On Nov 10, 2015, at 11:30 AM, Stuart Vyse <[email protected]> wrote:
> You may be interested in a column I wrote on this topic recently. Link below. > > http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/neuro-pseudoscience/ An excellent critique. Thank you. Tom Stafford (http://mindhacks.com/2015/11/05/a-gold-standard-study-on-brain-training/) pointed to some other limitations of the study that I discussed—limitations that I think would be useful to discuss in our classes: “First up is the choice of control task. The benefits of the exercises tested in this research are only relative benefits compared with the scores of those who carried out the control task. If a different control task had been chosen maybe the benefits wouldn’t look so large. For example, we know that physical exercise has long-term and profound benefits for cognitive function.” Second, if “people who were likely to score well were more likely to drop out of the control group (perhaps because it wasn’t challenging enough), then this would leave poor performers in the control group and so artificially inflate the relative benefits of being in the cognitive exercises group.” Third, the primary outcome measure was “a self-report by the participants. There wasn’t any independent or objective verification, meaning that something as simple as people feeling more confident about themselves after having competed the study could skew the results.” His conclusion was similar to yours: “Don’t pay money for any ‘brain training’ programme. There isn’t any evidence that commercially available exercises have any benefit over the kinds of tasks and problems you can access for free.” -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffry Ricker, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Social/Behavioral Sciences Scottsdale Community College 9000 E. Chaparral Road Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Office: SB-123 Fax: (480) 423-6298 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrJeffryRicker/timeline/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jeffry-ricker/3b/511/438 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=47344 or send a blank email to leave-47344-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
