Can intelligence be trained

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According to the FTC complaint, the company suggested its games could reduce or delay cognitive impairment such as one might find in Alzheimer's patients, which is false. Earlier studies have found no link between increased intelligence and brain training exercises. Students today take a wide variety of standardized tests, from assessments throughout elementary school to evaluations required for college admission.

While test prep for such assessments can increase factual knowledge, one study suggests that this prep does little to increase overall IQ. While test preparation increases what psychologists refer to as crystallized intelligence , it does not increase what is known as fluid intelligence.

Crystallized intelligence includes facts and information, while fluid intelligence involves the ability to think abstractly or logically. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science , researchers looked at the IQ scores and test scores of approximately 1, eighth-grade students.

While schoolwork helped increase the students' test scores, it had no effect on measures of fluid intelligence. The authors suggest that fluid intelligence is a much better indicator of abilities such as problem-solving ability, abstract thinking skills, memory capacity, and processing speed. While the study found no indication that test preparation improved IQ, that does not mean that this preparation has no value.

Research clearly shows that having high scores on standardized tests is linked to having high scores on other important tests including Advanced Placement tests, the SAT, and the ACT. Crystallized knowledge is also important for many areas of life, both in school and later on in the workforce. For example, factual knowledge is important for doing well in math classes and for later applying that knowledge in the real-world.

In another study published in the Journal of Neuroscience , researchers found that while brain training games did increase performance on specific tasks, they didn't lead to a general improvement in overall intelligence. In the study, 60 participants were tested on their ability to withhold an action. After seeing a "go" signal indicating either left or right, the participants had to press a key corresponding to the correct direction.

In about a quarter of the trials, however, a beep was sounded immediately after the go signal that meant that the participant was not supposed to press any key. Compared to the control group , which received no such beep, the participants in the experimental group showed increased levels of activity in brain areas associated with inhibitory actions.

However, the researchers saw no corresponding activity in areas of the brain associated with working memory. According to the researchers, brain training games can result in a temporary increase in the ability to perform a specific task.

However, they probably do not have much of an impact on overall intelligence. Given the results of such studies, you might be wondering if brain training has any value. We reviewed the evidence to find out.

The topic of cognitive training is still very controversial, with scientists expressing opposing views about its effectiveness. Enthusiastic claims about the effects of cognitive training programmes usually follow the publication of a single experiment reporting positive findings.

Much less attention is paid when a study reports negative results. This phenomenon is quite common in many areas of social and life sciences and often provides a biased view of a particular research field. That is why systematic reviews such as ours are essential to rule out the risk of such bias.

In a new paper, published in Current Directions in Psychological Science , we synthesise what the reviews say about several cognitive training programmes.

Our main method was meta-analysis — that is, a set of statistical techniques for estimating the true overall effect of a treatment. To begin with, music expertise has been associated with superior memory for music material notes on a stave. Remarkably, music experts exhibit a superior memory even when the musical material is meaningless random notes.

In the same vein, musical aptitude predicts music skills such as pitch and chord discrimination. However, music instruction does not seem to exert any true effect on skills outside of music. Indeed, our meta-analysis shows that engaging in music has no impact on general measures of intelligence, when placebo effects are controlled for with active control groups. Music training does not affect either cognitive skills — fluid intelligence, memory, phonological processing, spatial ability and cognitive control — or academic achievement.

These outcomes have been recently confirmed by other independent labs. The field of chess presents an analogous pattern of findings.