Data for “Training and transfer effects of working memory updating training in male abstinent long-term methamphetamine users”
Description
Methamphetamine use is associated with cognitive effects, as cause or effect of the drug (re-)use. Enhancement of cognitive functioning, especially of executive functioning through targeted trainings might alleviate these effects. The present study assessed the effect of an adaptive working memory updating (WMU) training in male long-term methamphetamine inpatients (n=16) on various executive functions. Before and after training, the participants completed a number of tasks measuring WMU, interference control, response inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. The inpatients showed a clear performance improvement across training sessions. Relative to an active control group (n=16), the trained participants further showed a beneficial near-transfer effect in the form of enhanced performance on the non-trained WMU task. No evidence of training-induced effects on any of the other tasks was seen, reflecting the absence of far transfer. These results are similar to those seen in other cognitive training studies in both healthy and clinical populations. They provide evidence for a fundamental ability to learn and for applying the changed capacity or learned skill to similar, novel contexts, which may have clinical implications. The data file concerns an SPSS data file containing pre-processed data. The data consist of each participant’s score on the outcome measure(s) for each of the tasks used (n-back, flanker, go/no-go, Stroop, two running memory, and switching tasks), which were used to perform repeated measures analyses of variance to analyze training progress, traditional and Bayesian analyses of covariance to assess the evidence for training-induced transfer effects, and a Spearman correlation analysis to assess to what extent individual variation in training progress is linked to progress on the WMU transfer task, as described in the target article. The meaning of each column in the data file is described under the tap Variable View --> Label. The raw data (in eprime format) on which the pre-processed data are base are available from the corresponding author upon request.