9 GAMES TO DEVELOP INTELLIGENCE IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The games to develop intelligence are one of the best form to train the ability to think, understand, reason, assimilate and process information. Nowadays, it is scientifically proven that despite the genetic characteristics of each person, intelligence is a concept that can be developed if we enhance our mental work.

In addition, the development of intelligence can be done through any activity that motivates an effort of our mind. In this way, there are a wide variety of entertaining activities that can be very useful to increase our intellectual capacities.

10 Games to develop intelligence in children and adults

Acquisition of information

One of the most important aspects of intelligence is the ability it gives us to be able to acquire and store new information in our brain, to be wiser and have more knowledge.

However, the direction between intelligence and knowledge is not one directional, it is two-way.

That is to say: greater intelligence allows us to learn more easily, but greater wisdom also makes us more intelligent individuals.

In this way, the first game that I propose to develop intelligence is one that allows you to acquire information and knowledge.

There are many games that fulfill this purpose, such as the famous trivia game, but you can also create a game that fulfills these functions yourself.

Suggest to your group of friends that each of them write cards with questions about different aspects or knowledge they have. Once you have them done, put them all together and draw cards at random.

This game will allow you to share everyone's knowledge and acquire many interesting knowledge in a playful and entertaining way.

Hopefully, if one person in the group knows a lot about history they will have written questions related to that topic, if you are a doctor you have made interesting cards about medicine or if you are a movie fan you have asked questions about movies.

Arithmetic

Doing math problems is one of the most important activities for developing intelligence, yet they can often be boring and uninteresting.

However, mathematics can be an interesting game if it can be adequately adapted to a playful environment.

The game that I propose for this purpose will try to relate mathematical problems with creativity and speed of thought.

To play you have to make two teams and take place in a quiet place such as the living room or dining room of a house.

To begin, a team must leave the room where the game is being played. Meanwhile, the other team will stay in the room and have to formulate a math problem within a one minute time limit.

However, they will not be able to pose a mathematical problem in any way, but must use the elements present in the room to do it.

For example:

If in the dining room there is a cupboard with 8 glasses, a drawer with 20 forks and a table with 4 candles, the problem can be formulated as: multiply the forks and candles and divide it by the glasses.

After the minute is up, the other team will enter the room and the problem will be asked. In this case, the second team will have 3 minutes to solve it, looking for the objects mentioned in the problem and performing the mathematical action.

The example we have given is quite simple as it only has multiplication and division, however, mathematics offers endless opportunities.

The more creative and resourceful you are when posing the problem, the more difficult it will be for the other team.

Another very important aspect when defining intelligence is the language and the amount of vocabulary that a person has.

In addition, we rarely pay attention to our language or vocabulary, assuming that we already speak well enough and already know most of the words in our language perfectly.

However, this is not always the case, as language is a mental skill that can be constantly developed.

To improve your language, I suggest you carry out an exercise that allows you to increase your knowledge of words.

Each team should write a list of words on different small pieces of paper. It is preferable to write words that are less known or that are not used frequently in common language.

Once written, all the papers will be placed in a bowl. One participant in a team will draw a piece of paper and have to define the word, and the rest of the participants in their group will have to guess which word they are trying to describe.

Each time the group participants guess the word, the player who was defining will draw another paper and do the same with the new word. You should go through this process for a minute, at which point you will change teams and a participant from the other group will come out to define words.

The teams will alternate in periods of one minute until there is no paper left in the bowl. At that time, the team that has managed to get the most words right will be the winner of the test.

Processing speed

This exercise allows to develop the speed of thought and information processing, which constitutes a very relevant mental ability to determine the intelligence of a person.

It can be played both in groups and individually, although it can be more enjoyable if played with several people.

The game consists of writing the numbers 1 to 9 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9) on the top of a sheet.

Once written, a different symbol will be drawn just below for each number. The symbol can be of any type: a star, a suit, an inverted U, an L, etc. Let's see an example:

Once we have the numbers with the corresponding shapes in the upper part of the sheet, numbers will be written in an altered order for the rest of the sheet. For example:

The game consists of drawing the figures corresponding to each number for a period of two minutes (being able to view the examples at the top). The objective will be to complete as many numbers as possible during this period of time with the correct figure.

Letters and numbers

This game allows you to develop working memory and conceptual organization.

It consists of a person from one team saying a series of numbers and letters to a participant from the other team. For example: 8,2, C, 6, W, 1, S.

Once the contestant has said the series, the participant from the other team must be able to repeat it but not in the same order, but must first say the numbers, from lowest to highest, and then the letters in alphabetical order.

For example, in this case the correct answer would be: 1,2,6,8, C, S, W.

Series can be made and as they are completed properly, the degree of difficulty increases, putting more numbers and more letters in an altered order.

Likewise, a maximum number of series can be agreed. The team that has made a greater number of hits in those series will have won the test.

Sequencing

Planning and sequencing is that ability that allows us to put in order all the concepts that we have stored in our mind.

This ability becomes a key skill for problem solving, conceptual organization, and reasoning.

To develop this skill, you can play a very fun game.

This game will consist of making a story through drawings, which must be deciphered by the other team.

So to start with, each team must draw a story on different cards. That is to say: on each card there will be a drawing in such a way that if all the cards are put together properly they make a story.

For example, if you want to represent a person making fried eggs, on the first card you can draw a man taking some eggs from the fridge, on the second by pouring oil into the pan, on the third by pouring the eggs, on the fourth by adding salt and in the fifth, removing the eggs from the pan.

Once done, the cards are scrambled and given to the other team, who will have two minutes to be able to sort them and guess what story is represented.

The more ingenuity invested in making the cards, the more difficult it will be for the other team to properly sequence the cards.

Creativity

No one can deny that creativity is a key element of intelligence, since those people with greater capacities to create new things and draw different conclusions through imagination have a highly important ability.

To work on these aspects, you can play a game based on the scamper method.

It is about asking yourself 7 questions about the object or process about which you want to be creative. Although the technique is focused to innovate on the same object or process, I will give you examples of different things:

S (substitute): What can I substitute? Who else? What else? Another approach? Another process?

C (combine): What will happen if I combine one idea with another? What other items could we combine with this one? In what ways could we agree on a combination? What can be combined to multiply the uses? What other attractions of others can we combine in ours?

If you combine a car with an airplane, this comes up:

A (adapt): What else is like this? What other idea do you suggest? What could be copied? What could it emulate? What idea could we incorporate? What process could be adapted? What idea outside my field could I incorporate?

M (modify or magnify): What could be magnified or magnified? What could be smaller? What can be added? More time? Stronger? Higher? More durable? What can add more value? What can be pleaded? What can be modified?

Q (put other uses): What else could it be used for? Are there other ways to use it as it is? Could it be used for other markets? Other users? Objects? Animals?

E (delete): What if it were smaller? What is left over or is not necessary? Should I split it? Split it? Separate it? Downplay it? Compact it? Subtract? Delete? Delete rules?

If the roof of a car is removed, a convertible emerges.

R (rearrange): What other arrangement or arrangement could you improve? Another drawing? Another provision? Another sequence? Change the order? Investing cause effect? Change the rhythm? Change the schedule?

Attention

In these drawings you must find the 5 differences:

Chess

Finally, the last activity to develop intelligence that I would like to discuss is chess, a well-known game that encompasses a wide variety of mental abilities and efforts.

As you already know, chess is a game between two people, each one has a total of 16 pieces placed on a board, and the objective is to kill the opponent's pieces through the characteristic movements of each one, until kill the opponent's king figure.

The characteristics of chess have made it a game highly related to intelligence, a fact that has motivated a wide variety of scientific studies to verify what intellectual implication this game has.

It has been connoted that chess practice implies greater work and development of people's ability to concentrate, the ability to analyze and different calculation mechanisms.

Likewise, it is also considered that chess favors creativity and strategy, as well as planning and decision-making, very relevant aspects of intelligence.

References

1. Berg, CA 2000. Intellectual development in adulthood. In RJ Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence (pp. 117-137). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Castelló, A. (2001) Intelligences. A multidisciplinary integration, Barcelona, ​​Masson.
3. Nisbett, RE 2009. Intelligence and how to get it. New York: Norton.
4. Pepperberg, IM 2002. The Alex studies: Cognitive and communication abilities of gray parrots. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Yela, M. (1987) Studies on intelligence and language, Madrid, Pirámide.