Exploring the effectiveness of commercial and custom-built games for cognitive training

• Participants were trained with a COTS brain training game or a custom n-back task.
• Changes in general intelligence were compared to two control groups after 3 weeks.
• No significant differences were found between groups.
• Neither cognitive training system produced significant improvements.
• Future work should consider longer evaluation periods for unsupervised training.

There is increasing interest in quantifying the effectiveness of computer games in non-entertainment domains. We have explored general intelligence improvements for participants using either a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) game, a custom do-it-yourself (DIY) training system for a working memory task or an online strategy game to a control group (without training). Forty university level participants were divided into four groups (COTS, DIY, Gaming, Control) and were evaluated three times (pre-intervention, post-intervention, 1-week follow-up) with three weeks of training. In general intelligence tests both cognitive training systems (COTS and DIY groups) failed to produce significant improvements in comparison to a control group or a gaming group. Also neither cognitive training system produced significant improvements over the intervention or follow-up periods.