By KATY MAYFIELD – Staff Writer
The app Elevate provides users with a fun and attractive way to improve their logical skills.
The app Elevate by Elevate, Inc. is a new spin on the ever-growing brain-training app genre. In many apps of a similar mission, users go through activities which seem more like games than neurological exercises. This is the case for the hugely popular app Lumosity, in which users tap on birds, distinguish between shapes, and direct fish all in the hopes of “transforming science into delightful games” as their website states.
Not only do such games become tedious, but some studies have proven they do not improve cranial acuity. Though entertaining, they merely improve skills for the game played, rather than increasing cognitive ability in the targeted area.
There’s little scientific study surrounding The App Store’s 2014 App of the Year, which was released in May 2014 and is now available for both Apple and Android, but it doesn’t focus on seemingly arbitrary brain games.
Instead, Elevate utilizes dozens of exercises related to real-world skills such as “estimation”, “eloquence”, and “brevity”. In these timed games, users order products by price, accounting for taxes and discounts; list substitutes and synonyms for a given word based on tone to improve eloquence in conversation; and remove superfluous phrases from sentences, respectively.
At the end of each game, Elevate shows which parts of the brain were active during the game, and even tracks the user’s day-by-day progress in each area, giving a score out of 5,000 for each skill set: speaking, writing, reading, listening and math. In addition, it sets users up with three new games a day and tracks their usage by day, giving “awards” for multi-day playing streaks.
Additionally, Elevate’s beautifully colorful and modern interface heightens the gaming experience and keeps the app interesting.
Though the evidence surrounding the effectiveness of “brain-training” apps is dubious, Elevate is a must-play for anyone, from those looking for a little cognitive stimulation to users in search of a slightly more educational alternative to aa.
