Neuroscientific evidence support that chess improves academic performance in school
Abstract and Figures
In this work, we report the cognitive benefits of playing chess for school-aged children. The most benefitted areas appear to be math and reading. To validate these results, a diversity of scientific studies are described, in which brain activation is demonstrated through magnetic resonance imaging when novice, intermediate, and advance chess players play the game. Given this evidence, it is suggested that chess be used as a tool to improve academic performance in boys and girls. In addition, it is concluded that studying the use of chess could lead to new lines of research that could validate the neural mechanisms that occur when boys and girls play chess.
Figures - uploaded by Ricardo Ortiz
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Ricardo Ortiz
Content may be subject to copyright.
... We quantified chess progress and the level of well-being through a battery of tests that were applied initially and at the end of the project. The link between chess progress and well-being has not been observed before, although much research has focused on certain psychological skills such as critical thinking (Trinchero & Sala, 2016;Trinchero, 2013;Subia et al., 2019), necessary in solving mathematical problems, creative thinking (Sigirtmac, 2016), focused attention (Iz et al., 2019), capacity for verbal abstraction, resistance to distraction, perceptive organisation (Aciego, García, & Betancort, 2012) and impulsivity (Afshari, Majidi, & Yadolahzadeh, 2022). I discovered that, at the beginner level, in order to progress in chess, specific training must focus on two distinct directions: the accumulation of information and reactions in adverse conditions. ...
span id="docs-internal-guid-17d0fbf9-7fff-d749-a0c0-9b30e86c8cad"> This study followed the evolution of the cognitive and psychological performance of a group of 45 subjects from three localities (Romanesti, Dranceni, and Târgu Frumos) during an intervention program carried out for six months. The programme included chess activities and workshops to improve well-being, with the aim of analysing significant changes at the level of five parameters: chess test, chess rating, chess relative value, self-esteem, and perceived stress. The results obtained highlight statistically significant improvements in all five variables studied, indicating an increase in cognitive performance and chess skills, as well as a decrease in the level of perceived stress, along with a strengthening of self-esteem. The comparative analysis between the initial and final values suggests the effectiveness of the activities implemented within this intervention plan, highlighting the positive impact of chess and well-being-centered approaches on the cognitive and psychological development of the participants. These results support the integration of chess and wellness-oriented workshops into educational and personal development programs, with the potential to improve cognitive performance and reduce stress among young people. </span
Over the last decade, an increasing number of countries have integrated chess as a pedagogical tool and even as core content of their academic curricula. Nonetheless, the evidence regarding the causal effects of chess on a range of skills remains inconclusive. We report new evidence of the impact of learning chess in school on a set of cognitive and non-cognitive skills of 12-year-old students to shed light on this matter. To do this, we take advantage of the implementation of a phase-in program introducing chess into a set of schools in Catalonia (Spain). This experimental setting enables us to estimate the causal effects of practicing educational chess at school on critical thinking, attention, patience, and risk aversion. Results show that, after one academic year, the differences between the treated and control group are not statistically significant for any of these outcomes. Students who took part in the chess program significantly outperformed the students in the control group only in terms of their chess-playing knowledge and proficiency.
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1kovX6fTMpvDdn
Background:
Chess has long been used to evaluate fundamental cognitive functions including memory and problem solving, where the executive function is crucial. Studies show that chess enables young players to gain advantages in a variety of cognitive domains and it has been demonstrated that chess players have better spatial reasoning, long-term planning, decision-making, memory, cognitive development, academic performance, mental development, scholastic achievement, and strategic, creative, and critical thinking. The purpose of this study is to compare and assess cognitive functions among chess players and non-chess players aged 11 to 16 years in Western India.
Methods:
The study was conducted in total 120 participants- 60 chess players (case) and 60 non-chess players (control) aged 11-16 years with normal BMI and no cognitive impairment (MMSE test>24). Participants were assessed for cognitive functions using several tests- Executive function and selective attention (Stroop and Eriksen-Flanker test), Working memory (N-back test), Reaction time (Deary-Liewald task) and Intelligence (Bhatia Battery Tests of Intelligence).
Results:
Significant p values were found for Stroop congruent time (p<0.001), Stroop incongruent time (p<0.001), Eriksen-Flanker congruent time (p<0.001), Eriksen-Flanker incongruent time (p<0.001), N-back (working memory) correct response (p<0.001), Deary-Liewald Simple reaction time (p<0.001), Deary-Liewald Choice reaction time (p<0.001), Bhatia’s Battery Tests of Intelligence Quotient (p<0.001).
Conclusion:
In contrast to non-chess players, the chess players demonstrated better and enhanced cognitive functions- selective attention, executive function, working memory, single reaction time, choice reaction time and intelligence quotient.
Çalışma kapsamında ilk olarak, satranç kavramının tarihsel gelişimi hakkında bilgiler verilerek Dünya’da ve ülkemiz özelinde satrancın yeri hakkında kavram incelenmesi yapılmış ve satrancın insanlar üzerindeki etkilerine değinilmiştir. Satranç oynamanın öğrenmede bilişsel yetenekleri ve matematik becerilerinin gelişimine katkısını, akademik hayattaki rolü üzerinden inceleyerek, farklı eğitim seviyelerindeki öğrencilerin problem çözme yeteneklerini, öngörülen kazanımların öğrencilere sağladığı katkıyı, başarıları üzerindeki rolü incelenerek, akademik kariyer ve satrancın aralarında ki pozitif ilişki çalışma kapsamında açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Bu sonuçlar, satrancı eğitimde etkili bir araç olarak kullanabileceğimizi göstermiş, en çok yararlanılan alanlar olan matematik ve okuma alanlarında satrancın çocukların okul performansının iyileştirilmesine olanak sağlayan bir materyal olarak kullanılması önerilmiştir. Bu bağlamda, satranç oynamanın yararlarını incelemek için eğitimsel ve psikolojik araştırmalar incelenerek açıklamalarda bulunulmuş, bu açıklamalardan sonra çalışmanın amaçları doğrultusunda satrancın akademik kariyer üzerinde ki etkisi irdelenmeye başlanmıştır. Birbiri ile akademik başarıda etkileşim halinde olan bu iki bölümün çalışmayı bütün haline getirmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Bu hedef doğrultusunda modern çağın getirdiği zorluklara uygun olarak, eğitim alanında yeni koşullara uyum sağlamanın gerekliliğinden, klasik eğitim programlarının sunduğu fırsatların bireysel gelişim için yeterli olmadığı kanısına varılmıştır. Bu nedenle son zamanlarda okul ve okul öncesi çağda daha iyi bilgi edinme, yeni eğitim tekniklerinin tanıtılması yoluyla mevcut programları yenilemek için girişimlerde bulunulmuştur. Bu yeni tekniklerden biri, etkili bir eğitim aracı olduğu kanıtlanmış olan satranç oyunudur. Satrancın sağladığı önemli faydalar bilişsel unsurlara ayrılabilir, her bireyin gelişimi için gerekli beceriler olarak sayabileceğimiz konsantrasyon, hafıza ve mantıksal düşünme; eleştirel düşünme faktörleri: güçlü ve zayıf yönleri değerlendirme yeteneğini geliştirme, değer yargıları oluşturma, karar verme ve problem çözme yoluyla yaratıcılığı geliştirmektedir. Bu ana faktörlerin yanı sıra, matematikte, tutum ve genel davranışta daha iyi sonuçlar oluşturması ayrıca okuryazarlıkta gelişmeler olan nedensel bağlantıları vardır. Satrancın eğitimde formal veya informal bir öğrenme aracı olarak kullanılmasının asıl avantajı, okul öncesi ve okul çağında istisnai bir değer olan tüm bu faydaların elde edilebilmesidir.
A common task in brain image analysis includes diagnosis of a certain medical condition wherein groups of healthy controls and diseased subjects are analyzed and compared. On the other hand, for two groups of healthy participants with different proficiency in a certain skill, a distinctive analysis of the brain function remains a challenging problem. In this study, we develop new computational tools to explore the functional and anatomical differences that could exist between the brain of healthy individuals identified on the basis of different levels of task experience/proficiency. Toward this end, we look at a dataset of amateur and professional chess players, where we utilize resting-state functional magnetic resonance images to generate functional connectivity (FC) information. In addition, we utilize T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging to estimate morphometric connectivity (MC) information. We combine functional and anatomical features into a new connectivity matrix, which we term as the functional morphometric similarity connectome (FMSC). Since, both the FC and MC information is susceptible to redundancy, the size of this information is reduced using statistical feature selection. We employ off-the-shelf machine learning classifier, support vector machine, for both single- and multi-modality classifications. From our experiments, we establish that the saliency and ventral attention network of the brain is functionally and anatomically different between two groups of healthy subjects (chess players). We argue that, since chess involves many aspects of higher order cognition such as systematic thinking and spatial reasoning and the identified network is task-positive to cognition tasks requiring a response, our results are valid and supporting the feasibility of the proposed computational pipeline. Moreover, we quantitatively validate an existing neuroscience hypothesis that learning a certain skill could cause a change in the brain (functional connectivity and anatomy) and this can be tested via our novel FMSC algorithm.
We analyse the effect of substituting a weekly mathematics lesson in primary school grades 1–3 with a lesson in mathematics based on chess instruction. We use data from the City of Aarhus in Denmark, combining test score data with a comprehensive data set obtained from administrative registers. We use two different methodological approaches to identify and estimate treatment effects and we tend to find positive effects, indicating that knowledge acquired through chess play can be transferred to the domain of mathematics. We also find larger impacts for unhappy children and children who are bored in school, perhaps because chess instruction facilitates learning by providing an alternative approach to mathematics for these children. The results are encouraging and suggest that chess may be an important and effective tool for improving mathematical capacity in young students.
Chess involves the capacity to reason iteratively about potential intentional choices of an opponent and therefore involves high levels of explicit theory of mind [ToM] (i.e. ability to infer mental states of others) alongside clear, strategic rule-based decision-making. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used on 12 healthy male novice chess players to identify cortical regions associated with chess, ToM and empathising. The blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response for chess and empathising tasks was extracted from each ToM region. Results showed neural overlap between ToM, chess and empathising tasks in right-hemisphere temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) [BA40], left-hemisphere superior temporal gyrus [BA22] and posterior cingulate gyrus [BA23/31]. TPJ is suggested to underlie the capacity to reason iteratively about another’s internal state in a range of tasks. Areas activated by ToM and empathy included right-hemisphere orbitofrontal cortex and bilateral middle temporal gyrus: areas that become active when there is need to inhibit one’s own experience when considering the internal state of another and for visual evaluation of action rationality. Results support previous findings, that ToM recruits a neural network with each region sub-serving a supporting role depending on the nature of the task itself. In contrast, a network of cortical regions primarily located within right- and left-hemisphere medial-frontal and parietal cortex, outside the internal representational network, was selectively recruited during the chess task. We hypothesise that in our cohort of novice chess players the strategy was to employ an iterative thinking pattern which in part involved mentalizing processes and recruited core ToM related regions.
Pupils’ poor achievement in mathematics has recently been a
concern in many Western countries. In order to address this is-
sue, it has been proposed to teach chess in schools. However,
in spite of optimistic claims, no convincing evidence of the ac-
ademic benefits of chess instruction has ever been provided,
because no study has ever controlled for possible placebo ef-
fects. In this experimental study, a three-group design (i.e., ex-
perimental, placebo, and control groups) was implemented to
control for possible placebo effects. Measures of mathematical
ability and metacognitive skills were taken before and after the
treatment. We were interested in metacognitive skills because
they have been claimed to be boosted by chess instruction, in
turn positively influencing the enhancement of mathematical
ability. The results show that the experimental group (partici-
pants attending a chess course) achieved better scores in math-
ematics than the placebo group (participants attending a Go
course) but not than the control group (participants attending
regular school lessons). With regard to metacognition, no dif-
ferences were found between the three groups. These results
suggest that some chess-related skills generalize to the mathe-
matical domain, because the chess lessons compensated for the
hours of school lessons lost, whereas the Go lessons did not.
However, this transfer does not seem to be mediated by meta-
cognitive skills, and thus appears to be too limited to offer ed-
ucational advantages.
In recent years, pupils' poor achievement in mathematics has been a concern in many Western countries. Chess instruction has been proposed as one way to remedy this state of affairs, as well as improving other academic topics such as reading and general cognitive abilities such as intelligence. The aim of this paper is to quantitatively evaluate the available empirical evidence that skills acquired during chess instruction in schools positively transfer to mathematics, reading and general cognitive skills. The selection criteria were satisfied by 24 studies (40 effect sizes), with 2,788 young people in the chess condition and 2,433 in the control groups. The results show (a) a moderate overall effect size (g = 0.338); (b) a tendency for a stronger effect on mathematical (g = 0.382) than reading skill (g = 0.248), and (c) a significant and positive effect of duration of treatment (Q(1) = 3.89, b = 0.0038, p < .05). However, no study used an "ideal design" including pre- and post-test, full random allocation of participants to conditions and, most importantly, both a do-nothing control group and an active control group - a problem common in education research. Directions for further research are discussed.
RESUMEN Analizando las principales propuestas existentes relacionadas con el ajedrez en el campo de la educación, se ha comprobado que no hay ninguna herramienta que permita obtener datos fiables de las habilidades que el participante desarrolla cuando juega al citado juego. Este estudio ha tenido como objetivo la elaboración y validación de un test de ajedrez para determinar el nivel de los jugadores de nueve a doce años en los finales de partida. Así, siguiendo las fases de construcción, validación por expertos, ajustes iniciales, pilotaje y análisis estadístico partiendo de la teoría clásica de los tests, se ha comprobado que el test cumple los requisitos necesarios para que sea preciso, fiable y válido. La herramienta va destinada a profesores y formadores y tiene que ser de utilidad para hacer evaluaciones y comprobar el nivel inicial del jugador principiante. También está pensado que pueda utilizarse en nuevas investigaciones. No obstante, la herramienta se tendrá aún que pasar a un grupo mayor y a una franja más amplia de población para verificar que cumple de forma más significativa y amplia las características de objetividad, sensibilidad, confiabilidad y validez. ABSTRACT The analysis of the existing proposals related to chess in the education field has revealed that there is no tool available in order to obtain reliable data about the skills that participants develop when playing the mentioned game. The main purpose of this work has been the design and validation of a chess test in order to determine the level and skills of the nine to twelve years old players at the end of the chess match. Thus, following the phases of construction, validations by experts, initial adjustments, piloting and statistical analysis based on the classical test theory, it was found that the test met the requirements to be accurate, trustworthy and valid.
Se analiza el efecto del entrenamiento en ajedrez según se utilice una metodología sensible con el desarrollo de competencias cognitivas y sociopersonales frente a otra focalizada en el entrenamiento táctico, en una muestra de educación obligatoria. Se utiliza un diseño cuasi-experimental con: grupo experimental 1, formación integral (N = 110); grupo experimental 2, formación centrada en el tablero (N = 60); y grupo control, baloncesto y fútbol (N = 60). Las variables, medidas al inicio y final de curso académico, son: competencia cognitiva, evaluada mediante prueba de rendimiento; competencia socio-afectiva, mediante test auto-evaluativo; y competencia en ajedrez, mediante prueba de rendimiento. Los resultados muestran que el grupo de formación integral mejora no sólo en competencias cognitivas básicas (atención y memoria), como ocurre en el grupo experimental 2, sino también en competencias cognitivas más complejas (asociación, análisis, síntesis, planeamiento, previsión…). Igualmente mejora en el ámbito socioafectivo no sólo en somatizaciones y comportamiento en clase, sino también en autoestima, motivación y actitud ante el estudio.
Chess is a good model to study high-level human brain functions such as spatial cognition, memory, planning, learning and problem solving. Recent studies have demonstrated that non-invasive MRI techniques are valuable for researchers to investigate the underlying neural mechanism of playing chess. For professional chess players (e.g., chess grand masters and masters or GM/Ms), what are the structural and functional alterations due to long-term professional practice, and how these alterations relate to behavior, are largely veiled. Here, we report a multimodal MRI dataset from 29 professional Chinese chess players (most of whom are GM/Ms), and 29 age matched novices. We hope that this dataset will provide researchers with new materials to further explore high-level human brain functions.
A number of studies suggest that teaching children how to play chess may have an impact on their educational attainment. Yet the strength of this evidence is undermined by limitations with research design. This paper attempts to overcome these limitations by presenting evidence from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving more than 4,000 children in England. In contrast to much of the existing literature, we find no evidence of an effect of chess instruction on children's mathematics, reading, or science test scores. Our results provide a timely reminder of the need for social scientists to employ robust research designs. © 2018 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
This study researched the influence of learning and practising chess on two executive functions (planning and flexibility) in childhood. The performance of a group of child chess players was compared to a group of children who did not play chess through a planning test (Tower of London) and a cognitive flexibility test (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test).
The results showed a better performance in planning by the group of child chess players and suggested certain differences in flexibility (in favour of the group of chess players). This study adds evidence to the hypothesis that highly complex games like chess can favour the development of executive functions in childhood.
Recently, chess in school activities has attracted the attention of policy makers, teachers and researchers. Chess has been claimed to be an effective tool to enhance children's mathematical skills. In this study, 931 primary school pupils were recruited and then assigned to two treatment groups attending chess lessons, or to a control group, and were tested on their mathematical problem-solving abilities. The two treatment groups differed from each other on the teaching method adopted: The trainers of one group taught the pupils heuristics to solve chess problems, whereas the trainers of the other treatment group did not teach any chess-specific problem-solving heuristic. Results showed that the former group outperformed the other two groups. These results foster the hypothesis that a specific type of chess training does improve children's mathematical skills, and uphold the idea that teaching general heuristics can be an effective way to promote transfer of learning.