Would you play a mobile game for 20 minutes a day over a month if it would make you smarter? That’s the promise of a mobile app called IQ.

IQ offers a version of a brain-training exercise known as Dual N-Back, which has been shown to improve ‘fluid’ intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason and solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge. It is critical for a wide variety of cognitive tasks, experts say, and it is also considered to be among the most important factors in learning.

For years, scientists believed it was impossible to improve a person’s fluid intelligence. But that changed in 2008, when a team of researchers published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrating that training on certain memory tests did transfer to improvements in real-world tasks requiring fluid intelligence. The researchers also found that this training was ‘dosage-dependent’ – meaning, the more training a person receives, the more their fluid intelligence improves.

The IQ mobile app provides the type of training described in the paper. To start, IQ shows you a blank screen. Next, you hear a letter of the alphabet spoken; at the same time, you see a small grey square appear somewhere on the screen. A moment later, you hear another letter spoken and see another square appear on the screen. If the second letter is the same as the one you heard first, that’s an audio match, so you press the Audio button (the 1 key on my test phone). If the second square is in the same position as the first, that’s a visual match, so you would press the Visual button (the 3 key on my test phone). If both are the same as the previous ones, then you press both buttons.

For example, in Round 1, you might hear the letter G and see a square appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Next, let’s say you hear the letter G again, but see the box in the lower left-hand corner. Since the letter matches but the box doesn’t, you would press the Audio button. The app scores each answer with a tiny ‘OK’ or ‘Err’ message, then gives you a total score for each round. At the end of several sequences, the program decides whether you scored hight enough to move on to the next level.

That’s Level 1, and it’s fairly easy, at least, at first. But IQ quickly gets tricky. You must constantly remember a new sequence of letter and box location. Each letter/box combination is not only a new sequence, but also the predecessor of the next sequence, meaning you have to compare it against both the preceding and following sequences. What’s more, the sequences come quickly, forcing you to pay very close attention indeed.

IQ gets exponentially more difficult in Level 2. Here, you have to remember two sequences back to determine whether there’s a match. Move up to Level 3, and you must now remember three sequences back. And so on, all the way up to an unimaginable Level 15. That’s what is meant by Dual N-Back. ‘Dual’ refers to the fact that you’re looking for matched pairs. ‘N’ refers to the number of sequences you have to remember. For example, here is an Audio match at Level 4: A / C / X / L / A. It is a match, because the second A matches the A from four sequence back. I told you it wasn’t easy!

So how well does IQ work? Does it really make you smarter? I don’t know for sure, but I can attest to the fact that IQ is difficult. After a few days of practice, I could complete Level 1 with no errors, but I still had a hard time with Level 2, never mind Level 5 or 6. In theory, at least, I am not only better at the exercise, but also slightly more intelligent!

According to developer EFRAC, IQ runs on all Nokia phones that support Java, which is essentially all of Nokia’s Series 40 and S60 devices. However, I could not get IQ to run properly on an N97 (S60 5th Edition); the touch UI worked, the visuals appeared clearly, but the audio component (the speaking of the letters) refused to make a sound. Fortunately, IQ ran without a problem on my Nokia N95 8GB (S60 3rd Edition). Also, the app’s incomplete documentation left me feeling rather, well, dumb. ‘How do you work this thing?’ (Editor’s Note: More information about the app is available directly from the publisher on their website.)

The IQ app is available in Ovi Store for $4.99 (USD). And there’s a free Lite version, too. So, do I sound any smarter yet? How about now?