Commercial brain training often sells far transfer: practice this game, get smarter in life. Cognitive psychology usually finds something narrower: people get better at what they practice, and generalization is the hard part.
A usable filter for get-smarter claims:
- Name the outcome (acute state, skill/knowledge, aging trajectory, measured IQ, or trained-task score).
- Ask what transferred (same task family vs a broader battery with real controls).
- Prefer active controls and pre-registration over testimonials.
- Remove real constraints first (sleep debt, clinical issues, true deficiencies), then build hard skills for competence goals.
I published a small open companion for this filter: an evidence-ranked CSV of interventions related to intelligence / cognitive performance outcomes, plus a citation pack. It is not a systematic review of everything, and it does not claim that any product raises IQ.
- OSF project: https://osf.io/kja9b/
- Narrative companion: https://intelligencemax.ai/guide
Disclosure: I maintain the matrix and also build educational software in the space (IntelligenceMax). Use the OSF files on their own if you only want the CSV.
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