Can a Curriculum that Teaches Abstract Reasoning Skills Improve Standardized Test Scores?

Abstract: A pilot study was conducted in order to determine whether a curriculum that teaches strategic principles improves performance on standardized tests. Two classrooms in a low-SES Israeli school participated in an experiment. The more academically advanced classroom was exposed to a series of strategy games; the less advanced classroom was both exposed to games and taught a series of principles designed to guide their thinking in complex choice situations. These principles were taught with special reference to strategy games and then reinforced in the course of ordinary schoolwork.

We find that in the wake of this intervention, the less advanced class outperformed the more advanced class on computerized tests of game-playing performance and on paper- and-pencil tests of verbal and math ability.