There are efforts to use the game of

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

as a tool to aid the intellectual development of young people. Chess is significant in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence ( AI) studies, because it represents the domain in which expert performance has been most intensively studied and measured. Research has shown that chess can have a positive impact on meta-cognitive ability and mathematical problem-solving in children, which is why several local governments, schools, and student organizations all over the world are implementing chess programs. Adult studies however show mixed results and don't conclude a positive correlation between Chess as mental training and cognitive function. New York-based Chess-In-The-Schools, Inc. has been active in the public school system in the city since 1986. It currently reaches more than 30,000 students annually. America's Foundation for Chess has initiated programs in partnership with local school districts in several U.S. cities, including Seattle, San Diego, Philadelphia, and Tampa. The Chess'n Math Association promotes chess at the scholastic level in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Chess for Success is a program for at-risk schools in Oregon. Since 1991, the U.S. Chess Center in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

teaches chess to children, especially those in the

inner city The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists some ...

, "as a means of improving their academic and social skills." There are a number of

experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome oc ...

s that suggest that learning and playing chess aids the mind. The Grandmaster Eugene Torre Chess Institute in the Philippines, the

United States Chess Federation The United States Chess Federation (also known as US Chess or USCF) is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in FIDE, the World Chess Federation. US Chess administers the official national rating ...

's chess

research Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

bibliography, and English educational consultant

Tony Buzan Anthony Peter "Tony" Buzan (; 2 June 1942 – 13 April 2019) was an English author and educational consultant. Buzan popularised the idea of mental literacy, radiant thinking, and a technique called mind mapping, inspired by techniques used by ...

's Brain Foundation, among others, continuously collect such experimental results. The advent of chess software that automatically record and analyze the moves of each player in each game and can tirelessly play with human players of various levels, further helped in giving new directions to experimental designs on chess as mental training.

History

As early as 1779chesscafe.com
(pdf): ''„It is said that Franklin wrote the essay for the amusement of Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy in 1779 during his stay in France.“''

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...

, in his article ''

The morals of chess "The Morals of Chess" is an essay on chess by the American intellectual Benjamin Franklin, which was first published in the ''Columbian Magazine'' in December 1786. Franklin, who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, played chess ...

'', advocated such a view, saying:

Alfred Binet Alfred Binet (; 8 July 1857 – 18 October 1911), born Alfredo Binetti, was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet–Simon test. In 1904, the French Ministry of Education asked psychologist Alfred Binet to ...

demonstrated in the late 19th century that good chess players have superior

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

and imagination.

Adriaan de Groot Adrianus Dingeman (Adriaan) de Groot ( Santpoort, 26 October 1914 – Schiermonnikoog, 14 August 2006) was a Dutch chess master and psychologist, who conducted some of the most famous chess experiments of all time in the 1940s-60. In 1946 h ...

concurred with Alfred Binet that visual memory and visual perception are important attributors and that problem-solving ability is of paramount importance. Thus, since 1972, at the collegiate level, the

University of Texas at Dallas The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD or UT Dallas) is a public research university in Richardson, Texas. It is one of the largest public universities in the Dallas area and the northernmost institution of the University of Texas system. It w ...

and the

University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral, ...

both recruit chessplayer-scholars and run scholastic outreach programs in their respective communities.

References

{{Reflist

External links

W. G. Chase, H. A. Simon: ''Perception in Chess'' (1973)

USCF Chess Research Bibliography

Hampton University Dean finds chess, business make a smart match Artificial intelligence Cognitive training Mathematical chess problems