Brain Training for Reading: What's Claimed vs What's Known

By Laura Lurns · Reviewed by Philip Weaver · Last reviewed 2026-10-05

What brain-training programs claim

This page covers brain-training programs. It does not cover reflex or balance programs.

Some programs promise better reading from an activity that is not reading. Check that claim before you pay for it. Some promise that memory drills, speed games or puzzles will improve schoolwork.

To us, brain change and better reading are different claims. Ask which one a program has shown.

What independent reviews found

Practice reaches the thing it is practice at. Simons and colleagues (2016) reviewed brain-training programs sold on the promise of wider gains. They found good evidence for the trained task, less for closely related tasks, and little for distant ones. They also found little evidence that these programs make daily thinking better. Researchers still argue about whether some limited carry-over happens.

Simons and colleagues also looked at one trial in older adults. In it, speed-of-processing training gave the largest gains. The trial showed little evidence that it improved other thinking tasks. Those were older adults, not children.

Melby-Lervåg, Redick and Hulme (2016) pooled the working-memory training studies. They found that people got better at working-memory tasks. Against a treated control, they found no convincing carry-over to word reading, reading comprehension or arithmetic.

Strong, Torgerson, Torgerson and Hulme (2011) pooled the controlled trials of Fast ForWord. It is a listening program sold for language and reading difficulties. They found no evidence it was effective for children's oral language or reading difficulties.

Reading improves with reading instruction.

When a gain is the expectation

Foroughi and colleagues (2016) posted two flyers. Some adults answered a flyer that promised brain training. After one hour of training, they improved on a reasoning test. Other adults answered a plain flyer and did the same hour. They showed no significant gain. That is a caution, not a method. A gain someone reports can be the expectation they came in with. It was measured in adults. This study tells us nothing about children.

The adults chose which flyer to answer. So the two groups may have differed in other ways too.

Questions to ask before you pay

Ask one question before you pay. Where is the independent evidence that the gains reached reading, attention or grades? Or did they only reach the game itself?

Ask who ran the study and who paid for it.

Our own programs

Our reading course is practice on reading and spelling words. It is not practice on a general brain skill. It does not teach comprehension, and it does not replace reading teaching.

We also offer work on skills such as listening and memory. It runs alongside reading, spelling or math instruction, not in place of it. Whether that work improves reading has not been shown. We do not claim that it does.

In no case do we claim a study's result for our program.

No study of any Learning Success program exists.

You can ask every question on this page of us too.

When to ask for help

Each of these is a reason to ask for help on its own.

• Little change, even with steady practice and good teaching.
• Reading well below what school expects.
• A teacher who raises a concern about reading.
• Extreme upset about reading.
• Complete avoidance of reading.
• Hopelessness about learning.
• Sadness or worry that lasts.
• Significant delays in speech, language or motor development.
• A skill that was there and has gone. Our position is that a lost skill goes to a doctor first, not a tutor.

If no skill has gone, start with the teacher. Say what you are seeing at home, and what you have tried. Beyond the teacher, the right person depends on what it turns out to be about. If the work is too hard, someone who works on that school skill. If worry or mood is the thing, someone who works with children's mental health. In our view, delays in speech, language or movement are worth raising with your child's doctor. In our view, if you are worried enough to ask, a professional evaluation is worth asking about.

Any talk of hurting themselves is a same-day call to your doctor or a crisis line.