice, and you are relying – and some individuals will discover those things that you would train them to do, but most will not, but so anyway, what you find is there’s little or no general – like when the studies are done correctly, and I must emphasize that because many of the studies in this literature are done badly, and they are done badly, it’s just poor science because doing them right is very time-consuming and it’s expensive. To do science right, it does require that. When you do it right in my opinion, there is no benefit of these simple so-called training programs that rely on just practice over and over again, and I’ve done many different tasks over the years, we’ve done a number of big pay groups doing a lot of these different studies, so people will get better on any task they do. If I have you doing a task you’ve never done before, right – I don’t know if you’ve ever played basketball – but now, practicing to shoot foul shots with your non-dominant hand, you will get better in that. People get better at almost anything you get them to do.

Sucheta: If you do it again and again.

Randall: This can transfer to anything else, and so transfer is really the key element here. It’s not just to get better on the tasks that you are performing but it’s to get better at tasks that you have not performed. So for example, and then as I said, my wife is a school psychologist, and one of these programs – and I won’t mention the name because I don’t want to end up in court over this – one of these programs is specifically geared for children, and they sell licenses to school districts and they are very expensive. I mean, so my wife comes home one day and says, “This company is trying to sell our school district a license for $50,000,” and so every child in the district could play these games that supposedly improve working memory. I’ve shown repeatedly that those games don’t work, that you may it better on those tasks but it’s not going to improve on everything else. Now, think about that. This is in a school district. Well, that’s about the beginning salary of a teacher, so the school system was considering – after talking to my wife, they backed off on it – but they were going to basically give the equivalent of a teacher and this in a time that they were literally cutting staff to have people do these things, so this is not just some little game situation. This is critical information that people are buying and paying for in hopes that their children are going to be better at school. I see virtually no evidence that these so-called brain training programs of that type have any benefit whatsoever.

Sucheta: So is there anything that actually works that has been proven with good science behind it, that has managed to look at this – because coming from a clinical practice as well as working with typical clients of innovation pool, that no two brain injuries are alike and no two patients’ profile is alike, no symptoms are alike, and so as a clinician, I’m catering and tailoring these strategies to help them develop skills to transfer and generalize into real life, and I see a change in their quality of life, but it’s much more difficult to measure that in a pure scientific way because there are so many complex aspects involved, but people can’t be on hold. So how can we manage to do both simultaneously?

Randall: Well, I think for one thing, what’s really critical is if in fact attention control is at the core of all of this, and in my opinion it is, the ability to control your attention, things that we talked about – mindfulness before, mindfulness training, things that can get people more aware of the need to control their attention, to not let themselves be distracted, I think if people understand that they’ve got maybe an injury or they’ve got a remote mental condition that makes them more prone to being distracted, then they can take steps to prevent that. They are not going to eliminate it. In my opinion, there is no magic pill that’s going to make this all better, but if people are aware that they are more easily distracted and therefore, they have to work harder at preventing their attention from being captured by extraneous events, they can be better at it, and I see you as a therapist, you can get them to better understand that if I’m in a situation where there’s a lot of information coming in from all kinds of sources, then I need to focus on the one that is critical to what I need to do in this situation. If it’s in the classroom, I need to pay attention to the teacher and I need to not let myself be captured by the rowdy little boy beside me, and this is particularly true in first, second, third grade little boys, right? Having their attention captured by other misbehaving little boys. I took my grandson to practice this morning – I do it on most Fridays – there’s a situation where here’s a bright kid but he’s still at that stage where if there’s something going on near him, he’s going to have his attention captured away from the teacher, but if you keep – and tell him, “Your job here is to pay attention to the teacher. Try to ignore that little boy next door,” right? And I think you can do that with your people who have brain injuries of various kinds. As you so aptly put it, every brain injury is somewhat different, that’s because every brain is somewhat different. I’d like to think that we’ve got this one-size-fits-all. Every brain is a somewhat different size, is a somewhat different structure. There are huge differences in brains, and a big part of what I do is to look at the individual differences in people with normal brains, but they are clearly different in ways that are important to their ability to control and to focus their attention.

Sucheta: Yes, got it, and I think what I can relate to from my training experience in “training” here literally refers to number one is, needs assessment, giving guidelines to help people identify what is their own need for self, and then the second way is to really help them control these deficits or disturbances, or roadblocks by modeling more appropriate ways of handling it, or exercising a certain way of thinking, and then finally, finessing usage of tools and strategies, and that’s what rehabilitation or retraining, or “training the brain,” or behaviors to me in my practice look like.

Randall: Sucheta, I think what’s important there that you said is clearly, you learn to behave in a certain context, in a certain place, in a certain location, and you practice that in that patient, then you’re going to be better than next time you’re in that location, and so these things need to take place either mentally or physically and possibly in the environment where they are likely to occur, so it would be great if you are talking with children, if you could have somebody training the children in the classroom while this whole chaos is going on, for example, or for your patients to work with them trying to get them to simulate the location where they are likely to be distracted or have their attention captured.

Sucheta: In my practice, one of the things I do is very carefully introduce visual and auditory distractions that mimic the level of classroom engagement. So we start with only one distraction that’s only either visual or auditory, like just to have a TV on or just to have a PowerPoint on, then we have people talking, so have recordings of various kinds – cafeteria noise, conversations people are having, or recess time, a playground – and then finally, when I do the group training, I assign two people at a time to talk while other four are working. So what we are doing is simulating real life challenges where –

Randall: That’s great.

Sucheta: – adaptive experiences are adjusted online, not hypothetically or not preach at, but they have experientially driven. Does that make sense?

Randall: It makes perfect sense. Let me make an editorial comment here. I would like to see these scientific studies looking at systems like that because I think procedures like that would be much more effective because you are in fact, simulating with conditions under which people are easily distracted, and I think it seems like that could possibly be much more effective for getting people to know when to block out information, went to disengage from these attention-capturing events in ways that – simply telling them about it or in ways that you just can’t do with a video game. There is not any research that’s actually doing that in the level where you have control groups and sufficient numbers of people being tested that have scientific validity there.

Sucheta: I think that’s the next nut to crack, Dr. Engle. This is a job for you.

Randall: I think so too. These things all take a lot of money and at a time when scientific budgets are being cut drastically, that’s probably not one that’s going to be funded in the near future, I’m guessing.

Sucheta: Oh, wow. Well, really, that’s a most disappointing thing about – you’re right, the scientific studies take so much time and effort, but I really appreciate – in closing, I have one last question for you. I see that the clients that I work with are mismanaging their goals, they are underachieving, and they are highly stressed and anxious about their situation. I find that these individuals are often preoccupied with their thoughts about others’ perception of them. Talking about stress psychology, once I heard Robert Sapolsky say that it’s bad for your health to be the low-ranking male in the baboon troop, and we all are no different than primates, so my question is, by allocating tons of mental resources, to ruminating about one’s own sense of self-worth, and comparing yourself with other people, we are compromising our working memory space, right? How can we handle that?

Randall: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, by training yourself to not do that. It’s easier said than done but I think this is where this idea of mindfulness training and cognitive behavior modification, all of that comes in, to get you to prevent yourself from a habit of attending to that information which will increase stress and that’s Sapolsky’s point, is it that if you are sitting around worrying about being the –

Sucheta: Demoted all the time.

Randall: That’s right, the low one, down on this heirarchy, it is stressful. His book “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” – he covers that very, very well.

Sucheta: Well, that brings us to the end of this interview, Dr. Engle. You have been a terrific guest. I’m really grateful for your time. Before I let you go, if people have a question or inquiry about your work, what’s the best way to get ahold of you?

Randall: Well, my email address is randall.engle@gatech.edu. If they Google my name, and my lab is the Attention & Working Memory Lab, but if they just Google ‘Randall Engle,’ people come up and if they click on the site to my lab website, there’s information there and they can contact me through that site, and all of my papers are available there. There’s a 2002 paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science that is a really good introduction for this idea of the ability to attend to critical information and to block attention to non-past critical information.

Sucheta: Thank you so much. We will link those things in our website. Once again, we are extremely grateful for your time. Have a great day.

Randall: You are most welcome. Bye.

Todd: Well, as I suspected, Sucheta, yet another great conversation with Dr. Randall Engle. This conversation around working memory, I was thinking back to the limerick that you tried to have me recite from my working memory in the beginning of this episode, and I’m realizing now that to get better at that, I have to really focus on training my brain. So a lot of work I have to do on that front. But I understand, we cannot train our brain unless we can get good at watching out for mindlessness, right?

Sucheta: Exactly right, Todd, and that’s probably the first takeaway, and maybe you can even think it this way, that watching them and not letting go out of control is the training. So temporary information that we hold onto while we work on things defines part of the working memory story, but the critical component of working memory is attention and where it is directed. That really is the foundation for designing anything that we design to train the working memory. Working memory system is very volatile, as I mentioned it earlier, and any momentary lapse of attention can be very costly. Well, of course, the most fun part or the sad part is it does not spare young or old ones, experts or novices, and it can cause havoc or even deadly results for anybody involved. The reason we become victims of everyday mindlessness is that we are trying to get rid of this moment in hopes that we will feel more gratified in some other moment in the future, and this is exactly what gets our attention tied up and our mind preoccupied in thinking about things other than what is in front of us, and so all the Zen masters and the mindfulness experts are talking really about capturing the moment and the caching on that moment, really.

Todd: Yes, no, absolutely. We talked about being on autopilot and I do a lot of things, I feel, on autopilot everyday, and I understand now and I see how I can do better.

Sucheta: That’s exactly the premise of working memory training, Todd. The takeaway for me that I would like to share with people is that we can do better. The question remains, how? So number one is to become more aware of attention slippage. Second is to rein back our focus, prevent mind wandering, and the third thing is to sharpen the skills of maintaining focus on tasks in hand. People often rely on automatic aspect of attention, particularly if we are dealing with something that we have done 100,000 times, or example, making coffee or getting yourself out of the garage and pressing the button to close the garage door. If you get the sequence out or if you are on autopilot, you may actually forget to close the garage door or you may actually begin to close the garage door even when you are driving halfway through the door. Even practicing simple relaxation techniques as simply breathe in and breathe out can lead to improvement of that conscious attention. Watching one’s breath is highly emphasized in many eastern spiritual practices, in fact, and of course, it’s become quite popular but it’s not really easy, if you know what I mean.

Todd: Well, sure do, and thinking about taking deep breaths, I mean, I sometimes do that as well as closing my eyes, is to focus better. I felt like I was okay after that but it sounds like I need to go a lot further towards – you mentioned these Zen masters and their deep level of concentration. Is that even possible for someone like me?

Sucheta: Of course, it’s possible, Todd. With practice, anything is possible. Mindfulness practice can circumvent failures of working memory functioning. Just as Zen masters do, we need to develop control on our executive attention. Zen masters often use an analogy that we have, a monkey mind. “Let me get through this moment to get to the good stuff.” That is the monkey mind, and that monkey mind keeps telling us that this moment that we are in is really not enticing or good enough. Mindfulness practice is countering that silly notion and reining in the constant desire for self-gratification through pursuit of new stimulation or new ideas. Boredom is the true beast that we need to conquer, so yes, to become like Zen master is to really let go the tendency to get bored easily.

Todd: So thinking more about working memory training, what does that actually really look like?

Sucheta: Well, this is the takeaway number for for all those who are listening, that the first step is myth-busting. We need to expand our mental resources and free up working memory by letting this moment be. We need to surrender into the truth that many things compete for our attention and we cannot multitask or multi-attend That’s the myth that needs to be busted. Treatment needs to be conceived using a broader lens of attention regulation. If we really understand that, then we will know what effective training process should include. Helping people become aware of how volatile their attention system is can be very, very helpful. Secondly, training them to identify external distractions and internal intrusive thoughts can be very helpful as well, and lastly, if people learn how to and then master ways to hold onto one idea with great effort and focus, they can certainly improve their working memory.

Another thing is, get people to better understand themselves and their fragile focusing ability. So the training should include learning to focus on what’s critical for self, that goal-directed attention, and I use this analogy often that the bigger goal, pursuit of bigger goal trumps pursuit of a smaller goal, and so recognizing or reordering that goal is really important.

Lastly, one must learn to ignore stuff that is not important or relevant for immediate goal or even a big picture goal, and that judgment is actually working memory training.

Todd: Well, our things like brain games and gimmicks, I mean, are those really effective or are they not?

Sucheta: Well, we live in online world where everything is offered to us as a means and tools to improve ourselves, and Professor Engle’s analysis reveals that not everything is created equal. He understands why people would be desperate and willing to spend money on training these skills and abilities because these skills can really impair everyday effectiveness but he asks us to be very cautious and he has described the science behind it very well. When he evaluated the possible benefits of training through games, his research suggested that they were relying just on practice – the games were relying on practice and that was not adequate way of training working memory. Our brain is a powerful tool and anyone can and will get better with anything by simply engaging in practice, so none of the tools he investigated showed improvement in transfer of these skills into a newer or unfamiliar situation.

So no, in his opinion, brain games and gimmicks were not effective. What I did gather though that he recommends us to consider that games that have dynamic aspect built into it is likely to lead to better success but he hasn’t seen any in the market yet.

Todd: That’s fascinating stuff. I’ve always thought that I had just a weak memory and it’s fascinating to think about that there is training that could be done to strengthen that. That’s something I’m going to have to think about.

So as we close this conversation, Sucheta, any final thoughts you want to share?

Sucheta: Oh, absolutely, Todd. Here’s my conclusion: working memory plays a big role in our interaction with the world. Childhood upbringing can play an important role in learning to develop mindful attention, handling distractions, and coping with ongoing stress of living a life. We need external support and coaching throughout our lives so our interests are shaped and our exposure is widened. Going to places like museums and aquariums can widen our perspective but it can also polish this paying attention and learning how to pay attention to important stuff. Playing with toys and building things, experimenting with stuff can really engage curiosity and force one to get off that autopilot mode.

So finally, strengthening skills outside school is really the key. Parents and culture can set high expectations and make sure that children meet those those expectations through compassionate support and careful supervision, and with all that together, when orchestrated well, can lead to sound development of working memory.

Todd: Great stuff. As I said, another great conversation between yourself and Dr. Engle. Good stuff.

Alright, all the time we have for today. On behalf of our host, Sucheta Kamath, and all of us at Cerebral Matters, thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to seeing you next week on Full PreFrontal.