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What do cheating on your diet, overreacting to a tantrum thrown by your child, and having a drink even though you decided to stop drinking have in common? They all involve failures of self-control.
不按時用餐、對孩子的錯誤反應(yīng)過激、打算戒酒后卻豪飲？這都屬于失敗的自我調(diào)控。
The ability to control unwanted behaviors is at the heart of what psychologists term executive control. Executive control is an umbrella term that refers to a collection of cognitive functions - such as attention, planning, memory, initiating actions and inhibiting them. When our impulses get the best of us, a failure in executive control is often to blame.
控制不必要的行為的能力處于心理學(xué)術(shù)語“執(zhí)行控制”的核心位置。執(zhí)行控制是個涵蓋性術(shù)語，它指的是一系列的認(rèn)知功能，比如注意力、計劃、記憶、下意識的動作以及控制下意識動作。當(dāng)我們沖動行事時，該受責(zé)備的常常是執(zhí)行控制。
Fortunately, these failures are not inevitable. In fact, a paper published last week in the journal Psychological Science suggests that failures of executive control can be diminished by training our working memory.
幸運的是，這些失敗是可以避免的。實際上，上周《心理科學(xué)》周刊發(fā)表了一篇論文，此論文認(rèn)為通過訓(xùn)練工作記憶可以消除執(zhí)行控制失誤。
Working memory, housed in the prefrontal cortex, is strongly related to executive control. People with less working memory have poor executive functioning and training working memory improves executive control. Because of this, Katrijn Houben and her colleagues at Maastricht University in the Netherlands set out to test whether strengthening people's working memory might help them control their impulses.
大腦的工作記憶，位于前額皮質(zhì)，它與執(zhí)行控制有密切聯(lián)系。人的大腦工作記憶越小，他的執(zhí)行控制的能力就會越差，訓(xùn)練工作記憶會改善執(zhí)行控制。由此，荷蘭馬斯特里赫特大學(xué)的Katrijn Houben及其同事決定測試一下，增強人民的工作記憶是否能幫助控制其沖動。
They decided to look at impulse control in heavy drinkers. So, they invited people who drank upwards of 30 drinks per week to complete a series of on-line working memory training sessions. There were 25 sessions in total spread out over roughly a month's time and folks took part in either a treatment or placebo training group.
他們決定觀察酗酒者控制沖動的能力。所以，他們邀請一些每周喝30多次酒的人來完成一系列在線工作記憶訓(xùn)練項目。此項目共計包括25個子項目，共計耗時約為1個月。訓(xùn)練分為訓(xùn)練組和對比組。
In the treatment group, people went through an intensive working memory training program that involved a variety of verbal and spatial tasks designed to exercise working memory. In one task, the treatment group saw letters - one by one - on a computer screen. They were to remember the letters as they appeared and then to recall them in the exact opposite order in which they had been originally presented. This type of backwards memory task is quite hard because you have to keep track of what is presented to you and reverse it in your head. This reversing is the "working" part of working memory. Critically, as people got better and better at the backwards memory task, the difficulty - that is, how many items they had to remember and reverse in mind - increased. In essence, the training was always pushing people to work their working memory a bit more.
在實驗組中，實驗者們經(jīng)歷了一項集中性的工作記憶訓(xùn)練項目，此項目包括為了訓(xùn)練記憶里而設(shè)計的各種各樣的口頭和受空間控制的任務(wù)。在其中一項任務(wù)中，實驗組觀看了電腦屏幕所一一播放的字母。任務(wù)是讓他們按倒序說出他們所收看到的字母。這種倒序記憶任務(wù)很難，原因是你要在大腦中記憶所播放事物的同時反向記憶之。而這個顛倒過程就是工作記憶的“工作”部分。然后，當(dāng)人們在反向記憶中做得越來越好時，他們需在腦中記憶并反向記憶的項目的難度被增大。簡而言之，這種訓(xùn)練迫使人們做得比工作記憶還要多一點。
Folks in the placebo group also performed a variety of activities on the computer that were similar to those done by those in the treatment group. However, when people in the placebo group performed the backwards memory task described above, they only had to remember a few items and the number of items never increased. The placebo group had much less of a working memory workout.
對比組也進行了與訓(xùn)練組相似的活動，只是當(dāng)他們也進行上面所描述的反向記憶時，他們只需記住很少的項目，而且量不會增加。與訓(xùn)練組相比，對比組的工作記憶訓(xùn)練少多了。
Not surprisingly, people in the treatment group got better on the working memory tasks they trained on. But these folks also improved on other executive control tasks that they had not practiced. Even more impressive, people in the treatment group reduced their alcohol intake by about 10 glasses a week compared to what they drank before the study (with the biggest reductions for those with the strongest impulses to drink alcohol). People in the placebo group did not show a change in their drinking behavior.
不出人意料，在完成訓(xùn)練任務(wù)上，測試組的人做得好多了。并且這些人在他們未被訓(xùn)練的其他執(zhí)行控制任務(wù)方面也得到了提高。更讓人印象深刻的是，訓(xùn)練組的人減少了酒精的攝入量，與研究前相比，他們現(xiàn)在每周大約少喝10杯酒（對于那些飲酒量最大的、最想要喝酒的人來說）。而對比組中的人飲酒行為沒發(fā)生變化。
A month after the training was over, study participants were invited back on-line and their working memory and alcohol intake was assessed once again. The training benefits remained - both in terms of the boost to working memory and the reduction in alcohol intake.
訓(xùn)練結(jié)束一個月后，實驗參與者被邀請上線，對他們的工作記憶、酒精攝入量進行再次測量。（測量結(jié)果表明）訓(xùn)練的好處仍然存在，包括工作記憶的增長及酒精攝入量的減少。
Of course, more research is needed to figure out just how long these effects last and whether working memory training can help control alcohol use in clinical samples of alcohol abusers. Nonetheless, this work is exciting because it suggest that, just as you can build muscle through weight training, brain training can reduce alcohol abuse and likely a whole host of unhealthy behaviors.
當(dāng)然，還得繼續(xù)研究此訓(xùn)練的影響將持續(xù)多久，以及工作記憶訓(xùn)練師范有利于幫助臨床案例中的嗜酒者控制酒精攝入量。盡管如此，這項工作仍是激動人心的，因為它認(rèn)為，就像舉重訓(xùn)練能構(gòu)建肌肉一樣，思維訓(xùn)練可以減少嗜酒者甚至可能減少全部不利于健康的行為。
原文鏈接：Training the Brain to Avoid Temptation
