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Nintendo Brain Games Effectiveness Questioned

Posted by Soulskill on from the flickering-boxes-will-make-us-smart dept.

nandemoari writes "While Nintendo boasts that its Wii can make you fit, the game company's popular line of DS 'Brain Games' have for some time promised to make kids smarter by challenging them with word puzzles and math formulas. However, a French professor isn't buying the shtick. University of Rennes professor Alain Lieury, a cognitive psychology specialist in Brittany, France, recently studied a group of ten-year-old children playing a variety of mentally-challenging games. Not all were video games, however; Lieury pitted more traditional games (including sudoku, Scrabble, and regular old reading and homework) against Nintendo's popular line of DS hits, including Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, and Brain Training. Although he credits the Nintendo DS — one of the best selling consoles of all-time — as 'a technological jewel,' he finds Nintendo's claim that it can actually help kids learn is nothing more than pure 'charlatanism.'"

4 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Re:so "go bust" means... by zygotic+mitosis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly. I suppose the headline could be playing with the term 'brainbuster', but "go bust" means "out of business". Come on, Soulskill.

  2. How much more stupid can this get... by ericvids · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From TFA:

    "Before and after the course, the kids were given tasks including logic tests, memorizing words on a map, doing sums, and interpreting symbols. Researchers found that children using the Nintendo DS system didn't show any significant improvement in memory tests. They did do 19 percent better in math, but so did the pencil-and-paper group, while the fourth group did 18 percent better."

    If anything, this actually PROVES that Brain Age is just as good as traditional methods, if not BETTER, while at the same time being FUN for the kids because in their minds, they are at play, not at work.

    "If it doesn't work on children, it won't work on adults," Lieury said.

    Can you say "non-sequitur"? As children our brains are more agile because we get frequent practice in school, but as adults we don't. I even remember the friggin' game pointing that one out!

    It definitely worked for me. As a kid I used to breeze through simple maths, but as an adult I started losing that touch, frequently needing calculators to do simple math. But when I started using Brain Age everyday, I've gone back to my maths skill level as a kid.

    If there's anyone who's a charlatan, it's this guy, purposely withholding statistics that prove him wrong.

    --
    Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
  3. Re:so "go bust" means... by KDR_11k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, now put this against a neurologist (the titular Dr. Kawashima who apparently wrote a book about brain exercises and their effect) who measured the brain activity when playing the games...

    Also it should be mentioned that these games are NOT sold as homework helpers, they're aimed at adults, probably to keep the fluid intelligence fluid for longer.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  4. Re:maybe not... by Zebedeu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In any case, given the previous study, it is quite over the top for the French scientist to call it charlatanism, since there are other studies that show it helps. It would be nicer and more accurate to say, "the issue is more nuanced than often implied."

    Were you really expecting a Frenchman not to be arrogant?

    I laugh at you and your innocent naivety.