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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday June 13 2019, @07:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-or-maybe-not dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Can 'brain games' really help you improve the way your brain functions?

You've probably seen ads for apps promising to make you smarter in just a few minutes a day. Hundreds of so-called "brain training" programs can be purchased for download. These simple games are designed to challenge mental abilities, with the ultimate goal of improving the performance of important everyday tasks.

But can just clicking away at animations of swimming fish or flashed streets signs on your phone really help you improve the way your brain functions?

Two large groups of scientists and mental health practitioners published consensus statements, months apart in 2014, on the effectiveness of these kinds of brain games. Both included people with years of research experience and expertise in cognition, learning, skill acquisition, neuroscience and dementia. Both groups carefully considered the same body of evidence available at the time.

Yet, they issued exactly opposite statements.

One concluded that "there is little evidence that playing brain games improves underlying broad cognitive abilities, or that it enables one to better navigate a complex realm of everyday life."

The other argued that "a substantial and growing body of evidence shows that certain cognitive training regimens can significantly improve cognitive function, including in ways that generalize to everyday life."

[...]The most important lesson from the literature on training is this: If you want to improve your performance on a task that's important to you, practice that task. Playing brain games may only make you better at playing brain games.


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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:32PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:32PM (#855122) Homepage
    Don't be a dumbarse. Just because you can't tell the difference between climate skeptics and climate change deniars doesn't mean there isn't a clear distinction between them.

    The climate skeptics who have adopted the moniker "Lukewarmers" are undeniably skeptics, and yet they clearly state that not only is there global warming, that a significant component of it is anthropogenic (many are happy with ratios around a half). They just don't believe any of the IPCC models (by which I mean they don't just believe that the predictions made by the simulations of the model are incorrect, but that they actually believe the model itself is incorrect).
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