In accordance with the outcomes from a number of reports, there are cognitive and academic improvements derived from chess learning and chess playing. This evidence, however, endures three key limitations: (a) ignoring theoretical premises about the concept of transfer, (b) several shortcomings regarding ideal experiment guidelines, and (c) an uncritical faith in null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) statistical analyses. The present review scrutinized the NHST outcomes from 45 studies describing chess instruction interventions (n = 12,705) in nineteen countries that targeted cognitive ability (100 tests) and academic performance (108 tests), with a mean Hedge’s effect size g = 572 (95% CI = [0.127, 1.062]). There was a lower average statistical power, a higher proportion of false positive outcomes, larger publication biases, and lower replication rates for the studies in the academic performance domain than in the cognitive ability domain. These findings raised reasonable concerns over the evidence about the benefits of chess instruction, which was particularly problematic regarding academic achievement outcomes. Chess should perhaps be regularly taught, however, regardless of whether it has a direct impact or not in cognitive abilities and academic performance, because these are far transfer targets. The more likely impact of chess on near transfer outcomes from higher quality studies remains at present unexplored.

根据一些报告的结果，国际象棋学习和下棋带来了认知和学术上的改善。然而，该证据存在三个主要限制：(a) 忽略了关于转移概念的理论前提，(b) 关于理想实验指南的几个缺点，以及 (c) 对零假设显着性检验 (NHST) 统计分析的不加批判的信念。本综述仔细审查了 NHST 的结果，该研究来自 19 个国家的 45 项描述国际象棋教学干预（n = 12,705）的研究，这些研究针对认知能力（100 次测试）和学习成绩（108 次测试），平均 Hedge 效应大小为g= 572 (95% CI = [0.127, 1.062])。与认知能力领域相比，学术表现领域的研究平均统计功效较低，假阳性结果比例较高，发表偏倚较大，复制率较低。这些发现引起了对国际象棋教学益处的证据的合理担忧，这在学业成绩方面尤其成问题。然而，国际象棋或许应该定期教授，无论它是否对认知能力和学业成绩有直接影响，因为这些都是远距离转移目标。国际象棋对高质量研究的近转移结果的更可能影响目前仍未探索。