Parents ask whether brain training works. It is a fair question and it has an honest answer, which is that it depends entirely on what you mean by "works".
This practice does not sell a working memory training program, which makes it easier to write about plainly. What follows is what the evidence supports, what it does not, and what to ask before you pay for one.
What working memory is
Working memory is the ability to hold information in mind and do something with it over a matter of seconds — keeping the first half of an instruction while decoding the second, holding a sum while carrying a digit, remembering what you walked into the room for.
It is limited in everyone, it is more limited in some children, and a classroom asks for it more or less continuously. That is why it is a common target.
What the evidence supports, and where it stops
The literature on computerized working memory training divides fairly cleanly into three claims, and they are not equally well supported.
| The claim | Where the evidence stands |
|---|---|
| Children get better at the trained tasks | Well established. Practice improves performance on the thing practiced, substantially and reliably. |
| Gains extend to other working memory measures | Supported, but more modest, and the size of the effect varies by how similar the new measure is to the trained task. |
| Gains extend to reading, arithmetic, and classroom attention | Not supported. Both meta-analyses found no convincing evidence of transfer to reading, arithmetic, or attention once training is compared against an active control rather than a do-nothing one. |
Near transfer is well documented. Far transfer is the argument.
The most-cited reviews are the meta-analyses by Melby-Lervåg and Hulme and the comprehensive review of the brain-training industry led by Simons and colleagues in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Both are readable, both are skeptical about far transfer, and both are worth reading before you spend money on any program of this kind.
What to ask before you pay for one
The best known of these programs is Cogmed, and a typical course of that kind runs five weeks — eight exercises a day, 30 to 45 minutes a session, five days a week — usually with a coach in contact throughout. Others follow a similar shape. Three questions are worth putting to whoever is selling it:
What specifically will improve, and how will we measure it? Is the claim about the trained tasks, or about school? And what happens if we stop — is the gain expected to hold?
The honest framing is this: the training reliably improves what it trains, and the coaching relationship and the daily structure are doing real work of their own. Anyone promising it will raise your child's reading level is going beyond the evidence.
Who it tends to suit
- A child whose evaluation identified working memory specifically, rather than a general recommendation to "build focus". If nobody has measured it, that is the first thing to do.
- A family who can hold a 30-to-45-minute daily commitment for five weeks. That is the part that most often fails.
- A situation where accommodations are already in place, so the training is added to something rather than substituting for it.
Who it does not
- A child whose main difficulty is decoding, anxiety, or sleep. Train the thing that is actually limiting them.
- Anyone hoping to avoid a school conversation. Training is not an alternative to a 504 plan.
- A family being asked to choose between this and an evaluation. Measure first.
References
- Melby-Lervåg, M., and Hulme, C. Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review. Developmental Psychology, 2013;49(2):270–291.
- Melby-Lervåg, M., Redick, T. S., and Hulme, C. Working memory training does not improve performance on measures of intelligence or other measures of "far transfer". Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2016;11(4):512–534.
- Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., and Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. Do "Brain-Training" Programs Work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2016;17(3):103–186.
