Woman Grandmaster Jana Schneider is looking into questions about cognition using her favorite game — chess.
Schneider is a student at the University of Wurzburg and has chosen to look into whether our brain processes 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional information more quickly. The experiment she has designed for her thesis involves testing how well people can solve 2D chess puzzles compared to 3D chess puzzles.
Schneider has invited anyone to participate, though you will have to hurry as the window for taking her test is closing soon. If you click the link below to join in, be sure that you are ready to sit down for about half an hour and work through her problems. The link, warns the article at ChessBase, will open only once.
Participants need to be at least 18, have an understanding of the rules of chess, and not have visual impairments. You will also need a device with a keyboard, like a laptop. The test is not compatible with a smartphone.
In addition to helping with the research, participants will be entered into a raffle for tickets to something called Euroschach Versand. If, like me, you are unsure what this is, the tickets are apparently worth 300 euros so maybe they could be sold online if you win.
You will also get to see your own results after working through the problems, gaining insight as to whether your own brain has a preference for 2D or 3D images.
While this experiment will not answer the question alone, it might begin the work of understanding whether we humans are better equipped to process 3-D or flat images. To be clear though, the experiment itself will only be comparing performance between 2D and 3D online chess problems.
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