Kawashima vs “Super Mario”! Should a game be serious in order to stimulate cognitive aptitudes?

Abstract The vogue of massive commercialization of video games has prompted the development of methods for brain training on game consoles. Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training™ even benefited from an intense media campaign with celebrities. However, a previous study ( Lorant-Royer et al., 2008 ) proves that, in six tests (school-related or inspired by the WISC-IV), the effect of training from the Kawashima program or recreational brain training ( Brain Academy ), is lacking or weak (+20%) and does not exceed paper-pencil games (Mickey games) or control group (without training). However, other studies show a cognitive effect particularly on attention, suggesting that the practice of video games could improve specific cognitive capacities used in video games such as attention, manual dexterity, visual and spatial memory, etc. In this sense, any recreational game could have the same effects as the so-called Brain Training program. This study adopts the general methodology of Lorant-Royer et al., comparing this time Dr Kawashima's Brain Training ™ to a recreational game ( New Super Mario Bros ™), paper-pencil games (Mickey games) as “placebo” and a control group (without training) in 10 tests focused on visual attention, manual dexterity and visuospatial memory. Eighty-eight pupils aged 10 years and 2 months on average were divided into four groups and were evaluated twice (pretests and post-tests) before and after 11 training sessions in the games. The results were very disappointing. Of the 10 tests, only the “brain training” had a weak positive effect (+18.15%) in the right hand dexterity test. Conversely, the group playing the “ Super Mario ” game registered a positive effect (+23.91%) on the visual span test. In conclusion, recreational training will neither be sufficiently specific nor sufficiently long (in terms of training years) in order to obviously develop cognitive abilities.