Popular ‘brain training’ games could be used to improve children’s school grades, a new study has found.

 

The research, carried out by the University of Michigan and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, suggests that puzzle-based computer games used by children to help ‘train’ their brain and increase memory could also be used to improve their reasoning and problem-solving abilities.
 

The brain training games, made popular through the introduction of devices such as the Nintendo DS, were used to test 62 school children with an average age of around eight or nine. The psychologists conducting the research assigned students to one of two groups, with one group of children using games designed to boost ‘working memory’, whilst the other group were made to exercise their general knowledge and vocabulary skills. Both groups trained on computerised tasks resembling video games five times a week in 15 minutes sessions for a period of a month.

 

 

The ‘working memory’ enables people to store and retrieve small amounts of information over brief periods. The study found that, for the children who trained well, the brain training games could boost the working memory and improve reasoning and problem solving skills for at least three months afterwards, compared with those who did not train as well and those who trained on the general knowledge and vocabulary games.

 

Dr Susanne Jaeggi, who led the study, commented:

 

‘The current findings add to the literature demonstrating that brain training works, and that transfer effects may even persist over time.’

 

However, the researchers conceded that the effectiveness of brain training varied hugely from one child to another, and is not guaranteed to work for all youngsters. This could be attributed to a number of factors, with Jaeggi, concluding that ‘individual differences in training influenced the children's performance on the intelligence tests’.

 

The researchers are now investigating whether this type of brain training might be beneficial for children with working memory and attention deficits.