Celone (2001) tried to answer the question whether notional or conceptual teaching of chess can develop
student’s abstract thinking and their problem-solving ability or not. To answer this question he did a research on 19
students of elementary school who voluntarily participated in a one-week program that lasted 20 hours. Students
were tested just before and after this program and by using equivalent forms of the TONI-3 Test of Non-Verbal
Intelligence, a valid and reliable instrument associated with abstract reasoning and problem-solving and by using the
Knight’s Tour, a domain-specific instrument measuring overall chess problem-solving ability. The result of this
study suggests that significant increase between scores just before and after the test was observed and the
improvement was both in their problem-solving ability and intelligence quotient (IQ).
In another study done in New York on 3000 students in 100 public schools, the efficacy of chess programs on
developing problem-solving ability and reading comprehension was observed (Margulies, 1993). The result of
another study done by Ferguson (1995) shows that by including chess in the curriculum, math teachers could detect
significantly improvement of math scores of students and their problem-solving power when compared with those
students who had not taken part in these programs. Ferguson goes on to say that in 1989 only 120 students were
enrolled and trained in chess clubs but in three years, that is, in 1992, the number of students in chess schools
amounted to 19000. The increase was owing to appraising the results of relevant studies and convincing the families
and educational personnel of usefulness and effectiveness of chess play and its pedagogical and social effects.