Jade Oldfield works with the Chess For Life program at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, which sees youth involved in the province’s criminal justice system spend 25 hours studying the game of chess and learning to apply its principles to life. She says they’ve already got plenty of anecdotal evidence that the program has a positive impact, and now they’re looking to confirm it through research.
“What we are hypothesizing is that chess as a cognitively demanding game, and based on the critical thinking involved in the game, is actually something that we can use to develop and grow in particular adolescent executive functions,” she said.
“So those are those skills like Inhibition, looking before you leap, thinking about the consequences of your action, things like working memory, Thinking about a couple moves ahead, holding those things in mind and manipulating them, as well as cognitive flexibility, the idea that, well, if this person moves here on the board, I can do this, but if they move here, then I have to respond this way. So all of those skills are actually very much used in the game of chess, and we know that executive functions are actually a better predictor of life success and life outcomes than even academic achievement.”
Listen to the full interview above.
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