Interesting, and I also remember similar results from other studies, where essentially playing the game would make the subjects better at the game with no other provable benefit.
Now, the control for these experiments was amusing:
for one of the sessions:
> which played regular, dumb computer games
What would be a 'dumb' game is fascinating.
You'd have to find something that provokes no brain stimulation at all, no skill evolution while still being a game. Then if the 'game' was really completely void of content but the players kept playing it, would they end up in a kind o meditative state, potentially causing their abilities to increase ?
Another control group were doing crosswords, I guess to get a "well known quantity", but aren't crosswords also pretty demanding games depending on the people doing it? I'd be worse at crossword than building raiding strategies in an RPG for instance.
Somewhere I have the feeling these studies are deeply flawed with a lot of unchecked assumptions. Not by laziness per se, but it just seems that cognitive fields are inherently hard for rigorous studies.
Right, but then if 'Brain training' games are shown to be no different from other games that dont have that label then the label is still revealed to be bullshit.
Now, the control for these experiments was amusing:
for one of the sessions:
> which played regular, dumb computer games
What would be a 'dumb' game is fascinating.
You'd have to find something that provokes no brain stimulation at all, no skill evolution while still being a game. Then if the 'game' was really completely void of content but the players kept playing it, would they end up in a kind o meditative state, potentially causing their abilities to increase ?
Another control group were doing crosswords, I guess to get a "well known quantity", but aren't crosswords also pretty demanding games depending on the people doing it? I'd be worse at crossword than building raiding strategies in an RPG for instance.
Somewhere I have the feeling these studies are deeply flawed with a lot of unchecked assumptions. Not by laziness per se, but it just seems that cognitive fields are inherently hard for rigorous studies.