We’re thrilled to share that a new study on Cogmed has been published in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy. Spearheaded by Dr. Ernst Fehr, vice chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Zürich, the study examines Cogmed’s effects on academic performance for typically developing children. 

It is one of the largest randomized-controlled studies on Cogmed to date, and one of the few to measure really long-term effects – we’re talking follow-ups several years post-intervention. 

And – spoiler alert! – the findings are pretty great. 

The study is worth reading in full, but for those of you short on time, here’s a bullet-pointed version:

• 572 first grade students in Mainz, Germany were randomized (between classes and within schools) into two groups.
• The treatment group did 5 weeks of Cogmed (30 minutes per day, 5 days per week), in place of a typically scheduled morning class period, either mathematics or German.
• The control group instead had their regularly scheduled mathematics or German language classes.
• All participants were assessed on mathematics, reading, IQ, and ratings of self regulation at baseline, immediately after, and 6 & 12 months after the intervention.
• The researchers found significant increases in performance among the Cogmed children in all of the assessed areas, with some of the gains being strongest 12-13 months after the intervention.
• Three years after the intervention they found that the children who completed Cogmed had a 16 percentage point higher probability of entering the academic track in secondary school compared to the control group – that’s 50% higher chances than the population average.

When we asked our founder Professor Torkel Klingberg about the findings, he shared:

“The present study differs from earlier publications in its focus on long-term learning outcomes in school-aged children. It not only shows that the effects on academic performance last, but also that they compound and increase over time. If we compare the impact on the children’s learning with other prominent and more costly interventions, such as reducing the number of students in the classroom, this study shows that Cogmed seems to yield equivalent–or better–results.”

We’ve had access to the pre-print version of this paper for a while now and have been eagerly awaiting its formal publication. We are absolutely delighted this is now officially out in the world, showing (once more) that Cogmed is a uniquely transformative tool when it comes to boosting the cognitive skills that are essential for learning and academic success.