Brain-training schools insist their methods can help children improve their grades, but not all experts and parents are convinced. Photo: IC

Many Chinese have been astonished by the seemingly impossible feats of recall performed on Jiangsu Satellite TV's hit reality show Super Brain. In one episode of the program, a contestant was able to memorize the thumbprints of 120 audience members, giving their names by just glancing at the thumbprints. Another contestant could look at the spots on a dog and identify it from a group of 101 dogs whose names he had memorized. Even a 5-year-old child dazzled audiences by solving complex math problems in his head.

But Chen Jingqiu, 16, isn't impressed by contestants on Super Brain because he knows many of their secrets. Chen has taken memorization courses at a brain-training school in Wuhan, Hubei Province, and understands the techniques he claims anyone can use to achieve the same results.

Inspired by the hype of Super Brain and a desire to give their children an academic edge, a growing number of parents are enrolling their kids in brain-training schools across the country. Many of the schools offer anecdotal evidence of success, but experts say there is no scientific proof that such techniques actually help students' grades.

Students study memorization methods during a training camp organized by Oriental Dragon Education. Photo: Courtesy of Oriental Dragon Education

Methods of memorization

Jingqiu's mother, surnamed Zhu, became interested in improving her son's memory while he was still an infant. Jingqiu enrolled at a brain-training school in November 2013, where he has learned different methods of memorization for numbers, English words and historical facts.

Word association and mind maps are just a couple of the methods he has mastered. The former links words with specific pictures to make them easier to memorize. Longer words are split into several parts to form a sentence.

For example, the word "chrysanthemum" is divided into five parts: "cry," "h," "san," "the" and "mum." "H" is used to represent by chair because of the letter's shape; "san" is the pinyin of "three" in Chinese; "the" serves as a definite article; and "cry" and "mum" retain their original meanings in English. The sentence for "chrysanthemum" therefore is: "A mother cries on a chair for three hours, holding a juhua(chrysanthemum) in her hand."

Yan Wenhua, a professor of psychology at East China Normal University, believes that certain training techniques can improve memory and learning abilities."Research shows that memories of images last longer than language," said Yan.

Zhu said she supports her son's studies at the brain-training school provided that memorization methods improve his confidence and make learning more fun.

Photo: IC

Link to academic performance

The memory palace technique, also known as the Method of Ioci, was introduced to China 600 years ago by Matteo Ricci (1552-1616), an Italian Jesuit missionary who taught young Confucian scholars memorization methods. 

"The memorization techniques we teach are variations on methods from ancient Greece, including the memory palace," said Yuan Wenkai, founder of the Wuhan-based Oriental Dragon Education chain of schools.

Yuan uses anecdotes of successful students to promote his school, which offers refunds to students who fail achieve extraordinary results.

In August 2009, 8-year-old Fu Boyu participated in an eight-day memory training camp held by New Trend Education, a brain-training school in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.

By using methods he learned in the class, Boyu can recite a 300-character passage in a Chinese textbook after reading it just twice or thrice, said Yuan.

Boyu, who is in the third grade, can read English at a fifth-grade level.

He topped his grade in an end-of-semester exam last year.

Yuan and Boyu's parents aren't the only ones who attribute the young boy's impressive academic performance to his brain-power training.

New Trend Education has conducted studies that claim memory training can boost learning abilities. 

Shen Ming, a senior teacher at New Trend Education, said their research found that new information can be retained in the long-term memory if it can be linked to existing knowledge by association or imagery. 

"I performed better in the reading and writing parts of my Chinese and English exams after 20 training sessions," said Jingqiu, whose favored technique is diagrams used to visually outline information better known as mind maps.

"Memorizing English words and definitions with brain-training methods has become fun, which has increased my efficiency and confidence," added Jingqiu.   

A teacher demonstrates how a mind map works to students at an Oriental Dragon Education school in Wuhan, Hubei Province.Photo: Courtesy of Oriental Dragon Education

Gimmick appeal 

Although some brain-training schools tout their memorization methods as effective ways to improve students' grades, not everyone is satisfied with the results.

A mother of a 10-year-old girl surnamed Yu, who attends at a brain-training school in Wuhan, said that at an open class she and other parents tested their children by giving them a total of 40 random numbers to memorize.

Many students successfully repeated the numbers in ascending and descending order after five minutes' preparation, which Yu's mother described as "amazing." 

But when talking about the link between improved memorization and academic studies, she said her daughter's English hadn't improved as much as expected.

"She had a high score in Chinese, but I don't know whether it can be attributed to the memory training," the mother said.

Zhao Nong, a mother of an 8-year-old boy at an international school in Beijing, said students don't require advanced memorization methods to excel. "My son has a very good memory. I don't think there is any need for him to undertake such training," said Zhao.

Skeptical experts

None of the experts interviewed by Metropolitan endorsed memory training as a way to improve children's intelligence or academic performance. Zhang Yuanjing, director of China's Children Industry Research Center, said children must devote their focus and attention for memorization to be effective. "The ability to memorize is only an external indicator that requires attention and understanding to be effective," Zhang said.

Yan said she doubts how many of these methods can actually be remembered and used in future. "I question whether children enjoy learning them," she said.

Zuo Xinian, a research fellow at the Institute of Psychology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that memorization methods learned at brain-training schools will only help students retain information in the short term, and won't play a decisive role in their performance.

"I don't think parents should go as far as to encourage their children to develop one cognitive skill over another. They should give children more freedom to develop talents in areas of interest," said Zuo.

Although Yu readily admits her memory isn't of the same caliber as Super Brain contestants, the 10-year-old can recite pi to 100 digits by using imagery associated with numbers to tell a story - the same technique she relies on to build her English and Chinese vocabularies.

Tang Liyue contributed to this story