A new Irish company claims that it has developed an online training programme which can raise a person’s IQ in a significant way, providing them with cognitive skills which increase intelligence levels. The SMART (Strengthening Mental Abilities with Relational Training) programme has already proven its effectiveness on the students of one Irish school.

A trial involving 15 students from Rathmore National School in Athboy in Meath, resulted in an average IQ increase of 23 points among students bringing them from an average IQ of 97 to 120, a level considered ‘superior intellectual functioning'. In the case of two students, diagnoses of dyslexia were revised following an improvement in their reading skills. By the end of the trial, the lowest IQ of 84 had risen to 106 while the highest IQ of 119 had risen to 140. The company has also noted that these IQ increases are still in place four years later.

The SMART system was developed by Relational Frame Training Ltd. which is a National University of Ireland, Maynooth, campus company. They claim that, "Unlike ‘brain training' products on the market which merely enhance memory, SMART improves the ability to reason logically and think clearly, so it also leads to improvements in verbal ability, perceptual reasoning and speed of information processing," IrishHealth.com reports.

The system used by the company is based on relational frame theory which operates on the theory that the development of relational skills is essential for intellectual development. Rational skills refer to an understanding of how words and numbers are related to other words and numbers. This theory has been developed over the last two decades and seems to be working for the Irish company.

Speaking at the launch of the programme, co-creator of the programme, Dr Sarah Cassidy said that the results and feedback they have received are “very impressive, with improvements across all students who participated in the trials”. She stated that the improvements “change the entire educational outlook of the children involved” and that the “findings represent a genuine breakthrough for educational psychologists.”
 
Dr Cassidy said that the company expects “significant adoption of the programme by schools and families across the world,” IrishHealth.com writes. “The online system is designed to be very user friendly and cost-effective, so that it can be employed in the classroom by teachers or at home by students in their own time," she explained.

Dr Bryan Roche, a lecturer in psychology in NUI Maynooth and psychologist, Dr Sarah Cassidy are currently launching the programme for use by the general public. They designed a series of over 50 programmes, which appear as a game in which users attempt to acquire points as they move through levels. It will be made available to both adults and children through different types of pay plans ranging from €14.95 per month to €89.95 per year.