Do brain-training programs work?
A review of every study cited by leading brain-training companies found people get better at the games, and little evidence that it carries over to everyday attention.
The short version
Brain-training games promise sharper attention and memory in everyday life. When a team of seven psychologists reviewed every peer-reviewed study cited by leading brain-training companies as evidence, they found people reliably get better at the games themselves, somewhat better at closely related tasks, and show little evidence of improvement on distant tasks or in everyday thinking. Many of the studies also had design flaws serious enough to rule out firm conclusions.
What the researchers did
In 2014, two groups of scientists published opposing open letters: one, signed by more than 70 researchers, said brain games do not offer a scientifically grounded way to improve cognition; the other, signed by 133 scientists and practitioners, said the literature showed broad benefits. Daniel Simons and colleagues set out to explain how both could look at the same evidence and disagree.
They first laid out a set of best practices for brain-training studies — such as an active control group, blinding, preregistration and adequate sample sizes — and then used those standards to evaluate all the published intervention studies cited by brain-training companies on the website hosting the pro-training letter. Those citations presumably represented the strongest evidence the industry had.
What they found
- Extensive evidence that training improves performance on the trained tasks.
- Less evidence that it improves closely related tasks ("near transfer").
- Little evidence that it improves distantly related tasks ("far transfer") or everyday cognitive performance.
- Many studies had major shortcomings in design or analysis, and none met all the best practices the authors considered essential for drawing clear conclusions about everyday benefits.
The review closes with recommendations for scientists, funders and policymakers on how to produce better evidence.
Limits and caveats
The review covers the evidence cited by companies up to 2016; it does not prove that no form of cognitive training could ever transfer, only that the cited evidence did not show it. It also focuses specifically on practising cognitive tasks or games, not on other activities such as exercise or meditation that are sometimes grouped under "brain training".
What it means for how you work
If a game is enjoyable, it can be a fine way to spend a break, but do not expect it to lengthen your attention span at work. The interventions with better evidence for attention are structural and behavioural: structured breaks, fewer interruptions, enough sleep and, for direct training, mindfulness practice. When a product claims to raise attention span, ask the question this review asks: improvement on what, exactly?