Is Brain Training (NDS) a failure?
I am currently involved in a development project where we are trying to mimic the scheme of Brain Training for the Nintendo DS (released as DS Training in Japan and Brain Age in the US), with exercises focused on the different subjects from Computer Science studies.
It was thus very interesting to read this article about the game being “no better than paper and pencil”. The valorations presented in the article are so dramatically off-target that I couldn’t resist ranting about them.
The article starts from the notion that “Brain Training no better than paper and pencil” and then constructs an attack against the game as mostly a great scam. You only need to read the first paragraph:
“A 10p pencil is just as good as a £100 Nintendo at stimulating the memory, according to a study that dismisses the DS Lite’s claims to boost the brain”.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Bad news? A scam? Demonstrating that the game is as good as traditional pen and paper exercises is awesome news! Really, have you ever known a child that arrives home and grabs a piece of paper to do math calculations? The brilliant design of this game is having turned some of the most boring tasks ever into a compelling game, tapping into our competitive nature to turn boredom into excitement. The only risk was that, in the process, we could have spoiled the cognitive value of the tasks. Dr. Lieury has not killed our research into the usefulness of game-based learning. He has validated it, and I’m thankful.
It is also interesting how, according to the article, Dr. Lieury goes on to state: “There were few positive effects and they were weak. Dr Kawashima is one of a long list of dream merchants.” After reading that, I could no longer trust anything in this research. Prof. Kawashima is a renowned neuroscientist, doing state-of-the-art research on brain imaging. In an attempt to be moderate, I will simply say that calling him “dream merchant” is a disinformed statement. Being aggressive I would use other words.
