Working-memory training: effects on delay discounting in male Long Evans rats.
Working-memory training sharpens memory itself yet leaves impulsive choice untouched.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Renee and team trained rats on a working-memory game for 140 sessions. Half the rats got the training, half did not.
The game asked rats to remember where a light blinked. Later, the rats chose between a small treat now or a bigger treat later. This tested delay discounting — how long they would wait.
What they found
The trained rats got better at the memory game. But they still picked the quick, small treat just as often as the untrained rats.
In plain words: stronger working memory did not make the rats more patient.
How this fits with other research
Freeman et al. (2015) saw a different story. In kids with autism, verbal working memory stayed flat for two years, while kids with ADHD improved. That looks like a clash — memory can be trained in rats but not in autistic humans. The gap is the population: neurotypical rats versus autistic children. Training helps one group; development helps the other.
Lerner et al. (2012) also ran a memory study, but with pigeons given nicotine. Like Renee’s rats, the birds showed no change in memory accuracy. Both labs used tight operant setups and found no magic bullet.
Foti et al. (2015) showed that naming stimulus classes before tact training helped adults form equivalence relations. Like Renee, they used a training-first design, but their payoff was reasoning, not self-control.
Why it matters
If you hoped memory drills would cut impulsive choices, this rat data says don’t bank on it. Work on delay discounting directly — use delay fading, token boards, or self-management plans. Keep memory tasks for memory goals, not for patience goals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Delay discounting describes the devaluation of a reward as the delay to the receipt of the reward increases. Because steep delay discounting is robustly correlated with a number of behavioral problems (e.g., substance dependence, gambling) and some evidence suggests steep discounting precedes and predicts drug-taking in humans and rats, this study sought to experimentally reduce rats' delay discounting. Human stimulant-dependent participants given working-memory training reportedly decreased their rates of discounting relative to a sham-training group (Bickel, Yi, Landes, Hill, & Baxter, 2011). To evaluate the cross-species generality of this effect, 38 male Long-Evans rats, matched on pretraining delay-discounting rates, were randomly assigned to receive 140 sessions of working-memory training or sham training (which required no memory of the sample stimulus). Large between-group differences in working memory were observed after training; however, posttraining delay-discounting rates were undifferentiated across groups. Potential explanations for these findings are discussed.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2015 · doi:10.1037/a0017571