Do Brain Games Make You Smarter?

It’s the big question, especially for an educational store like ours. Do brain games actually make you smarter?

Are educational activities, puzzles, or games actually educational? Are they better than reading a textbook or sitting in class? Do we have any proof of that? Or is it all just a marketing ploy, or perhaps a hopeful ideal, that simply isn’t true? Are schools and gamified educational programs just wasting everyone’s time?

I will give the conclusion now, then spend the remainder of this article explaining it. And more explanation is necessary, because even finding a definition for “smarter” is hard.

• All activities train your brain. Reading a book, asking a question, walking to the refrigerator. Whenever you do something, you’re using your brain. Either strengthening existing skills or learning new ones. That’s also why we’re against putting “educational” in front of stuff, because every game is educational.
• But some activities are more effective than others. Playing a game creates a much deeper understanding of the systems and concepts involved than, say, passively sitting in a chair and listening to someone give a lecture. Solving a puzzle on your own requires more effort and thus gives more reward than just looking up the answers to the homework exercises.
• And they only train a few specific skills. Most games require a small subset of skills to be applied and trained over and over. There is simply no evidence at all that doing so will magically transfer to other skills that you weren’t using (“far transfer”). There is only good evidence for “near transfer”: you get better at highly related skills.
• But this isn’t necessarily bad or impossible to overcome. Maybe Sudokus won’t make you amazing at other unrelated things. But they will make you amazing at the skills required, and that’s also worth a lot. And if you were to play a different puzzle every day, then you’d be collecting lots of different skills, which one might argue combine into “general intelligence” (or “becoming smarter”).

That’s it. You can leave now if you want! Below I’ll add some more explanation, nuance and sidenotes to the summary above.

What does “smarter” mean?

Most people know that there’s a difference between “knowledgeable” and “wise”, between “learned” and “smart”. They know that being able to memorize a lot of facts does not make you “smart”, just “knowledgeable”. They know that getting good at one thing does not magically make you good at something else.

For example, if someone gets amazing grades in one subject, and terrible ones in all the others, we don’t call them “smart”. We call them “good at maths” or “you have a talent for sports”. We call them an expert in that one thing they’re good at, but everything else is seen as evidence that they’re “not smart”.

No, most people believe “being smart” to mean that you possess “general intelligence”. Becoming smarter means your general level of skill, across all the general disciplines, rises.

People are looking for “far transfer”: things learned in one skill carry over to other skills far away from it. Being smart means you’re just as able to learn how to cook as you are to learn how to build a house. Because you have a general intelligence that you can apply to any skill.

There are many websites and apps that promise brain games that will “make you smarter”. (Although, in recent times, agencies have punished them for making such unfounded claims and they are now changing the phrasing.)

Hopefully you can see why this is nonsense. Why would playing a specific number game make you better at, say, reading and writing? Why would a spatial awareness game suddenly teach you new vocabulary? How would that even work in our brains?

There is simply no evidence for it, none at all.

But it sounds and feels reasonable. Many people believe this. Including some people close to me whom I’ve tried to convince otherwise!

Why? I believe it sounds convincing for two reasons.

Reason #1: “Near Transfer” is a thing. In other words, skills gained will improve highly related (“nearby”) skills. If a game makes you better at addition, then you can probably see how it would also make you slightly better at subtraction or counting in general. You’re training things that are present in both skills, so getting better will raise the level of all of them.

Reason #2: One of the clearest correlations in psychology is that of the “general factor”. Simply put, it means that people who are very competent in one area, are usually somewhat competent in all other areas too. A student who gets good grades in maths class is far more likely to also get good grades in other subjects. An athlete is far more likely to be somewhat good at other sports than someone who does not exercise at all.

People know this intuitively. They’ve seen it all around them, all their life. Competent people are competent at most things. Smart people are not suddenly incredibly dumb about some less-practiced skill.

Remember: this is a correlation. It’s an objective truth observed all around us, but that says nothing about why it happens. As for the cause, that is still very much up to debate. Some fiercely claim it’s all genetics; some claim that this proves you can improve ALL your skills by training a few of them (using e.g. brain games). A “rising tide raises all ships” situation.

These two facts make it just a bit more likely to believe that, somehow, training one skill (through a puzzle or game) will magically make you “smarter” in general.

But, let me remind you, there is no evidence for this. Only evidence to the contrary: that it doesn’t matter or that it even makes things worse.

So let’s talk about that part next …

But surely it can’t do any harm!

For the most part, this is correct. It matches what I’ve said above: any activity means learning, or at least maintaining what you have. So doing something vaguely educational is better than doing nothing at all. Even if a Sudoku doesn’t teach you vocabulary, it still teaches you numeric skills. And that’s good! That’s worth a lot!

If you do these educational activities with the understanding that they will train one specific skill (and nothing else), then they are great.

If you expect them to somehow be a replacement for everything (else), then they will do harm over time.

There’s one claim, for example, that these “educational (games) providers” have not had to redact. It’s the “use it or lose it”-claim. The fact that playing brain games maintains your intelligence, especially as you grow older.

There is far more evidence for this. Far more reason to believe that brain games and the like are effective for this. (Enough, in fact, that we’re considering opening up many of our games to market them to seniors too, instead of just to kids. But we haven’t made a decision on this yet.) This is, again, good! Exercising your brain with brain games, every day, will trigger your brain to stay sharp and maintain what it has. It’s a great way to retain your cognitive abilities for as long as possible.

Nevertheless, we can do better!

Variety is the spice of intelligence

Now you know that educational activities, puzzles, games, and the like train a few specific skills. You know that this makes you better at highly related skills too, but that it doesn’t magically transfer further than that.

But … you can compensate for that by doing different activities!

Some days you do a maths puzzle. Some days you do a language puzzle. Some days you do a visual or creative puzzle. And then, once in a while, you play a themed escape room, or you take a general knowledge pub quiz.

All of these activities train only a few specific skills. But they train different skills. Which means that, over time, if you maintain this variety, you are raising your general intelligence. Because you’re literally, purposely, raising your skill in each separate area. But also because those skills will mix and mingle and combine into something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. You will actually learn new things this way.

Because now we have research on our side again. We know that our brain works through association. We remember things (best) by attaching them to other things we already know. We can form deeper connections and understanding if we can build enough associations.

If you train all those areas of your brain, then they will be able to associate with each other. The “maths” side and “language” side will both be big enough to start overlapping and building new connections. This is where creativity comes from. This is where inspiration, and problem solving, and Eureka moments come from. Because your brain suddenly makes a new connection between two existing areas it has developed.

Playing the same brain game every day does not make you “generally smarter”. Playing a different game each day, and changing it up by playing not-games too, will actually get you close to any definition of “raising your general intelligence”.

This is also why our store has so many different categories (or “factions”).

Even though games are more effective learning tools than doing a Sudoku, we will still never recommend a curriculum of “just 100% brain games” to everyone. You need the variety.

Even though it’s been proven that typical school lessons and reading from textbooks is incredibly inefficient, we still spend a lot of time creating lesson materials and homework exercises. Because you need the variety.

The best way to “get smarter” is to challenge your brain in a different way every day.

This has been a lot of abstract talk. So let me give you a practical recent example.

Endeavor Therapy

There’s a company that makes games for ADHD kids and adults. (More generally, “people with an attentive disorder”.) They seem rather succesful and smart, but I haven’t researched them that much. I am talking about EndeavorOTC and EndeavorRX.

They managed to get clinical approval for their games. Now, those same games are recommended by therapists as actual treatment for specific issues. They claim that it’s been scientifically proven to be effective therapy.

Interesting. Very interesting. And no, I don’t mean that sarcastically, I am actually interested. I am a qualified scientist myself here in the Netherlands and a severely hyperactive person. On top of that, this entire store is based on “games for learning”, so I obviously want to study them.

Let’s look into it, shall we?

Their scientific evidence is almost exclusively based on the TOVA test. It’s a test used to diagnose people with ADHD and the severity of it.

After using their game for ~10 weeks, all participants showed significant improvements on this test! This is backed up by parents or teachers saying their child can focus much better and almost seems a “different person”—but those could be fake stories, you never know. And maybe we need to worry about parents being happy that their child turned into a different person. Anyway.

How does the TOVA test work?

• The person being tested is asked to press a button in case of X and to NOT press a button in case of Y.
• Example: press a button if you see a square in the top left; do NOT press the button if you see the square in the bottom right.
• Then, a few cases are checked.
  • Omission Error: you SHOULD have pressed, but you did not => Signals inattention
  • Commision Error: you PRESSED, when you should NOT have => Signals impulsivity
  • Reaction Time (RT): just your plain reaction speed => Bad times = Suggests sluggish cognitive tempo or drift
  • Reaction Time Variability: how consistent your reaction times are => Signals inconsistent focus, the hallmark of ADHD
  • Anticipatory Responses: how often you reacted TOO QUICKLY => Signals impulsivity
    • Too quickly, here, means reacting in < 150 milliseconds. This is seen as the minimum time needed to process input, think, and respond.

Well … it’s no surprise at all that playing the Endeavor games improves your score on this test. Because this is exactly what the game does. It’s the exact skill that it trains! They simply took the TOVA test and added a nice 3D video game around it. If you train for a specific test, over and over, then you are going to get much better at it.

Their game trains the TOVA test specifically, because this is how it works.

• You weave left/right over a track. (By subtly rotating your handheld device.)
• At the same time, symbols pop up, and you are told explicitly WHICH ONES TO PRESS (and, of course, NOT to press the other ones).
• (The game basically contains no other content, or challenges, or games. It only scales the difficulty over time, to keep up with your improved abilities.)

And so it literally trains this test. No wonder that you score much better on that TOVA test after training for it for weeks. You’ve been playing a game that rewards you for clicking the right things and not clicking too soon, and keeps your attention with its graphics and multitasking.

But now comes the all-important question: is this bad?

A problem is identified and a game presented that specifically tackles it. The game specifically trains the two things hyperactive people struggle with—inattention and impulsivity. The results show that it trains them quite well.

So is this bad? Is it useless? No! It’s just solving a specific problem. They looked at how one might identify the issue (a clinical test), then made it into a game that kids will want to play over and over. It’s just a clever way to make them take the test over and over.

The only “bad” part is that Endeavor presents it as being more than that. That people might expect it to perform miracles for unrelated cognitive skills. That people might believe a game that specifically solves inattention will also magically make their kids maths geniuses.

It’s just a game. A simple game, if I am to put on my experienced programmer’s cap for a second, that any decent developer could make in a week.

Just a very simple video game that rewards you for being good at X, so by playing it from time to time, you get good at X. It’s a video game that rewards you for staying focused and attentive, and not being impulsive. And so, yes, it does help people who struggle with that.

That’s all.

And, so, this is not a slight against Endeavor. As you see, I actually support their efforts and think there’s value in their game(s). They are even more honest than most such providers, because they clearly state their game only tackles these issues and must be part of a bigger therapy.

I merely dislike that such things always need to be paired with wild unfounded scientific claims, as if it’s not enough that a game can just make you better at a few things and have fun doing it. I just dislike that they present it as a miracle and ask ridiculous sums of money for it.

You can find such games in many places. You can use board games for that. You can try the much cheaper (and more social) games in this online store.

As long as you remember the point of this article:

Specific games/puzzles/activities train only their specific skills. For increasing general intelligence, you must aggressively VARY the activities you do.

Even though we try to create varied products, we are still one store with one perspective on education. As such, we would never make wild claims like “exclusively play our games and you will become a genius!” It would be a big fat lie. There is no evidence specific activities increase general intelligence. Everyone is different, everyone’s brains are different.

Try some of our games. Then try games made by someone else. Different games that work in a different way. That variety of experiences and skills is what increases general intelligence and allows you to create new connections between skills. Because even the most exquisitely designed (video) game will only train a few specific skills and nothing else.

Conclusion

So, when all is said and done, what do I hope people take away from this?

• All activities are educational, first and foremost. Let’s just stop putting the word in front of everything and pretend it means something.
• All activities—be it games, books, regular classes, etc—will only train a few specific skills. You will only practice or maintain the things that you happen to need for that activity. At best, you have some “near transfer”, making you better at tightly-connected other skills.
• But that doesn’t make educational games and activities useless. Because getting good at that one skill is still very valuable. Especially if it’s a foundational skill for later ones, such as learning to count before you can do multiplication later. Especially if it’s something a child struggles with specifically.
• And you can compensate even more by varying your “brain games” all the time. That way you will practice all skills equally, and they might start to associate and mix in your brain to actually get new ideas and learn new things.

There is no evidence for magical skill transfer by playing the same few brain games over and over.

If you look for ways to increase your general intelligence and cognitive abilities, you can look at the few things that have been proven over and over.

• A good diet.
• Lots of exercise.
• Proper sleep.
• Socializing.
• (Reducing stress through Music, Positivity, Mindfulness and knowing How To Relax.)

Start here. Until those are in order, no amount of brain games, Sudokus or studying can make up for what you’re losing.

This is the wisdom we try to keep in mind at this store. We hope to create many products, in all our different categories, that will let people have a lot of fun while training a few specific skills on purpose.