Posit Science recently put out a game called Word Wanderer where you make words, Scrabble style, to help your character move through a forest. It was both for entertainment value as well as brain exercise. I’m always interested in games as educational tools because that is how games started -they are ways for us to learn how to interact with others. So I contacted them for an interview. Steven Aldrich, CEO at Posit Science and his team were kind enough to give us some of their time.

[GDN] I’m a firm believer that games can educate as well as entertain. How did Posit Science come into being?
 
[SA] Founded in 2003 in San Francisco by renowned neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, Posit Science is the leader in bringing brain science from the lab to the people, improving their everyday lives.  We combine breakthrough research and a focus on great customer experiences to create products that are engaging and help users think faster, focus better and remember more. Our staff neuroscientists collaborate with more than 50 scientists from leading research institutions as well as engineers and product marketers to design, build and test our computer-based programs.  Posit Science products are now available online, through health, long term care and auto insurers, and from public television’s “The Brain Fitness Program” documentary.

[GDN] How does a firm go from making memory enhancement software to video games?

[SA] Our foray into the world of online games is two-fold: we want to attract casual gamers to the validated brain fitness category by showing them that some of the features that make games challenging and fun can actually be beneficial to the brain.  Secondly we want to educate people on what those features look like, how they work and how they can drive real and lasting brain change.

[GDN] With Word Wanderer you combine brain exercises and game mechanics, can you tell us a little about how that works?

[SA] Word Wanderer is like other word games with one key difference:  Word Wanderer utilizes intelligent adaptive measures to ensure that you train at your own personal ‘threshold’.  Word Wanderer adapts quickly to your skill level, so that you don’t waste too much time working at levels that are either impossibly challenging or trivially easy. It also slowly increases the difficulty of the game so that you’re typically training at threshold — the uppermost edge of your skill level. Training at threshold means that you are constantly working your brain. As soon as you master a task, the computer makes the task more difficult to encourage your brain to build stronger and more refined neural pathways.