Christopher Shaw Study
Link between bridge and improved test scores in children: A study by Dr Christopher Shaw
Do children who play bridge perform better on standardised tests than their non-playing counterparts? Dr. Christopher Shaw, a researcher in the US carried out a study in 2005 that shows the answer to that question is a definite “yes”.
Many bridge players have long believed that teaching kids bridge improves their critical thinking skills, but the evidence that it helped with school performance has been largely anecdotal. Shaw decided to take a more serious look at the impact that bridge has on test performance by school-age children.
In a 2005 study, Shaw examined six groups of fifth graders from public schools in Carlinville, Illinois who were of similar levels of academic ability. One group learned to play bridge as part of their maths instruction and the other five did not. All of the students had taken the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITSB) in September 2001 (before bridge instruction began)and then again in May 2003 (sixth grade) and May 2004 (seventh grade). The 15 students who learned to play bridge as fifth grades were mixed with the other students in sixth and seventh grades.
Performance in the ITSB increases as students get older. Educators and parents pay great attention to the improvement of scores from year to year. What Shaw discovered, however, was that the students who learned to play bridge had a greater average increase in their ITSB scores than their non-playing classmates.
The table below compares the average standard score (SS) of the bridge and non-bridge groups.
Why would learning to play bridge have such an effect? Shaw believes that the answer lies with inferential reasoning, a cognitive skill necessary to play the game. “Bridge is a game that develops inferential reasoning skills, which are very difficult to teach elementary students. These skills appear to be used in all five subject areas in middle school.”
With the help of system analyst, Terry Levan, who obtained a three year grant from the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) Educational Foundation, Shaw expanded his study to three sequential classes of fifth graders (2001-2003) taught by the same instructor. The 2001 group was taught bridge but the 2002 group was not. The 2003 group was also taught the game. Shaw examined each group’s results on the ITSB over a three year period. The first two tests were given 20 months apart; 32 months elapsed between the first and last test. The results are compared in the tables below:
The 2001 bridge students had higher test scores than the 2002 students at the end of 20 months and 32 months in four of the five subject areas. The language gain was less than the 2002 non-bridge students. The 2003 students out-gained the 2002 class in four of the five subject areas after 20 months (science scores were lower that the 2002 group) but exceeded the 2002 group in all areas after 32 months.