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Play a working memory training game, 20-25 min per day for 12 weeks. The results? Improved IQ scores reflected by Ravens Matrices Test.

This working memory training game, known as the N-Back, challenges users to remember something — the location of a cat or the sound of a particular letter — that is presented immediately before (1-back), the time before last (2-back), the time before that (3-back), and so on. If you do well at 2-back, the computer moves you up to 3-back. Do well at that, and you’ll jump to 4-back. On the other hand, if you do poorly at any level, you’re nudged down a level.

For example, in a children’s version of the N-Back game, there was a cartoon image of a haunted house, with bats and a crescent moon in a midnight blue sky. Every few seconds, a black cat appeared in one of the house’s five windows, then vanished (see the upper-right one of the picture below).

The exercise was divided into levels. On Level 1, the children earned a point by remembering which window the cat was just in. Easy. But the game is progressive: the cats keep coming, and the kids have to keep watching and remembering. If you get to Level 2, you have to remember where the cat was two windows ago. The time before last. For Level 3, you have to remember where it was three times ago. Level 4 is four times ago.

It is hard. Most children are somewhere between Level 2 and Level 3 after several weeks of training. Yet this training not only improves their working memory, but the same improvement were shown in measures of IQ.

In a 2008 study, Drs. Susanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, now of the University of Maryland, found that young adults who practiced a stripped-down,  (see the picture below) also showed improvement in a fundamental cognitive ability known as “fluid” intelligence: the capacity to solve novel problems, to learn, to reason, to see connections and to get to the bottom of things. The implication was that playing the game literally makes people smarter.

It is unknown yet, however, if the improvement in working memory can translate to better real-world problem solving skills. But here is hope.

  Want to play the game yourself? Try the non-cartoon version:

http://dual-n-back.com/nback.html

  Want to Meet the researchers? Here’s a video interview with University of Michigan professor Dr. John Joniders about working memory training on kids with ADHD, using N-back task:

What is “Tools of the Mind”? It's a full preschool curriculum consisting of some 60 activities, inspired by the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Many of the activities call for the exercise of executive functions through play. For example, when engaged in dramatic pretend play, children must use working memory to keep in mind the roles of other characters and suppress impulses in order to maintain their own character identity.

Does it work?

It was featured as the “most researched approach” for improving executive functions in school children 4 to 12 years of age (see August 2011 special section of Science).Some main conclusions regards Tools of the Mind include:

a. Tools of the Mind training improves working memory

b. Tools of the Mind training has shown transfer to other executive functions but, this transfer is narrow

c. Children with the poorest executive functions benefit most from training programs

d. Executive function training has the potential to impact academic achievement in children

e. Adaptive training is necessary because executive functions must be continually challenged in order to improve

f. A key element to improving executive functions is the child’s motivation, that is, their willingness to devote time to the activity

g. One benefit of computerized training over other approaches is that it can be done at home

There are the four interventions with the best track record, study found: 1) infant formula supplemented with omega-3 fatty acids; 2) interactive reading with your child; 3) sending your child to preschool, or an educational enriched environment with a center-based component; 4) parental involvement in the educational activities.

Children love games, but can they learn from playing games? Yes, in one way or the other they learn things from daily life. But the real question is, do they learn BETTER from games than from conventional classrooms? Probably, said a group of researchers from Utrecht University and Eindhoven University of Technology in Netherlands (Wouters, et al, 2013). In their paper, Wouters and colleagues summarized the findings from 56 studies involving over 7,000 students from different age groups (range from children under 6 years old to undergraduate students). Content of the games include language, math, biology, engineering, and others. Researchers compared the learning from games and from classroom from the following aspects: knowledge gains, skill gains, retention, and motivation. Their results indicated that learning outcomes from games are better than that from conventional instructions in first three aspects (knowledge gains, skill games, and retention), but surprisingly, not motivation. More interestingly, researchers also explored under which conditions games work, here are their major findings:

Students learn more when playing games in groups than playing alone.

Gaming showed no advantage over conventional instruction  when the experiment used random assignment. When non-random assignment was used, gaming showed a robust advantage. So it's possible (or even likely) that games in these studies were more effective only when they interacted with some factor in the gamer that is self-selected (or selected by the experimenter or teacher). And we don't know yet what that factor is.

Gaming showed no advantage over what they called "passive instruction"--that it, the teacher talk or reading a textbook. All of the advantage accrued when games were compared to "active instruction," described as "methods that explicitly prompt learners to learning activities (e.g., exercises, hypertext training.)"

Age of student had no impact.

And finally, be cautious, as the findings are strictly limited to “serious games”.

No you shouldn't.

But you should reward them for reading a new book, working on their homework without being distracted and planning their study time and carrying the plan out. In other words, you should reward your children for their good practices, rather than on the grades.

A recent study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. suggested that financial incentives for good practices provided guidance for children and communicate your expectation about "what should be done". Financial incentives for good results, however, do not contain the valuable information about how to get there. 

However, be cautious: only reward on the practices that you want your child to change, and don't bribe them on continue doing something they already enjoy. Psychologists have long been arguing that children are intrinsically motivated to do stuff they enjoy doing so. And paying them for continuing doing the enjoyable events may eventually lead children to think they are doing it for money and forget how enjoyable it was for them in the first place.

Fryer's study were carried out in 4 cities: Chicago, Dallas, Washington, and New York. It involves 18,000 kids and a total of $6.3 million financial incentives. To read more, go to 

A pictorial demo of the N-back task, retried from New York Times