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I didn't read the entire study and didn't play too much with the app, but this entire article reads like an advertisement to the peak app. The only relation I f

I didn't read the entire study and didn't play too much with the app, but this entire article reads like an advertisement to the peak app. The only relation I found on peak's about page to Cambridge is Barbara Sahakian, FMedSci DSc, Scientific Advisor. http://www.peak.net/about/ http://www.peak.net/about/ I'm not calling this a fraud but didn't numerous studies showed that any of the so called brain trainig apps don't show translation of skill to the real world? e.g. you do get better that the games the apps have, but not helping in actual real life scenarios? The test they used (Rapid Visual Information Processing test) is just another "game" in a way. You can train someone to be better at the test, but it doesn't make their ADHD go away magically. I wish it was that easy. It looks like the app includes games that are way too similar to the actual test that was used to determine progress in the test subjects. From the article: About the game: "To meet the objective, users have to identify different combinations of number strings in missions littered with distraction." About the test (used to prove the game does improve cognitive abilities): "Those tested were asked to detect digit sequences (such as 2-4 or 6-8), and then hit a button once detected as quickly as they could — and multiple sequences could appear at the same time" Am I missing something or this sounds like almost the same thing? One can train and learn all the answers to an IQ test, this doesn't make one a genius. This feels like a real great promoted article in the cover of scientific writing, but maybe I'm just and old cynic. Once a study shows actual translation, after years of observation, that ADHD subjects get improvements in other aspects of life (school, social, grades, self esteem etc) then I'll be the first to support it. Until then, it just looks like greed and bottom line. I guess it's better than playing candy crush at least.

Bartweiss 8y ago
> didn't numerous studies showed that any of the so called brain trainig apps don't show translation of skill to the real world? e.g. you do get better that the games the apps have, but not helping in actual real life scenarios? Yes, this is almost always the problem. For quite a while, we thought dual n-back tests had generalized results, and so brain-training apps were basically attempting to stumble on a gamified version of that task. Unfortunately, newer studies[1] suggest that dual n-back also doesn't produce fluid intelligence or working memory improvements, so there's no proof of concept here at all. As for this study, the game and metric were exceedingly similar, and practice effects on the metric are an obvious risk. The researchers did apply a second metric less similar to their task, a standard dot-connecting task called Trail Making Task. Unfortunately, their stated intent was to show that improved single-task attention didn't degrade focus-switching attention, so this was a substantially different task for which they hypothesized no change. Their abstract reports a statistically significant improvement on TMT, which could be quite interesting. However, the full paper shows that Decoder had p=0.03 improvement on TMT over the active control (people who played Bingo), but the passive control (no play) was not significantly different than Decoder or the active control. This isn't regarded as a failure because they expected no change, but it means the study failed to show clear improvement in any metric which didn't precisely replicate the game's task. You're absolutely right to be skeptical here. Practice effects are a constant problem with this sort of research, and the study seems to be confusingly short on attempts to test for that. The actual app focuses more on gamification than using any type of proven test, and the lead author's corporate connection to Peak is at best concerning. I don't think there's any sort of fraud here, but it's a field riddled with well-meaning projects that turn out to lack any general benefit, and this result has all the warning signs for another promising failure. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613001293 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...

Bartweiss 8y ago

> didn't numerous studies showed that any of the so called brain trainig apps don't show translation of skill to the real world? e.g. you do get better that the games the apps have, but not helping in actual real life scenarios? Yes, this is almost always the problem. For quite a while, we thought dual n-back tests had generalized results, and so brain-training apps were basically attempting to stumble on a gamified version of that task. Unfortunately, newer studies[1] suggest that dual n-back also doesn't produce fluid intelligence or working memory improvements, so there's no proof of concept here at all. As for this study, the game and metric were exceedingly similar, and practice effects on the metric are an obvious risk. The researchers did apply a second metric less similar to their task, a standard dot-connecting task called Trail Making Task. Unfortunately, their stated intent was to show that improved single-task attention didn't degrade focus-switching attention, so this was a substantially different task for which they hypothesized no change. Their abstract reports a statistically significant improvement on TMT, which could be quite interesting. However, the full paper shows that Decoder had p=0.03 improvement on TMT over the active control (people who played Bingo), but the passive control (no play) was not significantly different than Decoder or the active control. This isn't regarded as a failure because they expected no change, but it means the study failed to show clear improvement in any metric which didn't precisely replicate the game's task. You're absolutely right to be skeptical here. Practice effects are a constant problem with this sort of research, and the study seems to be confusingly short on attempts to test for that. The actual app focuses more on gamification than using any type of proven test, and the lead author's corporate connection to Peak is at best concerning. I don't think there's any sort of fraud here, but it's a field riddled with well-meaning projects that turn out to lack any general benefit, and this result has all the warning signs for another promising failure. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613001293 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...