BBC Brain Training study sends the wrong message

The trouble with the recent BBC study into Brain Training is that many people have interpreted the results to mean ‘Brain Training is pointless’. This is definitely not the case. It is important to remember that the aim of the study was to prove whether brain training games improve overall brain power ie are gains from playing certain games transferable to other mental tasks?

This was not proven, however, the study does admit that repeated playing of Brain Games leads to an improvement in the skills tested in those particular games. This is good news. Most decent Brain Training programs test core cognitive functions such as memory, reaction, special awareness and focus which are all vital for everyday tasks. Improvements in any of those areas will certainly be beneficial.

Was the experiment conclusive? Should we abandon further studies in Brain Training?

Many people feel the experiment itself was flawed. Criticisms of the trial have been flying around the net since the results were published. Here are some of the main flaws that have been mentioned...

•    Over the 6-week period, some participants had only completed 4 hours worth of training. Other trials have shown improvements only after a longer period of training.

•    The participants were practicing at home online. This is likely to lead to a bad testing environment with other distractions occurring such as noisy children, TV, talking and phones ringing during the training.

•    The experiment’s reasoning benchmark was a grammatical reasoning test. None of the training games tested language skills. The control group, however, was given a task which did test language skills.

The title of the program ‘Bang goes the theory’ suggests that the BBC had decided the outcome of the experiment before it even started!  Let’s hope that the scientific community doesn’t think the case is closed for Brain Training. More research is definitely needed.