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Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

abtinf wrote: post #27
kranner wrote: post #20

Title should include "for healthy young adults" as in the study: "The researchers note limitations in the study, most importantly that they only looked at young, healthy people. Brain-training games may still prove useful for aging adults or people suffering from addiction or unhealthy behaviors, the researchers caution."

"Brain-training games may still prove useful for aging adults or people suffering from addiction or unhealthy behaviors, the researchers caution. Given the context of the article, this is an unscientific and immoral statement. It is irrational to believe something is true or possible unless you have evidence for it. If the researchers have a positive reason to believe brain-training games are a form of medical treatm…

> Given the context of the article, this is an unscientific and immoral statement.

It is neither unscientific nor immoral to note a popular belief which the study does not provide a basis for rejecting on which a conclusion might be likely to be improperly formed based on the study.

"May" is not a statement of positive belief.

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#32

Post by rodiger »

abtinf wrote: post #27
kranner wrote: post #20

Title should include "for healthy young adults" as in the study: "The researchers note limitations in the study, most importantly that they only looked at young, healthy people. Brain-training games may still prove useful for aging adults or people suffering from addiction or unhealthy behaviors, the researchers caution."

"Brain-training games may still prove useful for aging adults or people suffering from addiction or unhealthy behaviors, the researchers caution. Given the context of the article, this is an unscientific and immoral statement. It is irrational to believe something is true or possible unless you have evidence for it. If the researchers have a positive reason to believe brain-training games are a form of medical treatm…

>It is irrational to believe something is true or possible unless you have evidence for it.

If you have no evidence against it, it is not irrational to believe something is possible.

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#33

Post by jmcgough »

I spent three years of undergrad working on neurogenesis research - was actually able to show that voluntary exercise could help ameliorate memory deficits caused by a model of a neurodegenerative disease we'd induced in rats.

A Luminosity recruiter contacted me after I left, and I asked for evidence that their research is actually helpful. They were very kind and passed along a number of studies that they'd done. I wasn't super impressed. Among other things, they were marketing their games to the general public, not the populations represented in their small studies. Quite honestly, aerobic exercise causes a huge upregulation of neurogenesis (and many other positive things), so people would be better off going for a light jog 2-3 times a week. It felt like they were taking advantage of families desperate to help a family member with dementia and willing to try anything.

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#34

Post by Tenobrus »

ice109 wrote: post #28
hoodwink wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the most comprehensive review of the DnB experiments I have ever seen: https://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis

>This is the website of Gwern Branwen, writer & independent researcher. I specialize in psychology, statistics, and technology forgive me if i don't take this meta-analysis seriously.

You may not have read any of Gwern's articles before. For many people, the quality of articles they've written in the past is high enough to give them (Gwern) quite a positive reputation. At least I'm likely to click on basically anything written by Gwern.

Critically if you actually read the article you can judge for yourself whether they know what they're talking about, as it's going to be both incredibly in depth and include disclosures of basically all caveats.

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#35

Post by ncallaway »

abtinf wrote: post #27
kranner wrote: post #20

Title should include "for healthy young adults" as in the study: "The researchers note limitations in the study, most importantly that they only looked at young, healthy people. Brain-training games may still prove useful for aging adults or people suffering from addiction or unhealthy behaviors, the researchers caution."

"Brain-training games may still prove useful for aging adults or people suffering from addiction or unhealthy behaviors, the researchers caution. Given the context of the article, this is an unscientific and immoral statement. It is irrational to believe something is true or possible unless you have evidence for it. If the researchers have a positive reason to believe brain-training games are a form of medical treatm…

> It is irrational to believe something is true or possible unless you have evidence for it.

This is actually two statements.

> It is irrational to believe something is true unless you have evidence for it.

Sure, I'd agree with that.

> It is irrational to believe something is possible unless you have evidence for it.

Whoa, there. This seems like it goes...way beyond rationality. I would argue that you would need strong evidence if you were going to claim something was impossible.

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#36

Post by dkarl »

adrianN wrote: post #19
dmreedy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are, they would be as difficult to recognize as germ theory to a 16th century doctor. We simply don't know enough yet about the mechanism.

You don't need germ theory to notice that washing your hands before performing surgery improves outcomes.

It helps. It's much easier to notice something and take it seriously when it fits a theory you already have. Kind of like if your house is haunted, you might not notice that the sounds you hear at night fit that theory unless you already have it in mind. If you try to understand the noises in terms of your house settling, a fugitive living in your attic, or an animal breaking in at night to steal food, you won't notice, or won't take seriously, the patterns that would be obvious to someone who believes in ghosts.

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#37

Post by djrogers »

abtinf wrote: post #26
SilasX wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, kinda like: "Adding a two mile walk every morning was found to have no health benefits[1] [1] we only studied marathon runners"

That is an incorrect analogy, because that claim would be about enhancing performance for peak performers. This study shows that there is no basis for the claim that you can enhance performance of normal/healthy performers. The researchers state the have insufficient evidence to determine the effect on low/unhealthy performers.

It’s actually not a bad analogy - healthy young adults tend to be at their mental peak, certainly compared to when they are another 40-50 years down the road...

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#38

Post by Bartweiss »

overgard wrote: post #29

I dont think abstract games like luminosity work, but I think its fatalistic to assume that your intelligence is fixed at a certain point. You can no doubt expand your intelligence (not just knowledge) by expanding your horizons, but learning is a difficult process.

This... feels more like optimism than evidence.

You can improve your performance on almost any single task, which is great news. Certain forms of learning (e.g. language) help defer dementia, exercise and meditation improve focus, memory tricks improve recall, learning diverse topics improves synthesis.

But in terms of 'intelligence' in the clinical sense? Despite many people's efforts, I've never seen a single convincing success for healthy adults increasing their IQ. You can practice a specific test until it's inapplicable, but if you take one test, try to raise your IQ, and take another test, you won't see gains. Dual N-back is still the best thing known, and it doesn't work appreciably.

Fortunately, the practical stuff - memory, focus, breadth of knowledge - is awfully helpful in real life. But I've never seen any evidence at all that intelligence in the IQ sense can be raised in adults.

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#39

Post by volkk »

dmreedy wrote: post #22
adrianN wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need germ theory to notice that washing your hands before performing surgery improves outcomes.

Yes, but you do need to start moving towards germ theory to understand why washing your hands with charcoal instead of soap results in dead patients again. Of course scientific theory and scientific observation are bootstrapped off of each other in the course of a dialectic, but raw statistics only get you so far until deductive work is required for the next steps, and the cycle repeats. It's easy to spot and distill…

can you explain a bit about the charcoal/soap thing?

Re: Study finds Lumosity users show no improvements in cognitive performance

#40

Post by michaelcampbell »

closed wrote: post #23

Slightly off-topic, but the pushback against brain training owes a huge debt of thanks to Randy Engle (and others), for loudly questioning the methods and rational of the early "become smarter by the magic of dual n-back" research. Here's an article where he compares it to cold fusion: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-your...

Was the claim not "doing n-back helps working memory"? Hardly "become smarter". Whether or not it works is worthy of discussion, but straw-man-ing a hyperbolic claim that wasn't made doesn't add to the discussion.
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