| Nintendo recently created two video games aimed at adults who might wish to improve their cognitive functioning: Brain Age and Big Brain Academy (BBA). The present study attempts to verify whether games such as BBA can improve adults' cognitive functioning using standard psychological instruments. Participants were mainly from the student body and administrative staff of a small, private upper-Midwestern university. Other adults not-affiliated with the university also participated. Nintendo DS system, Nintendo Big Brain Academy (BBA), and selected sub-tests from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III; Wechsler, 1997), Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities and Tests of Achievement-Third Edition (WJ-III; Schrank, McGrew, and Woodcock, 2001), and the Stroop tests (Golden & Freshwater, 1998), comprised the primary materials. A control group comprised of participants who did not receive the training but were tested with the same psychological instruments as the experimental group was utilized in order to control for test-retest practice effect. A total of 17 adults (mean age 41) enrolled to be participants. Seven completed the tasks of the experimental group while eight completed the tasks of the control group. Both groups were given pre- and post-tests. The participants in the experimental group were instructed to play BBA for one daily round of each game activity plus an integral test for 28 days. The activities involved skills of reasoning, logic, visual perception, arithmetic, and others. The integral test was comprised of a sample of five game activities, resulting in a composite score. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) found no significant differences, as a whole, between the control and experimental groups on the dependent measures; however, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the scores of the WJ-III (Cognitive) subtests, Concept Formation and Picture Recognition, revealed the scores to have significantly improved, but with small effect sizes. This suggests that playing BBA might result in small improvements in inductive reasoning, thinking flexibility, and visual memory in the non-clinical population. In addition, integral games scores were moderately correlated with sub-test scores of the neuropsychological instruments used in this study. No adverse effects on neurocognition were demonstrated. |
