For a long time, our platform at What’s Your IQ? focused mainly on measuring cognitive performance through IQ-style assessments.
But over time, one question kept appearing:
“Can cognitive abilities actually be improved?”
That question pushed us into a completely different direction.
Instead of only measuring performance, we decided to start building tools for training it too.
So we recently launched a full cognitive training section:
https://whats-your-iq.com/en/training
Why We Built This
A lot of “brain training” platforms feel disconnected from actual cognitive domains.
Many are just casual mini-games with vague claims attached to them.
We wanted to approach things differently.
Instead of creating generic entertainment games, we tried to organize training around specific cognitive functions commonly associated with areas like:
- working memory
- attentional control
- processing speed
- cognitive flexibility
- pattern recognition
- verbal retrieval
- spatial reasoning
The goal was not to promise “becoming a genius”.
The goal was to create focused exercises targeting specific mental processes individually.
The Training Categories
We currently added multiple training categories, each focused on different aspects of cognition.
Working Memory
This category focuses on the mental workspace used to temporarily hold and manipulate information.
Examples include:
- remembering sequences
- updating information in real time
- tracking changing patterns
- mentally juggling multiple variables
Working memory is heavily connected to reasoning, focus, and problem solving.
Attention
Attention is one of the most underestimated cognitive abilities.
A huge percentage of cognitive mistakes are not caused by low intelligence, but by:
- distraction
- impulsive responses
- reduced vigilance
- inability to filter irrelevant stimuli
The attention exercises focus on selective attention, inhibitory control, and sustained focus under repetition.
Memory
This section focuses more directly on recall capacity.
Different exercises target:
- short-term memory
- visual memory
- associative memory
- sequence retention
- rapid recall
We tried to avoid turning this into simple memorization repetition and instead focused more on dynamic recall tasks.
Processing Speed
Processing speed affects almost everything else cognitively.
Even strong reasoning becomes bottlenecked if information processing itself is slow.
This section includes tasks related to:
- rapid recognition
- mental arithmetic
- reaction timing
- information throughput
The interesting part is that improvements here often feel immediately noticeable during everyday activities.
Focus & Flexibility
One cognitive skill people rarely train directly is task switching.
This category focuses on:
- shifting between mental rules
- adapting quickly
- reducing switching costs
- maintaining accuracy during cognitive transitions
It becomes surprisingly difficult once speed pressure is added.
Reading Speed (RSVP)
This one became one of the most interesting additions.
We implemented RSVP-style reading training.
RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) works by presenting words sequentially in a fixed location instead of requiring constant eye movement across lines.
The idea is to reduce saccadic movement overhead and improve reading throughput.
A lot of people report that this mode feels strange initially, but becomes surprisingly efficient after adaptation.
Spatial Reasoning
Spatial manipulation is a major component of many STEM-related cognitive tasks.
This category focuses on:
- mental rotation
- shape manipulation
- spatial visualization
- geometric reasoning
These tasks are especially interesting because they feel very different from verbal or memory-based exercises.
Pattern Recognition
Pattern extraction is at the core of reasoning itself.
This section focuses on identifying:
- abstract rules
- sequence logic
- transformations
- hidden structures
A huge portion of fluid reasoning depends on this ability.
Verbal
The verbal section focuses less on “knowledge” and more on retrieval efficiency.
Examples include:
- word association speed
- semantic access
- verbal fluency
- linguistic processing
People often underestimate how computationally demanding rapid language retrieval actually is.
One Important Distinction
We see these exercises as training tools, not definitive measures of intelligence.
That distinction matters.
Getting better at a task does not automatically mean overall intelligence increased equally across every domain.
At the same time, cognitive systems are not completely fixed either.
Reality is probably somewhere in the middle:
- some gains are task-specific
- some gains transfer partially
- some cognitive abilities are more trainable than others
We are more interested in exploring that question honestly rather than making exaggerated marketing claims.
What We’re Interested In
One of the most fascinating things while building this was seeing how different cognitive profiles emerge.
Some users are extremely fast but inaccurate.
Others have strong memory but weaker flexibility.
Some dominate verbal tasks while struggling heavily with spatial reasoning.
Human cognition is far more uneven and specialized than people often assume.
Technical Direction
The platform is still evolving heavily.
Some things we are experimenting with:
- adaptive difficulty systems
- performance analytics
- long-term progression tracking
- cognitive profiling
- fatigue detection
- personalized training paths
- expanded reaction-time calibration
- additional reasoning categories
We are also interested in separating:
- pure practice effects
- genuine adaptation
- strategy optimization
- processing improvements
Which is much harder than it initially sounds.
The Bigger Goal
Long term, we want the platform to become more than just an IQ score website.
We want it to become a broader cognitive performance platform.
Not just:
“What is your score?”
But also:
“How does your mind operate?”
“Where are your strengths?”
“What can improve?”
“What happens over time?”
That is a much more interesting problem.
Try It Yourself
You can explore the training section here:
🧠 https://whats-your-iq.com/en/training
Would genuinely be interested to hear:
- which categories feel hardest
- whether people notice transfer effects
- which cognitive domains feel most trainable
- and whether repeated practice changes anything meaningful long term
Human cognition is still one of the most fascinating systems we interact with daily while barely understanding.
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