Do “Brain-Training” Programs Work?

By Daniel J. Simons, Walter R. Boot, Neil Charness, Susan E. Gathercole *, Christopher F. Chabris, David Z. Hambrick, Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2016

1,017 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/224d08a15960c774163fd53391d90b4caffe84e8

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

Citations in the corpus

Education and Cognitive Functioning Across the Life Span (2020, background): “, cognitive training, music, and chess) result in limited generalization of benefits to outcome measures of cognitive performance that are not directly tapping into skills, strategies, and knowledge acquired through those activities (Melby-Lervag, Redick, & Hulme, 2016; Sala & Gobet, 2017; Simons et”
A primer on investigating the after effects of acute bouts of physical activity on cognition (2019, background): “The use of cognitively engaging and/or active control conditions better satisfy perspectives that in order to appropriately gauge the effectiveness and clinical relevance of an intervention it is essential to utilize contact-control conditions that represent the current ‘standard of care’ or closely”
Attention Control: A Cornerstone of Higher-Order Cognition (2020, background): “Second, although strategy use may be a trainable aspect of task performance, the overwhelming conclusion to emerge from “brain-training” research is that improvements on trained tasks do not transfer to global improvements in cognitive functioning (Simons et al., 2016).”
Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert (2018, background): “” Simons et al. (2016) provided an extensive review of cognitive training programs in this journal and found little evidence that such training affects everyday cognitive performance, including reading.”
Video Game Addiction: The Push To Pathologize Video Games (2017, background): “For instance, suggestions that video games improve IQ or visual spatial cognition remain controversial at best (Simons et al., 2016).”
Meta-Analysis of Action Video Game Impact on Perceptual, Attentional, and Cognitive Skills (2018, background): “Thus, confidence in the overall accuracy of that foundational science is critical, as has been recently highlighted in the context of brain training games (Simons et al., 2016).”
Fitness Effects on the Cognitive Function of Older Adults: A Meta-Analytic Study—Revisited (2018, background): “An important issue raised in recent years, initially with respect to cognitive training, is the adequacy of control groups to ensure that observed cognitive benefits of interventions are not attributable to expectancy or placebo effects (Simons et al., 2016).”