Brain Training

Brain games. Do they train your brain? Are they effective?

Are chess players and musicians smarter than the average person?

If you wonder about such questions, you might find a recent article by Sala and Gobet of interest. The title, abstract and citation are shown below. The title tells you the conclusion: Negative evidence. In short, No. But there are some interesting tidbits.

First, we need to define Far Transfer. According to the authors: “Far transfer occurs when a set of skills generalizes across two (or more) domains that are loosely related to each other.” This is in contrast to near transfer where practice in one area helps in a closely related area – no surprise to anyone. Pay attention to this difference because it crops up aplenty in the world of education punditry. You may have encountered this when someone is promoting ‘critical thinking’ as a generalized skill, and that certain habits of mind (or perhaps brain-boosting tricks), will help you think smarter across a wide swath of domains.

Second, this short article is based on meta-analyses. No new data has been generated, but rather the data in previous studies was revisited and examined for “effectiveness of cognitive training”. The sample size is relatively small. Given those caveats, the conclusions are interesting. The studies that showed a positive correlation between chess or music or other brain-training with some improvement in cognitive ability, were in some sense the least rigorous from an experimental design point of view. For more rigorous experimental designs (with better control groups), this correlation disappears. The authors also cite several recent studies that suggest no correlation between brain-training programs or even video games on far transfer.

Perhaps this is not all that surprising. Based on Geary’s work, if some skill is biologically primary, no ‘training’ is needed – it’s already built in through evolution. If biologically secondary, expertise gained is domain-specific, i.e., practicing a particular skill improves your ability in that skill and anything closely related, but doesn’t transfer well in general to activities further afield. The authors write that “…the most obvious practical implications of our findings concern education… Considering the insight gained by the research on expert performance and cognitive training, educational and professional curricula should focus on discipline-related material rather than general principle without any specific reference to a particular subject (e.g., domain-general problem-solving skills).”

One interesting tidbit from the paper is that there is correlation between cognitive ability and expertise in chess players and musicians. However, “there is little evidence that chess or music instruction makes people smarter.” It may be that folks with strong cognitive abilities tend to engage in such activities, but it’s unclear if anything else contributes. More study needed, I suppose.

My daily brain-training comes from the New York Times crossword puzzle. In the early years, I would struggle even with the Monday (easiest) puzzle and my spouse and I would work together to solve the puzzle. We might be able to complete the puzzle in the early half of the week, but Friday and Saturday puzzles (the hardest) were often unfinished by day’s end. Too difficult. After a few years, we could complete all the puzzles together, and that individually we might be able to complete Monday through Wednesday puzzles. Nine years after our initial foray, we can individually complete the puzzle any day of the week. I do mine on paper and she uses her tablet. The only loss? What used to be a joint activity has now become an individual activity, although we do discuss fun and interesting themed features of the puzzle at the end of the day.

How has doing the crossword helped me? Well, I'm certainly better at doing New York Times crosswords. I might even be slightly better at crosswords from other sources, although I don’t do those much. Maybe I’ve gotten a little better at some types of word puzzles, but I’m not sure which. I have learned some trivia, reinforced by certain words that get reused often because of their vowel-consonant combination. Some examples: I’ve never read H.G. Wells’ Time Machine but I know who the Eloi are. I’ve learned a new shade: Ecru. I know that Melville wrote another whale-like novel called Omoo. And I now know a number of different famous or semi-famous individuals named Omar. My vocabulary of four-letter words (of the non-offensive kind) has also likely increased.

So much for brain training. The article is a bummer in that sense. Maybe I could call it the Brain Train Drain.