Working Memory and Go

[SmoothOper]

So does playing go have the potential to increase working memory?

It seems that there has been research recently indicating that people can increase their working memory, if they work at it. The tasks seemed fairly similar to strategy games.

[Phelan]

I think there were some posts about dual-n-back around here. They might have more info on it.

Edit: Found one - http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... f=10&t=729
Had to use google search.

[Zombie]

AFAIK, playing strategy games and the like tends to just increase the size of units your working memory can handle - newbies memorize positions of single pieces, experts remember things as gamestates. You don't really learn to handle more memory units than the standard. Just my understanding and relatively likely to be wrong, though. Something like Starcraft just might actually train you to be able to keep more separate things in memory, but that's pure conjecture on my part.

[Bill Spight]

IIRC, there is some research that indicates that professionals have increased working memory, at least for go. OC, they became strong as children, so that probably means that the structure of their brains is different from amateurs.

[hirohiigo]

There was an article some time ago about how shogi professionals actually use their brain in different (and more efficient) ways than playing. I would assume this is true also of go pros. I don't really know if this is actually an increase of memory, though.

[SmoothOper]

I think there were some posts about dual-n-back around here. They might have more info on it.

Edit: Found one - viewtopic.php?f=10&t=729
Had to use google search.

That is the type of article I was referring to. Which claimed that working memory could actually be improved. I am not altogether convinced, that the IQ tests don't just resemble the ways people were training IE. The training involves matrices with colorful objects, and the test involves matrices with colored blocks, so it could be just familiarity with the test, however it seems that Go would also be similar to the tests with 2D matrices.

The reason Go would improve working memory IMO, could be that you have to search through the game tree and remember the variations to pick a solution. An example would be reading out tsumego's or doing full board analysis.