REAL LIFE NEWS: BRAIN TRAINING GAMES DON’T WORK
by Hazed
“Boost your intelligence,” the companies that produce brain-training programs say. “Offset the effects of aging.” Their advertising implies that if you use their products you will stave off dementia. But a new study shows that the claims are, to put it bluntly, crap.
This isn’t the first time that scientists have thrown doubt onto the claims made by brain-training companies, but other scientists have supported the company and pointed to studies that show there are benefits. So researchers in psychology at the University of Illinois wanted to know, “How could two teams of scientists examine the same literature and come to conflicting ‘consensus’ views about the effectiveness of brain training?”
So they re-examined all of the existing peer-reviewed studies, in particular looking at all the papers that are typically cited by the brain-training companies. They looked at the evidence in each paper and evaluated factors such as sample size and the presence of control groups.
They found that very few of the studies stood up to this scrutiny.
“Based on our extensive review of the literature cited by brain-training companies in support of their claims, coupled with our review of related brain-training literatures that are not currently associated with a company or product, there does not yet appear to be sufficient evidence to justify the claim that brain training is an effective tool for enhancing real-world cognition,” conclude the authors in the study.
There is no evidence to show that brain-training does anything other than improving your performance on the particular task or puzzle you undertake. It just doesn’t improve your everyday cognitive performance.
Well, it did seem too good to be true.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/new-study-could-be-the-death-knell-of-brain-training-ga-1787355342
