The N-Back Challenge was designed to mirror the format of the scientific studies as closely as practical. Yet many learners wish to customize certain parameters of the game. To that end, we’ve included a handful of “advanced settings” that you can find within the Settings view. At best, they allow you to have more fun with dual n-back, motivate you to complete more sessions, and maybe even accelerate your cognitive development. But since they represent a departure from the actual science behind dual n-back, you may end up failing to reap the cognitive benefits demonstrated in the research, so you should proceed with caution.
One of the ways in which we try to differentiate the N-Back Challenge from other n-back apps is by sticking closely to the scientific studies. Our goal is to maximize the probability that, upon completing the Challenge, you will, in fact, experience the statistically significant cognitive benefits from dual n-back that have been demonstrated in over a decade’s worth of peer-reviewed research.
Bowing to popular demand, however, we have also included a few “advanced settings” that allow you to turn on instant button feedback, control your n-back level manually, and change the game speed. If you tweak any of these parameters, you will be moving away from the scientific defaults. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In theory, it could be that your custom settings end up increasing the load on your working memory during gameplay, thus, at least potentially, intensifying the cognitive gains. And there may also be other benefits from applying changes to the advanced controls — such as an improved understanding of the game mechanics or a boost in your motivation to persist through at least 20 sessions. To be on the safe side, however, we advise you to complete at least one full 20-Day Challenge without fiddling with the scientific defaults, and to leave experimenting with them until later, when you are more experienced. (This is why, when you try to alter them for the first time, it triggers a warning that nudges you to reconsider.)
Let’s go through the advanced settings one by one, to discuss the potential implications — both positive and negative — of customizing them.
Turning on Instant Button Feedback
You may be familiar with instant button feedback from the onboarding process: If you failed your first attempt at either of our two tutorial levels, we turned on instant button feedback to assist you during your subsequent attempts. With instant button feedback turned on, each tap of the “Position” or “Sound” button will be accompanied by a green or red circle: green if the tap was correct, red if it was incorrect.
Instant button feedback is particularly useful in helping you familiarize yourself with the dual n-back game mechanics. If you find yourself surprised at low scores after some of your rounds, consider turning on instant button feedback to learn where you are erring. It could be that your mental model of how the game works is slightly off. In that case, we encourage you to replay the tutorial (which you can do from within the Settings view), read our tutorial blog post, or, if afterwards you still have questions, reach out to our customer support.
Instant button feedback is quite popular, and even some highly practiced learners refuse to play without it. Once you have a good grasp of the game mechanics, however, it’s arguably more likely to be counterproductive for your cognitive development. Indeed, it can be quite distracting to see a red circle in mid-round: Instead of focusing on the storage and manipulation of the visual and auditory stimuli, your mind may wander off and mull over your error. What’s worse, once you start seeing red circles, you might be tempted to give up on the round, which, due to the instant reduction in mental effort, will prevent you from gaining any cognitive benefits until the start of the next round.
Controlling N-Back Levels Manually
By design, dual n-back is adaptive: Depending on your performance in a given round, your n-back level may be automatically raised or lowered. The advanced settings give you an opportunity to control your n-back level manually. The “Level controls” toggle activates a new control shown after each completed round that allows you to manually set the level for the subsequent round. In addition, you can choose the n-back level for your next round directly from within the advanced settings.
Manual control over your n-back level could theoretically be used to enhance the cognitive benefits from dual n-back. For example, it could be the case that, say, level 4 is, at present, too hard for you, yet level 3 is too easy. As a result, you might end up truly exerting your mind to its fullest for only half of your rounds during each session — namely, during the level 4 rounds, at the end of which you keep getting bumped down to level 3, which you then proceed to complete successfully without breaking a sweat. The manual level controls would allow you to spend more time at the more challenging level 4 — to try again immediately despite having failed.
That being said, it’s more likely than not that the use of manual level controls will end up backfiring in terms of the educational impact of your training. First of all, one of the reasons for the automatic changes in n-back levels is that it discourages learners from developing task-specific strategies that would short-circuit the cognitive gains. Manual controls might encourage learners to keep practicing the same level over and over again, independent of performance, and to slide into a sort of mental groove that engenders apparent success at the given level, but actually reduces the cognitive load during the round, and thus hampers cognitive development.
Another potential problem with manually setting n-back levels is that you might set them far too high. It may seem, at first glance, that leapfrogging to a new level could be a way for you to increase your cognitive load. In practice, however, you will likely find yourself giving up in mid-round or trying to succeed by guessing, which greatly diminishes the cognitive usefulness of the exercise.
The most common problem with manually setting n-back levels, however, is that you will be tempted to set a level that’s too easy. As we’ve pointed out before, dual n-back is cognitively exhausting by design. Given how unpleasant it is to remain in a maximally exhausting state for 20 minutes at a time, there is always a high temptation to give yourself a (counterproductive) breather. And manual level controls will give you instant access to such breathers.
By way of analogy, compare going to the gym alone versus going to the gym with a personal trainer. In the former case, are you really going to push yourself as hard as in the latter case, when you have someone constantly coaxing you to go for one more rep? Probably not. Turning on manual level controls is essentially akin to trusting your own self-discipline to ensure maximum effort during your dual n-back exercise. Yes, it may work — but the odds are probably stacked against you.
Changing the Game Speed
Finally, the advanced settings allow you to play dual n-back at different speeds — from 0.5x to 4x. As you will notice when you try it out, mastering dual n-back at high game speeds can be a fun challenge in its own right. But this control also comes with other potential attractions.
The most obvious benefit, perhaps, is that a high game speed allows you to complete your daily sessions more quickly — which, in turn, may make it more likely for you to actually complete the entire program despite your busy schedule. Or, if you prefer framing it differently, and time availability is not an issue: In a given amount of practice time set aside for n-back training, you may be able to get far more rounds under your belt.
In addition, one could plausibly argue that, by increasing the game speed, you will be making your working memory work harder, by forcing it to process stimuli and manipulate items more rapidly. And since your cognitive growth from dual n-back is all about placing a maximum cognitive load on your working memory at all times, it could potentially increase the educational impact.
Last, but not least, there’s also a potential benefit to reducing the game speed. For older adults, dual n-back represents an exciting opportunity to fight age-related cognitive decline. But, at the regular game speed, dual n-back may initially prove too daunting for many older adults to get the hang of. The possibility of reducing the game speed may be needed to help them familiarize themselves with the game mechanics and establish a daily dual n-back habit.
But that’s just one side of the coin. As with all other tweaks to the defaults, there is no scientific evidence you can rely on to reassure you that, with your custom settings, your training will still have a positive impact on your IQ. Just as it’s theoretically possible that playing at a higher game speed may accelerate your cognitive growth, it could just as well be that it may stymie it.
Consider, in this context, that working memory is not only about processing and manipulating information, but also about holding it in short-term storage. Whereas a higher game speed presumably makes it more difficult for your working memory to do the former, it likely makes it less challenging for it to do the latter. After all, higher game speeds reduce the time interval between stimuli, which reduces the total amount of time you’ll need to carry any given stimulus in your working memory.
There is a corollary to this previous point, however: If it were true that increasing the game speed has a negative net effect on cognitive load as a result of the reduced demands placed on short-term storage, then wouldn’t using the advanced settings to reduce the game speed from 1x to 0.5x have a positive net effect? Perhaps, but it’s impossible to say without further research.
On balance, just as with the other scientific defaults, our recommendation is to err on the side of leaving the game speed unchanged until you’ve completed your first 20 sessions, and to start playing around with them, if at all, only once you are more experienced.
