Dataset for "Examining the Trainability and Transferability of Working-Memory Gating Policies"

Internal working memory (WM) gating control policies have been suggested to constitute a critical component of task-sets that can be learned and transferred to very similar task contexts (Bhandari & Badre, 2018). Here we attempt to expand these findings, examining whether such control policies can be also trained and transferred to other untrained cognitive control tasks, namely to task switching and AX-CPT. To this end, a context-processing WM task was used for training, allowing to manipulate either input (i.e., top-down selective entry of information into WM) - or output (i.e., bottom-up selective retrieval of WM) gating control policies by employing either a context-first (CF) or context-last (CL) task structure, respectively. In this task two contextual cues were each associated with two different stimuli. In CF condition, each trial began with a contextual cue, determining which of two subsequent stimuli is target relevant. In contrast, in the CL condition the contextual cue appeared last, preceded by a target and non-target stimulus successively. Participants completed a task switching baseline assessment, followed by one practice and six training blocks with the WM context-processing training task. After completing training, task-switching and AX-CPT transfer blocks were administrated, respectively. As hypothesized, compared to CL training condition, CF training led to improved task-switching performance. However, contrary to our predictions, training type did not influence AX-CPT performance. Taken together, the current results provide further evidence that internal control policies are (a) inherent element of task-sets, also in task switching and (b) independent of S-R mappings. However, these results need to be cautiously interpreted due to baseline differences in task-switching performance between the conditions (overall slower RTs in the CF condition). Importantly though, our results open a new venue for the realm of cognitive enhancement, pointing here for the first time to the potential of control policies training in promoting wider transfer effects.