Intelligence chess. The brain of a chess player: what are its differences and advantages. Early Development School "Children's Park"

On May 11, 1997, at the Equitable Center in suburban Manhattan, Garry Kasparov, who had been the world chess champion since 1985, gave up after just 19 moves. last game match, which consisted of 6 games, in which he played against Deep Blue , chess computer, developed by IBM engineers.

This was Kasparov's second loss in the match: he won one game; the other three ended in draws—meaning he lost the entire match and, more importantly, lost his unofficial title of “the best chess brain on the entire planet,” according to the reporter New York Times who was present at this event.

There has been a huge debate in the chess world and beyond about what Kasparov's defeat means. (A few days before the match, the magazine Newsweek published a large article, on the cover there was the title that the magazine gave to this match - “The Last Stronghold of the Human Brain.”)

At a sombre post-match conference, Kasparov said he was ashamed of his loss and puzzled by his extraordinary ability. Deep Blue. “I’m only human,” he sighed. “When I see something in front of me that is far beyond my understanding, I begin to be afraid.”

For many people a triumph Deep Blue symbolized not only a challenge to human chess prowess, but also an existential threat to the unique intelligence of our species. It's as if the school of dolphins composed a magnificent symphony.

Indeed, the ability to play chess has long been considered a symbol of brain flexibility: the more intelligent you are, the better you play chess, and vice versa. In his 1997 book Chess Genius, British grandmaster Jonathan Levitt derived a precise mathematical relationship between IQ and chess talent, calling it the Levitt equality:

Elo ~ (10 x IQ) + 1000

Combination Еlo denotes a player's tournament rating—and in his equation, Levitt explained, he meant the highest rating a player can achieve "after years of playing tournaments and studying chess." (Funny squiggle after the word Elo means approximately equal.) So if you have an average IQ of 100, then, according to Levitt's calculations, the highest ranking you could ever hope to achieve would be 2000. An IQ of 120 could potentially get you 2200 points. And so on.

But not everyone accepts the premise that chess talent is closely and directly related to raw IQ. Jonathan Rawson, a young Scottish grandmaster who has written several provocative books about chess, calls Levitt's equation "completely wrong."

Rawson says that the most important talents in chess have nothing to do with intelligence at all; these are talents psychological and emotional .

“Most of the leading academic treatises on chess miss what are the most important components of the mind and feeling of a chess player,” wrote Rawson in his book The Seven Deadly Sins of Chess ( The Seven Deadly Chess Sins). “Their fault is that they perceive chess as an almost exclusively cognitive activity, where the choice of moves and understanding of positions rests only on a basis of mental patterns and inferences.”

The two most important executive functions are cognitive flexibility and cognitive self-control. Both of these skills are central to the training Spiegel gives his students.

In reality, he wrote, if you want to become a great chess player, or even just a good one, “your ability to recognize your emotions and use them to the last ounce is as important as the way you think.”

During chess lessons in IS 318 and in post-game briefings to students during tournaments, Elisabeth Spiegel often imparts specific chess knowledge to her students: how to spot the difference between a Slavic and a semi-Slavic defense; how to determine the comparative value of an elephant moving on white squares and an elephant moving on black ones.

But most of the time (and this amazed me as I watched her work) what she did was much simpler - and at the same time much more difficult: she taught her students new way of thinking. Her methodology is closely related to the metacognitive strategies studied by Martin Seligman and taught by Angela Duckworth. And to me, her system also seemed inextricably linked to the research that neuroscientists are conducting in the field of executive functions - those higher-order mental abilities that are compared to the control center of air traffic controllers in the brain.

The two most important executive functions are cognitive flexibility and cognitive self-control. Cognitive flexibility– this is the ability to see alternative solutions to problems, think “outside the box,” and negotiate in unfamiliar situations. Cognitive self-control is the ability to suppress an instinctive or habitual reaction and replace it with a more effective, but less obvious one.

Both of these skills are central to the training Spiegel gives his students. To win at chess, she says, you need a highly developed ability to see new and different ideas. “What particularly creative, winning move have you overlooked? What potentially disastrous move from your opponent are you blindly ignoring?”

She also teaches her players to resist the temptation to make an attractive move, since this type of move (as Sebastian Garcia discovered) often leads to further problems.

“Teaching chess means teaching those habits that are associated with thinking,” Spiegel explained to me when I attended her classes. – For example, how to understand your mistakes and how to become more aware of your thought processes.

Before becoming a chess teacher in IS 318, Spiegel taught eighth grade English, and in this capacity, as she herself says, was a complete disaster. She taught the basics of composition as well as she analyzed chess game Sebastian: When students turned in written papers to her, she went through each paper, sentence by sentence, with each student, asking questions: “Well, are you sure that this best way say what you want to say"?

“They looked at me like I was crazy,” she told me. “I wrote them long letters about what they wrote. It took me a whole evening to analyze six or seven works.

Spiegel's teaching style may not have suited the class very well. English language, but her experience teaching English helped her better understand what she wanted to do in chess class.

Instead of following chess program With a full year ahead of her, she decided that she would create her academic calendar on the fly, planning lessons based solely on what her students already knew and, more importantly, what they didn’t know.

For example, she once took her students to chess tournament– and noticed that many of them were “hanging” their pieces (meaning that they were leaving their pieces unprotected, making them easy targets). The following Monday, she devoted a lesson to how not to “hang” pieces by reconstructing lost games on green teaching boards hanging on hooks in front of the whole class. Over and over, she would break down her students' games, both individually and as a class, thoroughly analyzing where the player went wrong, where he could have gone differently, what might have happened if he had made a better move, and running through all these likely scenarios. several moves forward before returning to the point of error.

Although this approach may seem very reasonable from the outside, in reality it is completely unusual way teaching or learning chess.

“Focusing closely on what you can’t do creates discomfort,” Spiegel told me. – So usually people learn to play chess by reading books about it. These books can be funny, often intellectually entertaining, but what you read does not turn into a skill. If you want to truly achieve something in chess, you need to analyze your games and find out what and where you did wrong.

Ideally, it's a bit like what people get from psychotherapy, Spiegel says. You look at the mistakes you've already made—or the mistakes you keep making—and try to get to the reasons why you make them. And just like the best psychotherapists, Spiegel tries to lead his students along a narrow and difficult path: make them take responsibility for their mistakes and learn from them, without dwelling on these mistakes and without indulging in self-flagellation .

There's a reason why chess is known as the "game of kings." There is no doubt that the rulers of empires and kingdoms saw this game as an excellent opportunity to practice strategic thinking and predicting enemy behavior on a real battlefield, in confrontation with other monarchs or invaders. As people learn more about the brain, many are pushing for chess to be used more widely in education. What is the incredible effect of this game on the brain? How does it improve his performance?

Can Boost Your IQ Level

Chess has always had an image problem - it was perceived as a game for geniuses and people with already high IQ levels. For a long time there has been debate about smart people start playing chess or playing chess makes people smart. At least one study has clearly shown that this game can increase human intelligence. A study conducted among four thousand teenagers demonstrated a significant increase in IQ in those children of both sexes who learned to play chess for four months.

Helps prevent Alzheimer's disease

Because your brain works like a muscle, it, like any muscle, requires exercise to avoid injury and exhaustion. During a recent study, 75 people who took part engaged in constant brain activity, including playing chess. And this led to a significant reduction in the likelihood of developing dementia. Actually, just as muscles that do not receive physical activity lose strength, so the lack of use of the brain leads to a loss of its power. This is another reason why you should start playing chess.

Exercises both sides of the brain

In a study in Germany, scientists showed chess experts and novices different geometric figures and chess positions and measured people's reactions to recognizing them. They expected the left half of the experts' brains to be much more active, but they didn't expect the right hemisphere to be as active. Reaction times for simple tasks were also similar, but chess experts were better at using both hemispheres of the brain to respond faster to images of chess positions.

Increases creativity

Since the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for creativity, it should not surprise you that activating it helps you develop from a creative point of view. Chess in particular greatly increases your originality. Over the course of four years, a study was conducted, the essence of which was as follows: students in grades 7-9 had to play chess, use a computer and engage in various activities for 32 weeks, and scientists measured which type of activity provoked the greatest increase in creative thinking. Chess was in first place in all creativity parameters - the development of original thinking won by a large margin.

Improves your memory

Chess players know that this game improves memory. To be a good player means to remember all the moves that your opponent has made, and also to constantly remember which of them may be the most effective on your part in a given case. These are not just empty words, there is also scientific evidence. In a two-year study in 1985, a group of students were given the opportunity to play chess at any time. As a result, their grades increased in absolutely all subjects, and teachers noted that these students began to demonstrate better memory and better organizational skills. The same study was repeated with children - and the results were confirmed. Children who played chess began to remember everything better, and their verbal skills also improved.

Improves problem solving skills

A chess game is like one big riddle that needs to be solved, and solved on the fly, since your opponent is constantly changing the conditions. In 1992, as part of a study, almost half a thousand schoolchildren were divided into three groups. The first group studied traditional mathematics lessons, the second replaced mathematics with chess starting from the second grade, and the third - from the first. As a result, during centralized testing, the scores of the third group increased very noticeably, and the third group impressively outperformed the first in terms of results.

Improves reading skills

Very often, people refer to a 1991 study that examined the reading skills of 53 high school students in a chess program. The results were assessed and compared with the results of those children who did not play chess. They clearly showed that playing chess significantly improves reading skills.

Improves concentration

Chess experts may look like absent-minded, slightly strange scientists, but the truth is that those grimaces they make during the game are the result of the extreme concentration required game process. And it is concentration that you can improve by playing chess. If you get distracted or think about something else even for a moment, it can lead to you losing the game, since your opponent is not obliged to report to you exactly how he played. A large number of studies around the world have time and again confirmed that the ability to concentrate improves through playing chess.

Promotes dendrite growth

Dendrites are tree-like nerve branches that conduct signals from nerve cells to the neurons to which they are attached. You can think of them as antennas that pick up signals from all the nerve cells in your body. The more of these antennas you have, the more efficiently you can receive signals. Learning new things, such as playing chess, allows dendrites to grow. However, growth doesn't stop once you master the game. After that, you can compete with other people all the time, and each fight will be different - which is why chess is an ideal way to generate dendrites.

If teenagers play chess, it may even save their lives. One of the last parts of the brain to develop is the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain responsible for planning, judgment, self-control. Thus, even from a scientific point of view, teenagers are immature until they develop this part of the brain. Strategy games activities such as chess can speed up the development of the prefrontal cortex and help make better decisions in all areas of life. And this, in turn, quite possibly, will prevent the commission of stupid and risky acts, which are most often associated with adolescence.

There is no longer any doubt that chess has a beneficial effect on the development of mental abilities. The benefits of chess in the development of children and adults have been proven repeatedly by many studies and experiments. The influence of chess on intelligence studied in theory and confirmed in practice.

When teaching children and adolescents influence of chess on their intelligence is of key importance not only in development, but also in the formation of a new consciousness. Young people who are open to learning chess begin to think logically, develop analytical abilities, get used to thinking strategically, and train their memory. For adults, chess helps them maintain their mental capacity in good shape, allow you to hone previously acquired skills.

One of the key skills that chess provides is the ability to think consistently. Everything that happens on the board during the game is not an accident, and victory in a duel is given to those who know how to think through their moves, and do not just play at random. In this plan influence of chess on intelligence obviously. During the game, chess players develop comparative mental analysis, which is one of the main tools good player. In addition, memory is trained, the ability to see differences in similar situations and similarities in different ones. Since chess is a creative game rather than a mathematical one, the essence of such skills is by no means in memorizing all possible combinations and moves. The influence of chess on the human brain in this case is manifested in the development of spatial intelligence rather than in the training of RAM.

Chess teaches you to think. And this ability will later manifest itself in both children and adults in various fields of activity. The influence of chess on intelligence a person gives results not only in the game, but also outside it. Having acquired the skill of thinking independently and seeing the results of your actions in advance will certainly be useful not only in a chess match. Teaching children to play chess has a beneficial effect on their performance in school. It is not for nothing that the question of introducing chess into the school curriculum as a compulsory lesson is increasingly being raised. The influence of chess on intelligence Particularly strong at an early age, it is schoolchildren who can benefit most from this sport.

For many years, research and experiments were carried out to verify the practical benefits of chess. Thus, psychologists Alfred Binet and Petr Rudik, studying the benefits of chess for the brain, reliably convinced and proved that chess players develop not mechanical memorization, but logical and analytical thinking. The influence of chess on intelligence and mental abilities in general are still studied to this day. So, in last years doctors took up chess as a tool in the fight against a serious illness - Alzheimer's disease. This disease, according to scientists, can be defeated by maintaining active mental activity for as long as possible. As a disease prevention, chess is an ideal tool because it helps to activate cognitive functions, develop memory, attention and areas of the brain responsible for decision making.

The influence of chess on intelligence will certainly have a beneficial effect at any age. Whenever you choose the path of a chess player, it will bring worthy results.

Research by Michigan State University researchers has shown that intelligence, and not just tireless practice, is a significant determinant of chess skill. In this way, the researchers have provided compelling evidence linking cognitive ability to skill, and appear to have solved one of the most debated problems in psychology, disproving the theory that experience is based solely on intensive training.

“Chess is probably the most studied area of ​​research in knowledge and experience, but the evidence for the relationship between chess skill and cognitive ability is mixed,” says lead author of the University of Michigan study Alexander Burgoyne: “We analyzed half a century of research on intelligence and chess skill and found that cognitive ability is a significant determinant of individual differences in chess performance."

"When it comes to experience, training and practice are certainly part of the puzzle," says University of Michigan psychology professor Hambrick. "However, this study shows that for chess, at least, intelligence is another piece of the puzzle."

For an in-depth study known as a meta-analysis, the researchers reviewed 2,300 scientific articles on chess skills, specifically targeting studies that included assessments of cognitive ability (such as IQ assessments) and objective chess skills (such as ELO ratings). , which rates players based on game performance). The final sample included 19 studies involving approximately 1,800 participants.

"The meta-analysis represents the first attempt by researchers to systematically examine the best available evidence about the relationship between intelligence and chess skills," says Burgoyne, a graduate student in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience program at the University of Michigan.

The study found that intelligence was associated with chess-playing skill in the general sample, but especially among young chess players and people with low levels of skill at the game. At the same time, the players top level have different levels of intelligence, but almost all of them are quite smart people.

Hambrick explains this: "Imagine that a genius can become a skilled chess player relatively easily, while a person of average intelligence may take longer to do so. So the idea is that if you train harder, you gain more skill and knowledge about game, you can bypass cognitive limitations." This may be true for chess, he adds, but not for all activities.