The vast majority…believe that cognitive training can work

Ques­tion: Does any­one in the cog­ni­tive train­ing field agree on anything?

Answer by Dan Hur­ley: A hand­ful of researchers, most of them con­nect­ed to Geor­gia Tech, con­tin­ue to loud­ly insist that intel­li­gence train­ing is a bunch of baloney, that it’s like “cold fusion.” But those arch-skep­tics have pret­ty well lost the argu­ment. At this point, the vast major­i­ty of the 200 or so researchers I inter­viewed believe that cog­ni­tive train­ing can work. The Office of Naval Research, theU.S. Air Force, the Marines and the Intel­li­gence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IAPRA) wouldn’t be fund­ing this stuff if it were make-believe. Nor would the Nation­al Insti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­ease and Stroke. The legit­i­mate ques­tions that need to be answered are: Which meth­ods work best? How long do you have to do them? Who ben­e­fits? Should the meth­ods be com­bined? As with any new area of med­ical research, larg­er and longer stud­ies are need­ed to clar­i­fy uncertainties.

To Learn More:

• Can Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Make You Smarter?: In-depth Inter­view with Author Dan Hurley
• Does brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
• Debunk­ing 10 Brain Fit­ness and Brain Train­ing Myths