Cargo Cult Science Debunked: Brain Training Games Won't Help Intelligence
You've seen advertisements for brain training games, apps, and websites that promise to give your mental abilities a boost - even "Baby Einstein" videos for infants make the claim that they will lead to higher intelligence. A new paper finds that brain training programs might strengthen the ability to hold information but they won't bring any benefits to intelligence, like helping you reason and solve problems. The cognitive boost claims are based on correlations between working memory capacity (WMC), our ability to keep information either in mind or quickly retrievable, particularly in the presence of distraction, and general fluid intelligence. General fluid intelligence is the ability to infer relationships, do complex reasoning, and solve novel problems. read more