Does Brain Training Help Skill Development?
How can brain training help skill development in people? It seems a powerful new behaviouranalytic theory of human cognition, known as Relational Frame Theory (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes & Roche, 2001), has helped psychologists understand precisely what types of personal learning experiences are needed to maximize our intellectual development. This has been possible because behaviour analysts spend a lot of time trying to break into simpler units important intellectual skills, such as reading and problem-solving. We all understand that a human organism requires a central nervous system to operate effectively, and we understand that the brain is part of the central nervous system that is of relevance to understanding behaviour. But we do not all agree on the exact relationship between brain and development. The issue is not unlike the nature-nurture debate, insofar as drawing a distinction between a “fit” brain and high levels of intellectual skill, represents somewhat of a false dichotomy, at least from our perspective. This in turn tempts too many psychologists to take the easy and culturally consistent step, of explaining behavioral functions (e.g., skills) in terms of brain function. This is not so meaningful a move conceptually, because the brain develops precisely in response to the stimulation it receives through learning experiences, and it is even explicit in the brain training and brain health literature that brain training exercises might have their effect on our overall mental acuity, precisely because the brain responds to learning experiences by forming new neural links between cells. Brain changes that accompany skill improvements are interesting and they may be important to identify insofar as they help to fill knowledge gaps in our understanding of brain function and its relation to various behaviors. However, once this understanding unfolds, the activity of the brain and the skill with which it is associated can be considered two sides of the same coin. In other words, improvements in intellectual skill levels can be viewed at different levels of analysis; the learning achievements associated with those improvements, or the neural correlates of those improvement. Critically, however, the brain changes do not automatically easily explain the behaviour improvements, because they themselves were brought about by the behaviour changes they are supposed to explain! For example, the very improvement in remembering skills that are observed as one practices remembering, cannot be explained by the brain changes produced by that practice. To attempt to do so constitutes what philosophers of science call a tautology, and which behaviour analysts have always been keen to avoid. If brain or behaviour changes explain each other, it seems more parsimonious to behaviour analysts to assume that the brain changes are caused by the behaviour changes, and not vice versa, as per current fashion. By focusing on behaviour change in the development of cognitive skills training, and by using brain measures only as a secondary means of understanding the effects of that training (and in so doing producing coherent multi-level explanations), we keep focused on the task at hand. Yes, I am suggesting we treat neural changes as depend outcomes of brain training – not as the explanation for the effects of brain training. Put simply, the neural changes associated with brain training themselves need to be explained – and we can easily do so by simply looking to the brain training regimen. This is the essence of the behavioral approach.
Of course, neuroscientific activity helps to make sense of unusual behaviors and can even be diagnostic. For example, we might understand a particular behaviour once we discover specific brain functions for an individual that are typical of a certain population (e.g., schizophrenics). However, it is critical to understand that we only know that these brain functions are typical of those populations because we have taken our behavioral analyses of schizophrenics as primary in mapping out the brain function associated with that condition in the first instance. We did not discover schizophrenia in the brain – we simply looked at its neutral correlates. The condition was already mapped out behaviourally – and if it had not been the neural correlates could never have been discovered. Teach What You Want the Student to Learn If behaviour is what we are trying to improve … teach it! The emphasis on “brain plasticity” and “the growth of neural pathways” that has plagued the nonsensical marketing literature used for much brain training software, has actually inadvertently highlighted the inefficiency of the brain training system itself. This is a system in which behaviour is improved by exercising an organ whose cell density and degree of interconnectedness is merely associated with high levels of function in that skill domain. Training you brain will not tell you what the square root of -1 is. That is based on conventional knowledge. And it will not make you any better at reasoning logically in areas in which the rules of logic are conventional (e.g., understand the difference between “if-then” and “if-andonly-if” statements). Of course, a “fit” brain may make it easier to learn these things – but not if they are taught badly. This brings us full circle back to that false dichotomy and the relationship between teaching methodologies and brain development. That fit brain is no good at all, if no one knows how to teach, any more than your genes for height are any good at all if you are raised without much protein in your diet. It is well noted, even in the popular media, that there is much spin and scientific “gobbeldy-gook” associated with marketing for brain training products. What is not so obvious is the conceptual confusion that underlies the idea that a complex, socially conventional skill (e.g., reading) might spontaneously improve by exercising an organ merely involved in the effective execution of that skill. Arguing that a person will automatically become smarter by simply exercising their brain “muscle” is like arguing that they can become a better piano player by simply training their finger muscles.