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Chess Instruction Improves Cognitive Abilities and Academic Performance: Real Effects or Wishful Thinking?

DOI:10.1007/s10648-022-09670-9
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Angel Blanch at Universitat de Lleida
Angel Blanch
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In accordance with the outcomes from a number of reports, there are cognitive and academic improvements derived from chess learning and chess playing. This evidence, however, endures three key limitations: (a) ignoring theoretical premises about the concept of transfer, (b) several shortcomings regarding ideal experiment guidelines, and (c) an uncritical faith in null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) statistical analyses. The present review scrutinized the NHST outcomes from 45 studies describing chess instruction interventions (n = 12,705) in nineteen countries that targeted cognitive ability (100 tests) and academic performance (108 tests), with a mean Hedge’s effect size g = 572 (95% CI = [0.127, 1.062]). There was a lower average statistical power, a higher proportion of false positive outcomes, larger publication biases, and lower replication rates for the studies in the academic performance domain than in the cognitive ability domain. These findings raised reasonable concerns over the evidence about the benefits of chess instruction, which was particularly problematic regarding academic achievement outcomes. Chess should perhaps be regularly taught, however, regardless of whether it has a direct impact or not in cognitive abilities and academic performance, because these are far transfer targets. The more likely impact of chess on near transfer outcomes from higher quality studies remains at present unexplored.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09670-9
1 3
REVIEW ARTICLE
Chess Instruction Improves Cognitive Abilities
andAcademic Performance: Real Effects orWishful
Thinking?
AngelBlanch1
Accepted: 10 March 2022 /
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
2022
Abstract
In accordance with the outcomes from a number of reports, there are cognitive and
academic improvements derived from chess learning and chess playing. This evi-
dence, however, endures three key limitations: (a) ignoring theoretical premises
about the concept of transfer, (b) several shortcomings regarding ideal experiment
guidelines, and (c) an uncritical faith in null hypothesis significance testing (NHST)
statistical analyses. The present review scrutinized the NHST outcomes from 45
studies describing chess instruction interventions (n = 12,705) in nineteen countries
that targeted cognitive ability (100 tests) and academic performance (108 tests), with
a mean Hedge’s effect size g = 572 (95% CI = [0.127, 1.062]). There was a lower
average statistical power, a higher proportion of false positive outcomes, larger pub-
lication biases, and lower replication rates for the studies in the academic perfor-
mance domain than in the cognitive ability domain. These findings raised reason-
able concerns over the evidence about the benefits of chess instruction, which was
particularly problematic regarding academic achievement outcomes. Chess should
perhaps be regularly taught, however, regardless of whether it has a direct impact or
not in cognitive abilities and academic performance, because these are far transfer
targets. The more likely impact of chess on near transfer outcomes from higher qual-
ity studies remains at present unexplored.
Keywords Chess instruction· Cognitive ability· Academic performance
Chess requires an intensive management of cognitive abilities such as general
sequential reasoning, long-term memory, and an extensive body of knowledge, and
of other attributes such as will power and motivation (Blanch & Llaveria, 2021;
* Angel Blanch
angel.blanch@udl.cat
1 Department ofPsychology, Faculty ofEducation, Psychology andSocial Work, University
ofLleida, Avda de l’Estudi General, 4, 25001Lleida, Catalonia, Spain
Educational Psychology Review (2022) 34:1371–1398
Published online: 2 April 2022
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
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