ChessTrek Books

Chess for Success

The following was taken from the book Chess for Success by International Chess Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, and provides a brief summary of the Chess in Education Research.

A chess phenomenon is slowly spreading to schools all around the country. In classrooms where it has taken hold, educators are reporting astounding results. After learning how to play chess, kids who once showed little interest in getting a good education are not only turning their grades, and lives, around, they are excelling. Inner-city schools now sport huge chess trophies won by their students at National Championships. These same kids are going on to college at a rate far exceeding expectations, with some graduating from universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. How and why chess has the power to allow students to achieve these remarkable outcomes is the subject of this book.

Numerous studies have detailed the benefits of playing chess. The list reads like a dream for parents and educators.

Chess: develops logical thinking; sharpens problem-solving skills; improves concentration and focus; enhances imagination and creativity; develops the capacity to foresee the consequences of one's actions; promotes independence and a sense of responsibility; hones memory; heightens self-esteem; reinforces the concept of deferred gratification and much more!

The first study of note to focus on chess and aptitude in young people was conducted during the 1973-74 school year by Dr. Albert Frank at the Lisanga School in Kisangani, Zaire. Taking a group of ninety-two students between the ages of sixteen and eighteen from a fourth-year humanities class, Dr. Frank randomly split the group in half (experimental and control) and gave them a battery of aptitude tests. The experimental group was then taught chess for two hours each week with optional play after school and during vacations.

After one year of chess study, the students participating in the chess course showed a marked improvement on their numerical and verbal aptitudes. This held true not only for the better chess players, but for the chess group as a whole.

Another experiment was conducted during the 1974-76 school years by Johan Christiaen at the Assenede Municipal School in Gent, Belgium. Forty fifth-grade students were split randomly into two groups and tested, the most important being Piaget's tests for cognitive development. The experimental group received forty-two one-hour chess lessons.

When the kids were retested at the end of sixth grade, those who had taken chess were significantly ahead in intellectual maturation of their non-chess-playing counter parts. The transition from Piaget's concrete level (stage three) to his formal level (stage four), where children begin deducing and hypothesizing by using more complex logic and judgment, was far accelerated in the chess-playing kids. The study's dramatic findings compelled many scientists to call for more studies to confirm and broaden the results.

The first important follow-up study was conducted over a four-year period (1979 to 1983) by Dr. Robert Ferguson using mentally gifted seventh- though ninth-grade students from the Bradford Area School District in Bradford, Pennsylvania. A pretest was conducted on the students to determine their levels in two key areas: critical thinking and creativity. The students were asked to choose their own interests; fifteen chose chess, while the rest chose various other activities, including computers. Each group met once a week for thirty-two weeks; in total, each group spent sixty to sixty-four hours on their preferred activity.

As in the previous studies, the chess group significantly outperformed the non-chess groups on the post-tests, not just once, but for four years in a row. While the increase in critical thinking had been expected, it was the striking difference in three areas of creativity - fluency, flexibility, and, in particular, originality - that was most remarkable. The limited student sampling and the already high performance level of the children left the experimenter seeking broader confirmation.

It wasn't long in coming. In 1984, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) reported the results of a project conducted in Venezuela by the Ministry for the Development of Intelligence that included 4,226 second-grade students. The Venezuela experiment, Learning to Think Project, tested whether chess can be used to develop intelligence of children as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. The experiment showed an increase of intelligence quotient (IQ) in both male and female students as well as across all socioeconomic levels. Upon seeing the results, celebrated behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner wrote, "There is no doubt that this project in its total form will be considered as one of the greatest social experiments of this century."

The study had a far-reaching effect. FIDE reported a huge increase in worldwide scholastic chess, with as many as thirty countries implementing chess in the curriculum of thousands of schools. A Canadian study in 1992 confirmed the Venezuelan findings when a group of first-grade chess students significantly outperformed their peers in math, both in problem solving and comprehension. In addition, young students taking part in a two-year chess study in Moldavia showed marked improvement in memory, organizational skills, fantasy, and imagination, according to the country's Education Ministry.

In 1986, the American Chess foundation (ACF, later renamed Chess in Schools), under the leadership of the late philanthropist Faneuil Adams Jr., began sending chess instructors into various public schools throughout New York City. The success of the program in the first five years, prompted the ACF to commission a study under the authorship of Dr. Stuart Margulies. Considering the emphasis placed on reading scores, the ACF decided to revisit the Zaire results by studying what effect playing chess might have on literacy in its student population.

Fifty-three elementary students in the chess program from Roberto Clemente Elementary School in the Bronx, New York, were tested and their results compared to a control group of 1,118 nonparticipants. The outcome was a watershed moment in chess education: The chess students showed such considerable gains that even the author of the study was surprised.

In 1999, Dr. Marguiles and colleague Dr. Kathleen Speeth, supported by Chess in Schools, created an original study to test the effect of chess instruction on emotional intelligence, the importance of which has long been championed by multiple intelligence theorist Howard Gardner as critical to success in the classroom. The factors assessed were self-confidence, empathic respect for others, mood management, frustration tolerance, and sustained efforts to achieve personal goals. An experimental group of sixty fifth-grade students, evenly split between boys and girls, and a control group of the same composition were evaluated by three independent scorers. In every single category, the chess-playing students, with 91.4 percent of their responses being scored as emotionally intelligent, outstripped the non-chess-playing ones, who scored 64.4 percent overall. The greatest differentiator was on the topic of respect for others: The chess students showed a whopping 42 percent difference in their scores.

These results have been borne out in schools. Educators at Roberto Clemente report that chess has improved not only academic scores but social performance as well. "The effects have been remarkable," says one teacher. "Not only have the reading and math skills of these children soared, their ability to socialize has increased substantially, too. Our studies have shown that incidents of suspension and outside altercations have decreased by at least 60 percent since these children became interested in chess."

Other less stringent studies and thousands of individual stories have borne out the conclusions of these studies. Connie Wingate, principal of P.S. 123 in New York, may have said it best: "This is wonderful! This is marvelous! This is stupendous! It's the finest thing that ever happened to this school...It has been an absolute plus for the students who were directly involved as well as for the rest of the school...More than anything else, chess makes a difference...what it has done for these children is simply beyond anything that I can describe." With such an enormous body of empirical and anecdoctal support, it's easy to see why many educators around the country have embraced chess as a primary enrichment activity for their students.

Chess in Education Research Summary

In 1925 Chess Grandmasters were studied to determine the underlying factors of chess talent. The researchers determined that high achievement in chess is based on exceptional visual memory, combination power, speed of calculation, power of concentration, and logical thinking (Djakow, Petrowski and Rudik)

Researchers have felt that chess not only demands these characteristics but also develops them. John Artise in Chess and Education states: "Visual stimuli tend to improve memory more than any other stimuli; ... chess is definitely an excellent memory exerciser the effects of which are transferable to other subjects where memory is necessary." The following studies offer some hard evidence to support the claims of Artise and others.

The Zaire study, Chess and Aptitudes, was conducted by Dr. Albert Frank at the Uni Protestant School (now Lisanga School) in Kisangani, Zaire. The experiment was conducted during the 1973-74 school year. Ninety-two (92) students, 16-18 years of age, were selected from the fourth year humanity's class and distributed at random into two groups (experimental and control) of 46 students each. All of the students were given a battery of tests which included the Primary Mental Abilities test (PMA) in the French adaptation, the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT), the General Aptitudes Test Battery (GATB), and a Rohrschach test. The tests were administered to all of the students both before and after the school year, except for the DAT which was administered only before the school year and the Rohrschach which was given only after the school year. At the end of the first semester, a partial retesting was made. The experimental group was given a required chess course of two hours each week with optional play after school and during vacations.

The study was intended to confirm two hypotheses about the effect of various abilities on chess skill and also about the influence of learning chess on the increase of certain abilities.

Dr. Frank wanted to find out whether the ability to learn chess is a function of:

1. spatial aptitude
2. perceptive speed
3. reasoning
4. creativity
5. general intelligence

To play chess well must certainly involve a high level of one or more of those abilities.

Secondly Dr. Frank wondered whether learning chess can influence the development of abilities in one or more of the above five types. To what extent does chess playing contribute to the development of certain abilities? If it can be proved that it does, then the introduction of chess into the programs of secondary schools would be recommended, as it already has been in some countries. This hypothesis had not been the subject of any experimental study up to that time.

The first hypothesis would be confirmed by examining the results of the experimental group on the tests given at the beginning of the school term and correlating them with the level of chess skill attained. The second hypothesis would be proven by seeing whether significant differences exist between the results of the experimental group and the results of the control group in the aptitude tests at the end of the study.

The first hypothesis was confirmed. There was a significant correlation between the ability to play chess well, and spatial, numerical, administrative-directional, and paper work abilities. Other correlations obtained were all positive, but only the above were significantly so. This finding tends to show that ability in chess is not due to the presence in an individual of only one or two abilities but that a large number of aptitudes all work together in chess. Chess utilizes all the abilities of an individual.

The second hypothesis was confirmed for two aptitudes. It was found that learning chess had a positive influence on the development of both numerical and verbal aptitudes. The authors of the study were puzzled by the latter result. They wondered how playing chess could influence the development of verbal ability.

As mentioned earlier, this second hypothesis had not been the subject of previous experimental study. After only one year of chess study, the students participating in the chess course showed a marked development of their verbal and numerical aptitudes. This positive development was true for the majority of the chess students - not just for the better players! From this it is possible to conclude that the introduction of chess as a regular elective course in our high schools would be of positive benefit.