The possibility of using interactive multimedia to train or enhance fundamental cognitive abilities that drive the complex cognitive activities that make learning and problem solving possible has captivated me. I have followed cognitive training companies and interventions and research about cognitive training games, which have also been brain training games, as a hobby for some time now. I recently wrote two research papers (assignments) about this topic and hope to pursue research in this area in the future, in addition to another area that examines design of games that facilitate development and transfer of problem solving skills. As a Master's student in Instructional Design and Technology, I cannot help but be interested in all kinds of learning technologies--especially the design of games that demand use of cognitive abilities and processes in ways that progressively improve a player's fundamental cognitive "zone of proximal development" in ways similar to how increases in technology resources can shift a production possibility curve in economics.
Aside from the examining the potential cognitive benefits of interacting with these kinds of training games, I have also considered how else research in this area might meaningfully inform and be useful in the field of instructional design and technology, and I came up with the list below. I list them here briefly, but I can further elaborate on them in upcoming posts:
10 Relevances of Cognitive Training Research to Instructional Design & Technology
2. Commercially available cognitive training interventions make claims about the benefits and mechanisms of their cognitive training interventions, yet some of these claims run counter to academic research findings or remain unsupported. Yet, many instructors, designers, clinicians, specialists, and educational technologists have become interested in their marketed benefits and in using these interventions to help people improve their learning abilities. There is a demand for those who understand learning theories and cognitive science relevant to these interventions to translate the theories, research findings, and "neurobunk" or "neuromyths" into terms professionals and the public can understand and answer questions about whether or not and how to integrate these technologies into educational, training, or rehabilitation programs.
3. Instructional designers and others who design learning experiences are currently able to use learning objectives to guide their designs, but we appear to be missing a framework (theories and distinctions, not just evidence of performance gains) that allows us to design cognitive training games with specific cognitive training objectives or outcomes in mind. Though there are evidence-based hierarchies or taxonomies of the domains of learning (e.g. from Bloom, Dick & Carey, or Gagne), it is not always clear how these taxonomies can integrate, theoretically and empirically, with other evidence-based hierarchies of human cognitive abilities (e.g. the Cattell-Horn-Carroll Model of Intelligence) from research in intelligence studies or cognitive science. If research approaches to examining the design of games for enhancing novel problem solving abilities are successful, then their findings and theoretical insights based on them and their relations to either kind of evidence-based hierarchy (domains of learning or cognition) may help bridge. Indeed, this unity of theory, evidence, and hierarchies could help guide designers' designs of interactive multimedia experiences for enhancement of cognition with specific "cognitive training objectives" in mind.
3. Instructional designers and others who design learning experiences are currently able to use learning objectives to guide their designs, but we appear to be missing a framework (theories and distinctions, not just evidence of performance gains) that allows us to design cognitive training games with specific cognitive training objectives or outcomes in mind. Though there are evidence-based hierarchies or taxonomies of the domains of learning (e.g. from Bloom, Dick & Carey, or Gagne), it is not always clear how these taxonomies can integrate, theoretically and empirically, with other evidence-based hierarchies of human cognitive abilities (e.g. the Cattell-Horn-Carroll Model of Intelligence) from research in intelligence studies or cognitive science. If research approaches to examining the design of games for enhancing novel problem solving abilities are successful, then their findings and theoretical insights based on them and their relations to either kind of evidence-based hierarchy (domains of learning or cognition) may help bridge. Indeed, this unity of theory, evidence, and hierarchies could help guide designers' designs of interactive multimedia experiences for enhancement of cognition with specific "cognitive training objectives" in mind.
4. Some research in cognitive science has yielded some support for the idea that playing certain kinds of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) action video games improve speed of visual processing skills, but there may be more advanced benefits of these games or more advanced ways of recognizing which kinds of games afford which kinds of visual or perceptual benefits. If further research in this area could merge with the kind of overall research program discussed in #3 above, then we may be able to develop an empirically informed, internally coherent framework for identifying and describing the features of COTS games (e.g. action video games) in ways relevant to those who are considering or would consider integrating COTS games with an instructional strategy.
5. Advanced, collaborative, multifaceted research programs about the benefits of specific lab-grown game designs or COTS games may help inform intelligence theories, cognitive neuroscience, and instructional design and technology, together. And perhaps it should. Most of the research that has been conducted about cognitive or brain training interventions and their impact on cognitive or intellectual abilities appears more concerned about answering questions specific to cognitive neuroscience, with less emphasis or theoretical guidance on how the benefits of the examined interventions are relevant to the design of learning experiences.
6. If research in this area (cognitive training), then there will be a demand for preserving the integrity of the designed mechanisms underlying the training games while also making these game-like multimedia experiences more engaging with features that facilitate player motivation.
7. There are evidence-based multimedia learning principles that emerged from research programs started by John Sweller, Richard Mayer, and others, and they have been useful for instructional design. Now part of this body of research and some of the multimedia learning principles can be recycled, but this time for use in design of multimedia experiences that target fundamental, domain-general cognitive abilities and processes that underly complex cognition. Which parts and principles? Those pertaining to the fundamentals of how human cognition interacts with the elements of any multimedia artifact (e.g. the split-attention effect). Using these principles with existing research about specific cognitive processing abilities (not merely storage, attention, or updating) will result in a more empirically-informed account of interactions between human cognition and multimedia (regardless of whether or not the findings point to performance improvements or not).
8. Just as the gap between lab conditions or training environments and real world learning contexts is of interest to instructional interventions, it is also relevant to the design and impact of cognitive training interventions. Either way, instructional design and technology-oriented research cannot be left out of the cognitive training scene any longer, or else we won't complete research about transferrable cognitive benefits and any gaps between a lab-grown intervention and the demands, circumstances, and factors present in real world contexts. Plus, there may be salient or subtle differences between 2D multimedia experiences and 3D multimedia experiences in terms of relevance to and mirroring of real world contexts. A future, must-go direction for any examination of cognitive benefits (to fundamental or complex cognition) of multimedia designs is to examine the differences between the affordances of 2D and 3D interactive multimedia experiences in terms of both cognitive performance (near transfer) and far transfer to real-world performances.
9. Self-regulation and metacognition are important to active management of learning and motivation, as well as to perceptions of one's own learning abilities, self-competence, and the affordances of learning tools and technologies. I suspect that self-regulation and metacognition are just as important to one's adoption and expectations of a cognitive training (consider the claims and alignment of marketing for the commercially available cognitive training ), as well as to one's performance during and after training exercises. One really important topic to examine here is the extent to which self-regulation and metacognition can help facilitate transfer of . Though most forms of computer-based cognitive or brain training interventions is supposed to work without leveraging schemas or scripts from long-term memory, schemas and scripts may still have roles to play in the person's active transfer of cognitive benefits to real world contexts. Accurate, well-defined and integrated schemas about one's own cognitive abilities may help someone remember, perceive, and act with one's own cognitive abilities. When they do, scripts that mirror the domain-general abilities used in trainings exercises may be useful in real-world contexts.
10. Learners who have cognitive impairments--as a learning disability (genetic) or acquired impairment (over time or due to injury)--should not be overlooked, nor are they overlooked by researchers who design or examine computer-based cognitive training interventions. As this overall research program advances, so should its eye for how people of different cognitive profiles (e.g. people of different working memory capacities; people with learning disabilities rooted in differences in working memory abilities; differences in visuospatial or phonological abilities) benefit differently from interventions. There may be different routes and kinds of adaptivity, each of which, when implemented within cognitive training interventions, helps one cognitive profile more than another. Just like development and implementation of learning analytics applications is only as good as the data it is based on and the validity of the adaptive mechanisms to the learner based on what data has yielded about the mechanism's impact on people of such-and-such learner profile, so too must cognitive training research--at some point--evolve to consider and try out different adaptivity mechanisms to generate data about the impact of those mechanisms on people of different cognitive profiles.
