Do Cognitive Games Make Your Smarter?

The evidence is conflicting

Cognitive games have risen with digital technologies and sound like they obviously must improve our cognitive skills and brain power. However, initial research showed limited results – most of the improvements is down to improving skills on the game and not increased brain power in a variety of contexts. Where do we stand now? The results are mixed but, all in, not too bad!

Cognitive games really reached the public with Nintendo’s release of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Games in 2005. This was a set of games on a popular gaming console designed to boost your brain power. This led to a whole spate of brain games being released and many grand claims of their efficacy in improving memory, cognitive, and general brain ability.

This sounds like a good thing, until the research started coming in, and the research was very sobering. Indeed, Lumosity, the developer of a well-known app, was handed out a hefty fine in 2016 for overstating the impacts of their brain training app, and as recently as 2019 Wired published an article titled “Brain training apps don't really work. So why do we love them?”.

The recent articles are a bit of a surprise because the research has moved on, has found noticeable positive effects and the industry has caught up and has become more evidence-based - this is a good thing. Implicitly it feels like a good thing to train you brain, in fact it sounds downright obvious that this must be a good thing. So why the scepticism?