Toward a Science of Effective Cognitive Training

Narrative review of the cognitive-training literature and recent meta-analytic evidence

Children and adults

Recorded as the sympathetic reading of the same evidence: the authors accept the meta-analytic record but argue the field's failure is theoretical rather than substantive. Included because a debunked-layer verdict should be tested against the best available defence, not only against its critics.

Concedes that near transfer is uncontested and that far transfer remains hotly debated rather than established. Proposes that progress requires a process-based account of training and transfer, attention to individual differences in responsiveness, and Bayesian developmental models. Note what is NOT claimed: no demonstrated durable far-transfer effect is offered.

Individual differences in trainability are raised as a moderator without genetically informative evidence, which is the same untested assumption this archive flags elsewhere in the trainability literature.