My young daughter plays computer games that allow her to learn a skill while playing and competing with other players. It’s probably a gift and a curse of the COVID-19 pandemic all at once — children getting more than enough screen time per day, but gaining a skill that they might otherwise not attain while doing other tasks on the playground. However, I often wonder how relevant and generalizable these skills are in her daily life and future learning progress. That is, is she just getting better at the task itself, or is she growing in the area of expertise in which the game is supposed to be training her?

For example, my daughter loves this pizza making game that requires visual-spatial skills, working memory functioning, and math skills for calculation of the bill and tip. Over time, I have noticed that she has gotten really good at the game and at earning money at her own pizzeria!  However, is she just getting good at the game or are some of the cooking and business skills she attained transferable to real life settings?  I sure hope the latter is true!

As we expand our view to include more and more commercial cognitive-perceptual products on the market, we ask the same questions as we evaluate the effectiveness of perceptual-cognitive training tools on the market as psychologists and as customers. In an article published in a Psychonomic Society journal, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Christian Vater, Rob Gray, and Alex Holcombe presented a comprehensive overview of a perceptual-cognitive tool often used in training athletes called the Neurotracker.

The Neurotracker is a 3D multiple object-tracking (MOT) task that requires one to fixate on a green dot in the middle of the screen and use the peripheral vision to monitor the movements of eight yellow spheres. Try it out for yourself here!  Coaches may choose to use the Neurotracker for athlete training purposes because the company does make quite a few claims about the tasks’ effectiveness in increasing and improving cognitive functions. The Neurotracker claims to train sustained attention, selective attention, divided attention, inhibition, short-term memory working memory, processing speed. In particular, the company claims to help users “focus on key play opportunities”, “filter out incoming sensory distractions”, “stay sharp under high-pressure demands”, “see more opportunities in any situation”, “Interpret body language more effectively”, “perceptively slow down the environment”, “respond more quickly and efficiently”, “Improve your response accuracy”, “avoid overly impulsive actions”. As you can see, this is quite an extensive list of cognitive and physical benefits!  Many of these effects can be considered far transfer effects, i.e., an improvement in sport-specific skill and performance in competition. Near transfer effects, on the other hand, refer to improvement on the task itself.

Past research states that Neurotracker is based on two principles: Isolation and overloading. Isolation means that the number of functions solicited for the task is limited and consistent; while overloading a function means to use more cognitive resources than the current state. One way to achieve overloading is to make each trial increasingly difficult by increasing the speed.

Vater and colleagues conducted a systematic review of 29 published articles using the following questions:

• Does the Neurotracker test and train the cognitive skills that its makers suggest?
• Do the skills trained transfer to other domains?

So, what did their detailed analysis reveal?  It appears that the Neurotracker may be somewhat effective in improving a small number of cognitive functions in only a very limited number of studies. Unfortunately, many of the studies were methodologically flawed. More controlled experiments and pre-registered studies are certainly necessary for the claims of such wide cognitive benefits to be verified!  Carefully designed, basic scientific studies are needed to effectively examine whether the trained cognitive skills are indeed engaged, and eye tracking methodology may also be used as an experimental measure to further investigate the manufacturer’s claims on awareness. A quote from the authors nicely sums up this post: “Our review seems to be the first systematic evaluation of a training regime used by professional sports teams and the military, and we found that the evidence does not support the majority of its proposed benefits.”

For now, perhaps the most effective way to improve on a sport-related skill is still to put in the time and effort practicing on the field!

Featured Psychonomic Society article 

Vater, C., Gray, R., & Holcombe, A. O. (2021). A critical systematic review of the neurotracker perceptual-cognitive training tool. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28, 1458–1483.  https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01892-2