Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Research using short-term chess training programs has indicated an enhancement of cognitive functioning among children.The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of 1-year systematic chess training on the creativity and intelligence ofchildren. A pretestposttest with control group design was used. Children who were studying in two government schoolsand two private schools (grades 39) were selected randomly. They were then randomly assigned to experimental andcontrol groups, with 88 (50 boys, 38 girls) children in the experimental group and 90 (57 boys, 33 girls) children inthe control group. The experimental group underwent weekly 1-hour chess training for 1 year, while the control groupwas actively involved in extracurricular activities offered by the school during the same period. Creativity was measuredby WallachKogan Creativity Test (Indian adaptation) and intelligence was measured by subtests of Wechsler IntelligenceScale for Children: Fourth edition (WISC-IV), India. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed significant improvementin total creativity and Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ) for experimental group compared to the control group. Chesstraining as part of school activities appears to have a wide spectrum of outcomes.