Which cognitive skill tends to be highly trainable and can be improved with practice during early adulthood?

Which cognitive skill tends to be highly trainable and can be improved with practice during early adulthood?

• A. Processing speed
• B. Working memory capacity and executive function
• C. Verbal fluency
• D. Long-term memory

Answer: (B)

The key idea is that executive function and working memory capacity show the strongest practice-related gains in early adulthood. These abilities involve controlling and updating information, resisting distractions, and flexible thinking. With targeted training, people can reliably improve how much information they can hold and manipulate in working memory, and they can become better at planning, switching tasks, and inhibiting irrelevant thoughts. This reflects the plasticity of prefrontal-control systems during this period, where deliberate practice yields noticeable improvements and some transfer to complex reasoning tasks. Processing speed tends to be more stable across adulthood, with only modest gains from certain interventions. Verbal fluency can improve with language experience and practice, but not to the same extent as working memory and executive control. Long-term memory performance depends largely on encoding strategies and accumulated knowledge, which tends to be less responsive to short-term training than working memory capacity and executive function.

The key idea is that executive function and working memory capacity show the strongest practice-related gains in early adulthood. These abilities involve controlling and updating information, resisting distractions, and flexible thinking. With targeted training, people can reliably improve how much information they can hold and manipulate in working memory, and they can become better at planning, switching tasks, and inhibiting irrelevant thoughts. This reflects the plasticity of prefrontal-control systems during this period, where deliberate practice yields noticeable improvements and some transfer to complex reasoning tasks.

Processing speed tends to be more stable across adulthood, with only modest gains from certain interventions. Verbal fluency can improve with language experience and practice, but not to the same extent as working memory and executive control. Long-term memory performance depends largely on encoding strategies and accumulated knowledge, which tends to be less responsive to short-term training than working memory capacity and executive function.