Pièce touchée!: The relationship between chess-playing experience and inhibition

Abstract

Background. Studies have shown that teaching children and youths chess can contribute to their academic achievements and improve their cognitive abilities. Recent studies further indicate the transfer of chess skills to subjects such as mathematics. However, the literature does not address the possible benefits of chess to link between inhibition and ADHD, a disorder in the operational executive functioning system, whenwith chess ias a game that requires various cognitive abilities, and is considered dependent on executive operational functioning abilities and especially inhibition. Objective. To investigate whether chess experience relates to inhibitory control in teenagers with and without ADHD. Design. Participants completed a visual-spatial task designed for the purpose of the study, comprising two conditions: In the "free" condition, participants were allowed to test different solutions before choosing the answer, whereas in the "touch-move" condition they were asked to choose the answer without any physical attempts. Participants also completed "Go/No-go" tasks. Results. The new task was found to be partially effective as only the "touchmove" condition produced group differences, with chess players performing better than non-chess players, regardless of diagnosis. The No-go task performance analysis also showed a significant main effect for chess training, and a significant interaction among chess, ADHD, and medicine use. Conclusion. Although not establishing causality, these results indicate that chess players were less impulsive than non-chess players, regardless of diagnosis.