Chess masters and expert musicians appear to be, on average, more intelligent than the general population. Some researchers have thus claimed that playing chess or learning music enhances children’s cognitive abilities and academic attainment. We here present two meta-analyses assessing the effect of chess and music instruction on children’s cognitive and academic skills. A third meta-analysis evaluated the effects of working memory training—a cognitive skill correlated with music and chess expertise—on the same variables. The results show small to moderate effects. However, the effect sizes are inversely related to the quality of the experimental design (e.g., presence of active control groups). This pattern of results casts serious doubts on the effectiveness of chess, music, and working memory training. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings; extend the debate to other types of training such as spatial training, brain training, and video games; and conclude that far transfer of learning rarely occurs.

Transfer of learning is something all of us experience in our daily life. Knowledge of Samsung smartphones transfers to iPhones. Driving one’s car generalizes to other models of cars. Knowing how to cook spaghetti Bolognese is useful for cooking chicken pasta. All of these are examples of near transfer; that is, the generalization of a set of skills across two (or more) domains tightly related to each other. However, another type of transfer has attracted the attention of researchers for over a century: far transfer. Far transfer occurs when a set of skills generalizes across two (or more) domains that are only loosely related to each other (e.g., mathematics and Latin).

In a seminal article, Thorndike and Woodworth (1901) proposed their common-elements theory according to which transfer is a function of the extent to which two domains share common features. The theory predicts that while near transfer takes place often, far transfer is much less common. This point has been echoed by extensive research into the psychology of expertise and skill acquisition. For example, research on chess players has established that expert performance relies, to a large extent, on perceptual information such as the knowledge of tens of thousands of chunks (i.e., meaningful configurations of chess pieces; Chase & Simon, 1973; Sala & Gobet, 2017a). Because of its high specificity, such information is hardly transferable to other fields, as predicted by chunking theory (Chase & Simon, 1973) and template theory (i.e., an extension of chunking theory; Gobet, 2016; Gobet & Simon, 1996). However, research on expertise has also provided convincing evidence that experts—such as chess masters and professional musicians—possess, on average, superior overall cognitive ability. Importantly, domain-general cognitive abilities (e.g., intelligence, processing speed, and working memory [WM]) are reliable predictors of success for outcomes such as academic achievement (Deary, Strand, Smith, & Fernandes, 2007) and job proficiency (Hunter & Hunter, 1984).

At this point, we can see readers waving their hands: This evidence establishes correlation, but can we conclude that there is a causal relationship? Does training in cognitively demanding activities make people smarter? Is it possible to train domain-general cognitive abilities in one domain and hence obtain benefits in a vast number of areas? In other words, does far transfer occur?

This article presents the results of two meta-analyses investigating the cognitive correlates of expert performance and three meta-analyses on the effectiveness of cognitive training in the domains of chess, music, and WM training. Meta-analysis is a statistical method pooling together the results of all the studies available on a topic. Importantly, meta-analysis enables more reliable conclusions than a single experiment, because of the greater number of participants involved and the fact that studies are replicated. After the presentation of the five meta-analyses, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and extend the discussion to other types of cognitive training.

Theoretical and Practical Implications Together with recent experimental studies, our meta-analytic reviews have provided a clear pattern of findings: (a) People engaged in cognitively demanding activities such as chess and music have better overall cognitive ability than the general population; (b) cognitive ability (e.g., WM or general intelligence) is a predictor of chess skill and music skill, among many others; (c) training chess, music, or WM capacity does not reliably enhance any skill beyond the skills they train; and (d) far-transfer effects, when reported, probably stemmed from confounds such as placebo effects. The same pattern of results appears to occur with other types of cognitive training. In accordance with Thorndike and Woodworth’s (1901) common-elements theory, far transfer remains a chimera. Consequently, theories assuming that skill acquisition and expert behavior rely on a large amount of domain-specific information—such as chunking (Chase & Simon, 1973) and template theories (Gobet & Simon, 1996)—find substantial corroboration in our results. In fact, these theories predict no (or minimal) far transfer from the training task to other nontrained tasks. Conversely, theories assuming that training domain-general cognitive abilities helps individuals to improve a broad range of domain-specific skills are not supported (for a review, see Strobach & Karbach, 2016). Another theoretical implication of our results concerns neural plasticity. The substantial absence of far transfer suggests that the neural patterns observed in people engaged in cognitively demanding activities reflect modifications in domain-specific abilities (e.g., chess skill) rather than enhanced domain-general cognitive ability. The occurrence of specific neural patterns (anatomical and functional) and absence of far-transfer effects on cognitive tests have been reported in domains such as music (e.g., Tierney, Krizman, & Kraus, 2015), chess (e.g., Hänggi, Brütsch, Siegel, & Jäncke, 2014), and video game training (e.g., Colom et al., 2012). In addition to theoretical aspects, the most obvious practical implications of our findings concern education. If skills rarely generalize across different domains, then the most effective way to acquire a skill is to train that particular skill. Considering the insights provided by the research on expert performance and cognitive training, educational and professional curricula should focus on discipline-related material rather than general principles without any specific reference to a particular subject (e.g., domain-general problem-solving skills). Moreover, the benefits of such domain-specific training should not be expected to generalize to other domains (e.g., learning Latin to improve logical thinking in mathematics). Also, in line with the idea that training domain-general cognitive skills leads to benefits in a wide range of real-life skills, the last decade has seen the rise of a multibillion-dollar industry of commercial brain-training programs. Companies such as Posit Science and Cogmed claim that their training programs can help people in their daily, professional, and academic lives. However, in light of the results reported in the present paper, the effectiveness of these programs remains doubtful (see also the discussion in Simons et al., 2016).

Conclusions and Future Directions The meta-analytic reviews presented in this article strongly suggest that the optimism about the far-transfer effects of cognitive training is not justified, at least with typically developing children and young adolescents.4 Although cognitive ability correlates with domain-specific skills—for example, smarter people are more likely to be stronger chess players and better musicians—there is little evidence that chess or music instruction makes people smarter. Rather, smarter individuals are more likely to engage and excel in these fields. Moreover, converging evidence supporting Thorndike and Woodworth’s (1901) common-elements theory comes from the research on other types of training (e.g., WM training, video games, spatial training, and brain training) and expertise acquisition. Future interventions trying to obtain far-transfer effects should strive for an experimental design including pretests and at least two control groups (a do-nothing group and an active control group). Such a design is the minimum standard in order to evaluate whether the putative benefits of cognitive training are genuine and not produced by statistical artifacts (e.g., differences at baseline level) and nonspecific factors (e.g., placebo effects, expectations). Another central aim is to identify the specific characteristics of the training that might improve one’s cognitive ability, which abilities they boost, and why these abilities should foster other nontrained abilities (i.e., far transfer). Nonetheless, given the scarceness of evidence for far transfer in the literature, our prediction is that future experiments will show findings in line with those presented in this article. For this reason, researchers and policymakers should seriously consider stopping spending resources for this type of research. Rather than searching for a way to improve overall domain-general cognitive ability, the field should focus on clarifying the domain-specific cognitive correlates underpinning expert performance.

Acknowledgements The authors gratefully thank Guillermo Campitelli, Grace McGuire, and Andrew Waters for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Notes 1.

Two studies in the meta-analysis about chess instruction included participants with learning disabilities and below-average IQ. 2.

According to a common categorization (Cohen, 1988), effect sizes of 0.20, 0.50, and 0.80 are considered small, medium, and large, respectively. 3.

k refers to the number of total comparisons between experimental and control groups in the meta-analytic model. 4.

It is worth noting that this conclusion does not necessarily apply to the population of older adults. The aim of cognitive training in the elderly is mainly to slow down cognitive decline, not to enhance cognitive abilities. For more details, see Karbach and Verhaeghen (2014) and Melby-Lervåg and Hulme (2016).

Recommended Reading

Boot, W. R., Simons, D. J., Stothart, C., Stutts, C. ( 2013 ). (See References). A discussion of the confounding effects of expectations in video-game training .

Google Scholar Melby-Lervåg, M., Redick, T. S., Hulme, C. ( 2016 ). (See References). A comprehensive meta-analysis on working memory training .

Google Scholar Mosing, M. A., Madison, G., Pedersen, N. L., Ullén, F. ( 2016 ). (See References). An interesting and alternative method (i.e., twin study) to investigate the occurrence of transfer in the domain of music .

Google Scholar Sala, G., Gobet, F. ( 2017 a). (See References). A meta-analysis on the importance of domain-specific perceptual knowledge in the recall of randomized material by experts and nonexperts .

Google Scholar Shipstead, Z., Redick, T. S., Engle, R. W. ( 2012 ). (See References). A theoretical analysis of the limitations of working memory training studies .

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