chaalwise

Does this transfer?

Partly, and only if it is taught for. Playing games on its own does little for general thinking. An idea is more likely to carry over to work and study when it is named, met in different settings and used on your own decisions.

What the evidence says

  • Getting good at a game makes you good at that game. Studies of chess lessons find small effects on school results and general thinking, shrinking to about nothing in the best-controlled studies (Sala and Gobet 2016, 2017). A trial of chess lessons in 100 English primary schools found no effect on maths, reading or science (Jerrim and others 2018). Transfer to a distant setting is rare, and depends on how far the settings differ (Barnett and Ceci 2002).
  • Ideas move when they are bridged. Naming the idea and asking where else it applies makes transfer more likely (Perkins and Salomon 1988). Comparing two cases of the same idea did far more than studying the same two cases one at a time (Gentner, Loewenstein and Thompson 2003). Explaining to yourself why an answer is right helps too (Bisra and others 2018).
  • Short training can change decisions. One session of game-based training with named biases and personal feedback reduced biased answers on new kinds of problems, and the effect lasted at least two months (Morewedge and others 2015). In a later study, trained students made fewer biased choices in a business case they did not know was a test (Sellier and others 2019).
  • Use at work depends on work. Training is used more when people are supported in trying it at work (Blume and others 2010). A plan of the form "When this happens, I will do that" helps people act (Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006).

What Chaalwise does about it

  • Each lesson names its idea, and says where it turns up at work and in study.
  • Each idea is shown in a game and in at least three cases away from the board, so reviews bring the idea back in different cases.
  • Strategy lessons set a board position beside a case from work or study, to compare.
  • Each strategy lesson ends with a plan, "When …, I will …", and the review asks later whether you used it.
  • Questions come back just before you would forget them.

What it cannot promise

Chaalwise cannot see your work. It measures your answers to questions, not what you do on Monday. A strong level on your progress page means you know an idea well and can spot it in a new case, which is a start, not proof that you use it. Whether you do depends on using it soon, on real decisions, and on the people around you.

If you run a team: give people a decision to use the idea on within a week, and ask how it went. The printable pack is made for that.

Sources

  1. Sala, G. & Gobet, F. (2016). Do the benefits of chess instruction transfer to academic and cognitive skills? A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 18. doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2016.02.002
  2. Sala, G. & Gobet, F. (2017). Does far transfer exist? Negative evidence from chess, music, and working memory training. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6). doi.org/10.1177/0963721417712760
  3. Jerrim, J. et al. (2018). Does teaching children how to play cognitively demanding games improve their educational attainment? Evidence from a randomised controlled trial of chess instruction in England. Journal of Human Resources, 53(4). doi.org/10.3368/jhr.53.4.0516.7952R
  4. Barnett, S. M. & Ceci, S. J. (2002). When and where do we apply what we learn? A taxonomy for far transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4). doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.612
  5. Perkins, D. N. & Salomon, G. (1988). Teaching for transfer. Educational Leadership, 46(1). www1.udel.edu/dssep/transfer/teaching_for_transfer.htm
  6. Gentner, D., Loewenstein, J. & Thompson, L. (2003). Learning and transfer: a general role for analogical encoding. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2). doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.95.2.393
  7. Bisra, K. et al. (2018). Inducing self-explanation: a meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30. doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9434-x
  8. Morewedge, C. K. et al. (2015). Debiasing decisions: improved decision making with a single training intervention. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2(1). doi.org/10.1177/2372732215600886
  9. Sellier, A.-L., Scopelliti, I. & Morewedge, C. K. (2019). Debiasing training improves decision making in the field. Psychological Science, 30(9). doi.org/10.1177/0956797619861429
  10. Gollwitzer, P. M. & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38. doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
  11. Blume, B. D. et al. (2010). Transfer of training: a meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4). doi.org/10.1177/0149206309352880