Long-term effects Comparing winter and spring scores on the tests, the researchers found that when students played the games over a three-to-four-month period, proficiency in reading and math improved more than among children in the control group. They did, however, take the same standardized tests as the students in the experimental group. The rest of the students were in 10 second grade classes in three additional schools that served as a control group and used neither Activate nor the content-focused games. The classrooms were randomly assigned to receive the “brain-training” warm-up game plus the math game or the warm-up game plus the reading game. Finally, their program also includes a physical exercise component designed to work the same mental muscles as the computer games. While the authors don’t specifically mention libraries, they do note that the program could be used “in learning and performance situations other than schools.” The researchers also created math and reading games to test the use of Activate as a “priming” exercise for students before they begin working on curriculum content. “If we have a new tool to help us address the achievement gap related to the poverty, that’s very important,” Wexler says. Measures of these skills in five to seven-year-olds have been found to predict later academic performance, and past research has shown that poverty and exposure to trauma reduce these skills in children. Executive functioning includes focused attention, response inhibition, working memory, and the ability to switch from thinking about one thing to another. The games, which adjust to each child’s skill level, are intended to improve executive function skills. Of the total sample of 583 students, 372 students used the program three times a week for 20-minute periods. The researchers tested their suite of four brain-training games, called Activate, as part of the regular school day with second graders in four Fairfax County (VA) Public Schools. The study also involved researchers at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California Los Angeles. Funded by the Roddenberry Foundation and led by Bruce Wexler, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Yale, the study seeks to answer not only whether brain training is effective-a topic of debate-but also whether there are “far transfer” effects, meaning that students not only do better on the games themselves but improve their academic performance in general. “Compared with procedures currently available to teachers, video-game cognitive priming can more directly establish internal states to facilitate learning, and make those states specific to the nature of the content material that follows,” according to the study, which appears in the September 2016 issue of Scientific Reports. In addition, the study shows that using these “brain-activation” games as a warm-up or “priming” activity before working on academic content can better prepare children to learn than other strategies educators use to focus students’ attention, such as eliminating distractions and making sure there is adequate lighting. Playing computer games designed to improve cognitive functions can be even more effective at increasing students’ reading and math performance than traditional methods, such as one-on-one tutoring programs and extended learning time after school or during the summer, according to a n ew study by Yale University.researchers.
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