Research on cognitive interventions and training-induced changes in brain and behavior has been of growing interest in psychology and neuroscience over the last decade (for reviews see Hertzog, Kramer, Wilson, & Lindenberger,
2009; Lustig, Shah, Seidler, & Reuter-Lorenz,
2009; Chein & Morrison,
2010; for meta-analyses see Karbach & Verhaeghen,
2014; Melby-Lervag & Hulme,
2013). The interest in these studies is to a large extent related to empirical reports and observations, which suggest that appropriate training interventions can produce broad learning effects and may generalize to other non-trained tasks (e.g., Bergman-Nutley et al.,
2011; Green & Bavelier,
2003; Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig,
2008; Klingberg,
2010; Strobach, Frensch, & Schubert,
2012, and many others). These training and transfer effects are often observed in studies using process-based training; this training is based on the assumption that practice and learning may improve relevant processes in one task situation and the improvement may generalize to another task situation if there is a process overlap between situations (Schmidt & Bjork,
1992; Taatgen,
2013). This kind of training must be distinguished from (rather traditional) strategy-based training approaches, which usually focus on the training of task-specific procedures and strategies improving the performance in the given task without transferring broadly to other tasks (i.e., Klauer,
1989; Kliegl & Baltes,
1987; Kliegl, Smith, & Baltes,
1990; Rebok, Carlson, & Langbaum,
2007). …
