However addicted you may become playing them, concentration games help people improve memory and boost their problem-solving abilities, new research revealed. In other words, the more concentration games you play, the better your ability to solve problem gets.

Previous studies asserted that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve problems without having any relevant previous experience - a process named fluid intelligence by psychologist – is innate and cannot be taught. According to researchers, fluid intelligence is considered one of the most important factors in learning and is linked to academic and professional success.

The new study is the first to describe a method for improving this skill.

“Intelligence has always been considered principally an immutable inherited trait. Our results show you can increase your intelligence with appropriate training,” said Susanne M. Jaeggi, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Michigan and co-author of the paper, according to the New York Times.

Dr. Jaeggi and her colleagues recruited 70 participants (average age 26) from the University of Bern in Switzerland. About half of them served as controls. The other half completed a standard test for fluid intelligence and then performed a series of training exercises designed to improve their working memory. The researchers divided the volunteers into four groups; each group repeated the exercises over a different number of days.

Tests included hearing letters of the alphabet, and recalling whether it was the same as one heard three steps earlier, and also being shown patterned squares and asked to match them with ones which had appeared previously.

The half-hour exercises were repeated daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days respectively. Then the researchers compared the participants’ abilities with those who had not been subjected to the tests.

"The difference was most pronounced in those who had been slower to start with, but the mental ability of everyone who had taken part improved," said Professor Walter Perrig of the University of Bern, who carried out the study with colleagues from the University of Michigan.

"We demonstrate that the extent of gain in intelligence critically depends on the amount of training: the more training, the more improvement in [fluid intelligence]," the study concluded.

Moreover, the participants’ scores improved by as much as 40 percent on standardized tests of problem solving that involve finding the right pattern to finish an incomplete drawing. Overall, the trained participants performed twice as well on problem-solving tests as the participants who did not participate in the memory exercises, the study said.

According to the researchers, the fact that fluid intelligence can be improved through daily training opens a wide range of applications in education.

The study’s findings appeared in the April 28 edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.