In Balanced Achievement’s iThrive series, we aim to present you with a variety of useful iOS and Android Apps that you can utilize to accelerate your personal growth and improve the quality of your life. We meticulously select innovative Apps that are designed to help individuals make the personal changes needed to move their lives in the direction of happiness, success & fulfillment. In this article, we look at the Lumosity Mobile App which offers users a fun way to keep their mental edge and improve their cognitive competencies.
iThrive App Profile:
Cost: Free Basic Version, Paid Premium Subscriptions
($11.99/monthly or $59.99/annually)
App Focus: Brain Training & Cognitive Enhancement
Lumosity Mobile Overview:
There almost certainly come a time in each of our lives, when we hangup our learning hat and exchange the label of student for a professional title that we keep with us for much, if not all, of our remaining time on earth. Not long after graduating college and settling into our new career, regardless of if it’s as an accountant, cook or veterinarian, we begin to adapt to our new role until we become conditioned to carry out our responsibilities like clockwork. Unfortunately, for all too many of us, the repetitive nature of work, in addition to having practically no free time because of family and social obligations, means we have few opportunities to stay mentally sharp and improve our cognitive functions. That is unless you’re using a powerful brain training App like Lumosity Mobile.
It was in 2007 when Kunal Sakar, Michael Scanlon, and David Drescher founded lumosity.com with the goal of providing the greater population the opportunity to enhance their cognitive capabilities, by playing fun computer games, without dedicating but a few minutes of their time each day.
Lost in Migration (Attention): While playing Lost in Migration, users are shown a flock of five birds on their screen that look as if they are flying together in a particular direction, except for the center bird which may or may not be flying in unisons with the other four. The ultimate goal of the game is to keep your attention focused on the center bird and swipe your smartphone in the direction it’s flying. In addition to the selective attention skills Lost In Migration was designed to improve, other Lumosity attention games focus on the capacities of field of view and divided attention.
Highway Hazard (Speed): The game Highway Hazard, which resembles an arcade racing game, puts users in control of a car and instructs them to move between three different lanes, by swiping their phone in different directions, so that they avoid collisions with other cars, tumbleweed and rough roads. By speeding the car up as users get better at the game, individuals are able to naturally improve their mental reaction speed. In addition to the information processing skills Highway Hazard was designed to improve, there are also speed games aimed at enhancing the mental capabilities of spatial orientation and visualization.
Robot Factory (Flexibility): While playing the game Robot Factory, which was designed to improve response inhibition or the ability to suppress inappropriate stimuli that interfere with accomplishing goals, users are instructed to build a variety of different robots, as fast as they can, by correctly selecting the parts that match their structure and ignoring the parts of other robots. In addition to response inhibition, Lumosity has also created flexibility games designed to improve task switching and verbal fluency skills.