The FPS puzzler proved more efficient than Lumosity

Oct 2, 2014 08:58 GMT  ·  By

Brain games. Everyone loves them. But there’s one particular tool that has never been classified as such, yet it performs better than specialized programs like Lumosity.

According to the Florida State University, that tool is the popular video game Portal 2. Its distinct gameplay features make it a better brain training program than Lumosity, according to a small study.

What’s Lumosity?

For those of you who haven’t made acquaintance with Lumosity, it’s a brain training and neuroscience research company based in San Francisco, California. They offer a program with the same name that consists of more than 40 games in areas like memory, attention, flexibility, speed of processing, and problem solving.

The study

Florida State University took 77 undergraduates who were randomly assigned to play either Portal 2 or the well-established brain training collection in Lumosity. They played for about 8 hours.

We can all agree that 77 is not that big of a number, but that doesn't mean the survey wasn't serious or scientific.

According to the surveyors, “Before and after gameplay, participants completed a set of online tests related to problem solving, spatial skill, and persistence.”

Portal does it all, and then some

When the results came in, it was revealed that “participants who were assigned to play Portal 2 showed a statistically significant advantage over Lumosity on each of the three composite measures - problem solving, spatial skill, and persistence.”

“Portal 2 players also showed significant increases from pretest to posttest on specific small- and large-scale spatial tests while those in the Lumosity condition did not show any pretest to posttest differences on any measure. Results are discussed in terms of the positive impact video games can have on cognitive and noncognitive skills,” the study papers add.

Spatial awareness

The one thing where Portal 2 clearly distinguished from Lumosity, aside from the fact that it’s 100 times more fun, was its ability to improve spatial awareness.

According to the results, “Players in Portal 2 will improve all three facets of spatial skill: figural, vista, and environmental while players in Lumosity will only improve their figural and vista skills.”

In our own testing of Portal 2, we observed that the map creator in particular enabled a boost in imaginative skills, correlation, a better understanding of the laws of physics, and the ability not to just solve a puzzle, but to create a genuine one for others to try and beat. Portal 2 also allows you to better understand and learn different types of problem solving.

If you haven’t tried it yet, we totally recommend it. Not just for its brain training potential, but for the sheer amount of fun that it provides.