Dual n-back news
A long awaited study on dual n-back has recently come out in pre-publication: http://www.gwern.net/N-back%20FAQ#jaeggi-2010 (For background, read the rest of my FAQ.)
It replicates the IQ boost, but it’s by the same person as Jaeggi 2008 and has the same issue with the IQ tests being speeded rather than full-time. You can see my argument about this at the DNB mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_frm/thread/c0fe2e1f14b8af06
(Meta: is this appropriate for the discussion area? I know some people here are interested in IQ enhancement like DNB promises, but normally I would just drop this into an open thread as a comment, not make a whole quasi-article about it.)
IMO this is exactly the kind of thing we’re using the discussion section for.
No one has made an October open thread which means the Discussion section has de facto replaced the open thread.
Do video games enhance cognitive abilities?
Donohue SE, Woldorff MG, & Mitroff SR (2010). Video game players show more precise multisensory temporal processing abilities. Attention, perception & psychophysics, 72 (4), 1120-9 PMID: 20436205
If you make a quasi-article about it, readers checking “summary” pages like /r/discussion and /r/discussion/recentposts can see a summary of it before deciding whether to read the whole thing.
I plan to stop my habit of regularly checking /comments and start checking /r/discussion/recentposts instead, so I will no longer see most comments put in Open Threads.
That last is the proper way to use the discussion section IMO.