Why brain-training games don’t work
Success is often driven by your ability to solve problems and generate creative ideas. So, it is no wonder that people are looking for ways to increase mental capacity. And lots of companies have stepped into the void to help people improve their mental fitness.
The analogy behind many of these brain-training activities is athletic training. If you want to improve your physical performance, there are exercises you can do that improve your overall fitness.
Unfortunately, the brain doesn’t seem to work the same way. There simply aren’t ways in which to train general mental capacities that will improve your performance at a variety of other tasks.
Brain-training games often give you logic puzzles, lists of things to remember, or tasks that force you to pay attention. If you play those games, you will get better at them. But you don’t get better at thinking in general.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you can do to improve your mental abilities, though. It just means that brain games aren’t the route to getting there.
To see why, it is important to recognize that psychologists distinguish between two kinds of intelligence: fluid and crystallized. Fluid intelligence reflects basic psychological mechanisms that influence your performance.
For example, working memory is the amount of information you can hold in mind at once. People with a high working-memory capacity are typically better at solving complex problems than people with low working-memory capacity.
These basic mechanisms are important aspects of the cognitive architecture that support good thinking. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any exercises you can do that improve them. So, brain games that aim to improve working-memory capacity do not actually affect working-memory capacity, generally. Instead, people develop good strategies to play the game itself in ways that don’t benefit thinking more broadly.
Crystallized intelligence reflects the results of your life experience. After reading this article, for example, you will know about the concept of working memory. That knowledge becomes part of your crystallized intelligence. Similarly, problem-solving skills you learned in school or on the job become part of your cognitive repertoire. Your crystallized intelligence continues to grow throughout your life. The knowledge and skills you have make you better able to address new situations.
So, you can make yourself smarter by building that crystallized intelligence. Read books on a variety of topics, listen to podcasts, and go to lectures or take classes that expand your knowledge and skills.
The more you know and can do, the better able you will be to address challenges deftly.