Every day, educators receive e-mails and marketing pieces from companies advertising technology programs that claim to build or improve students' brain function and brain games that promise to train attention and memory skills. But do brain games really work for students?
How would a memory brain game purchased from a website differ from a card or board game like Concentration? How is an attention game different or better than a good book at developing concentration? Do old-fashioned paper and pencil activities like crossword puzzles help with brain function? Wouldn't any challenging video game help with attention if students have to focus for long periods of time to get to a new level?
The brain is the only organ of our body that changes each day as a result of our experiences. If we do any activities that challenge our memory or attention for extended periods of time, we will likely improve those brain capacities. If a student plays chess for several hours a week, for example, she will likely get better at the game and boost her short-term (working) memory as well. But neuroscientists who study brain plasticity—the way the brain changes with stimulation (or lack of stimulation)—have determined that there are ways to maximize the efficiency and positive outcomes of brain exercises so that children (or adults) can target some capacities over others in a short period of time. Controlled research shows that these targeted exercises benefit not only memory and attention but also other brain capacities.
For example, research unsurprisingly indicates that 7-year-olds doing a simple computer-based exercise that targets working memory for just a few minutes a day, over a few consecutive weeks, show improved working memory. What is more surprising is that these same 7-year-olds also demonstrate improved reading comprehension compared with children who received reading instruction but did not do the working memory activities (Loosli, 2012). To move beyond the basic benefits of daily brain exercises, educators need to sort through the hype surrounding brain-based learning products in order to determine the critical active ingredients and design elements shown to be effective for building targeted skills.
Fortunately, neuroscientists have published excellent guidance on how to do this in respected scientific journals. Below are some key design elements to look for in brain exercises that build targeted skills:
- High- and Low-Level Tasks: Exercises are most effective when they include challenging high-level tasks (like those that require a high degree of speed and accuracy) while also including low-level exercises (like those that improve our ability to perceive similar sounds or images more distinctly) (Ahissar et al., 2009). We might call this "the Sherlock Holmes effect"—that is, seeing lower-level details more clearly can help students solve more difficult problems.
- Adaptability: Exercises should increase or decrease in difficulty in order to continuously adapt to the student's skill level (Roelfsema, 2010).
- Highly Intensive Training Schedules: The exercises' relevant skills must be identified, isolated, and then practiced through hundreds if not thousands of trials on an intensive (i.e., daily or almost daily) schedule (Roelfsema, 2010).
- Attention Grabbing: To maximize enduring changes in the cortex, the student must be interested enough to attend to each trial or learning event for the exercise.
- Timely Rewards: A large number of the exercises' learning trials must be rewarded immediately, rather than at the end of a block of trials (Roelfsema, 2010).
After considering these elements, teachers may say, "This sounds fine for helping average students learn better, but what about my students who have been diagnosed with a learning disability or other issues, like autism spectrum disorder?" According to Ahissar et al. (2009), for children (or adults) with learning issues, distortions or limitations at any level will create bottlenecks in learning and impede the desired changes from brain exercises. But the authors also explain that if the exercises devote sufficient intensity and duration to specific sets of activities that focus on lower-level (perceptual) and middle-level (attention, memory, and language) tasks, they will support brain changes that will enhance higher-level skills, and learning will thus be easier and more advanced.
For educational leaders, teachers, or anyone who wants to understand which brain exercises are worth the investment of time and money, a rule of thumb is to avoid products that advertise themselves as "brain games," because that is what they most likely are—superficial games designed to be fun. Instead, seek out programs offering exercises that focus on specific high-level and low-level skills, like language, reading, memory, and attention, and have research evidence to support their value when used by students like yours.