Space fortress or the revised space fortress game is a cognitive game that was originally developed by cognitive psychologists at the University of Illinois, as a tool to study learning and training strategies . Notably, it is one of the few cognitive training tools that has shown transfer of training to real-world performance.
Flight students that trained on Space Fortress performed better on a battery of real-world flight tests and were more likely to be selected to pursue pilot training compared to a no-training control group. Studies have also found that learning Space Fortress with a strategy that involves flexibly shifting attention to different aspects of the game results in improved learning. Thus, the Space Fortress game serves as a great tool for studying how the brain acquires new, complex skills, and how the trained ability can extend to new contexts
In an interview, professor Daniel Gopher who was involved in the project said
we showed that 10 hours of training for flight cadets, in an attention trainer instantiated as a computer game-Space Fortress- resulted in 30% improvement in their flight performance
Try out the space fortress game online on the brainturk.com website or on our mobile app .