Evidence & limits
MindFrame is built on published research about metacognition — thinking about your own thinking. That research was done in schools, clinics and forecasting tournaments, not on MindFrame. This page keeps the two apart.
Each finding is attributed to the people who measured it and the group they studied.
g = 0.63
academic performance after metacognitive strategy instruction
Studied in: school students, 67 studies
A 2018 meta-analysis of 67 school studies (de Boer, Donker & van der Werf) found metacognitive strategy instruction improved academic performance by about g = 0.63 — a typical trained student scored above roughly 73% of untrained peers.
g = 0.69
symptom change, metacognitive therapy compared with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Studied in: clinical trials for anxiety and depression
In clinical trials reviewed by Normann & Morina (2021), metacognitive therapy outperformed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) by about g = 0.69. This is therapy research; it supports the principle, not a training app.
6–11%
forecasting accuracy (Brier score) after under an hour of probability training
Studied in: Good Judgment Project forecasters
In the Good Judgment Project (Mellers et al. 2014), forecasters given under an hour of probability training were consistently more accurate than a control group, improving Brier scores by about 6–11% over a two-year tournament.
Little far transfer
benefit outside the trained task
Studied in: review of brain-training studies
A 2016 review of brain-training studies (Simons et al.) found improvement on the trained tasks but little evidence of real-world transfer to everyday performance.
For each person, MindFrame measures accuracy, the gap between confidence and accuracy (calibration), and reasoning quality, session by session, and shows the trend.
Accuracy
Whether each answer was right, against an answer key written before the challenge was published.
Calibration
How far your stated confidence is from how often you are right, summarised as a Brier Score and a calibration error.
Reasoning quality
When you explain an answer in depth, Claude scores the argument; otherwise a published formula does, and your results say which one was used.
Your own trend
How those numbers move for you across sessions. It is a description of your practice, not a controlled experiment.
MindFrame has not yet run a controlled study, so we do not claim it produces the effect sizes reported in the research. We will publish our own numbers, including weak ones, once we have them.
The formulas are on How we score.
The science →
The research behind each part of a session, in plain words.
Research hub →
The 27 studies we cite, by topic, with links.
How we score →
Formulas, thresholds and how calibration is computed.
Transparency →
Product numbers we publish, and the ones we have not measured yet.
Beta status →
What is finished, what is still in beta, and what may change.