Short answer: yes - for what they are built to train, and no - for what the marketing sometimes promises. The long answer is more useful, because it tells you what to expect and when. Here is what the research shows, without the hype in either direction.
(If you searched for "Schultz table" or "Schulze table": same thing. The method is named after Walter Schulte, a German psychiatrist, and the spelling is the only thing people get wrong more often than the centre-gaze rule.)
What "working" would even mean
A Schulte table asks you to find numbers in order on a grid while keeping your eyes on the center. To say it "works", three things should be true:
- your performance on the table improves with practice (the training effect),
- that improvement shows up in similar tasks (near transfer),
- and ideally in everyday attention (far transfer).
The evidence is strong for the first, decent for the second, and thin for the third. That pattern is not specific to Schulte tables - it is the pattern for almost every cognitive training method ever studied.
1. The training effect: undisputed
Times fall quickly. A typical adult starts around 40-50 seconds on a 5×5 board and gets below 30 within a few weeks of short daily sessions. Part of that is learning the task, part is real gains in visual search and sustained attention. Nobody disputes this; it is the basis for using the table as a test in the first place, and why norms exist.
2. Near transfer: where the good evidence lives
The closest cousin of the Schulte table in the scientific literature is speed-of-processing training built on the useful field of view (UFOV). The ACTIVE trial - the largest randomized study of cognitive training in older adults, with over 2,800 participants - found that ten sessions of this kind of training improved the trained ability, with gains still measurable five and even ten years later (Ball et al., 2002; Rebok et al., 2014). Crucially, the speed-of-processing group also showed practical effects: fewer at-fault car crashes and slower decline in everyday tasks.
A Schulte table is not the ACTIVE software. But it exercises the same mechanism - picking up information away from the center of gaze, quickly, under time pressure - which is why we treat those findings as the best available indication of what disciplined practice can do.
There is also a large body of work on how visual selective attention changes with practice, best known from the action-video-game studies (Green & Bavelier, 2003): people who spend time on demanding visual-search tasks get measurably better at locating targets among distractors and at tracking several things at once. Again, near transfer - but real.
3. Far transfer: be sceptical
Will a Schulte table make you a better student, employee or driver? The honest answer is: probably a little, in the specific situations that resemble the task (scanning, monitoring, staying on a dull task), and probably not in general. The most thorough review of "brain training" (Simons et al., 2016) concluded that improvements on trained tasks are reliable, transfer to closely related tasks is common, and transfer to broad measures of intelligence or daily life is rare and small. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
The one exception worth taking seriously is measurement. A Schulte table will not fix your attention, but it will tell you, in seconds, how your attention is doing today - and that feedback loop changes behaviour (sleep, breaks, caffeine) in a way that no exercise can.
Where the method comes from, and why that matters
Schulte tables entered psychology as a diagnostic tool, used in clinics and, in the red-black Gorbov variant, in aptitude testing of pilots, drivers and operators - people whose attention must switch fast under load. Its diagnostic pedigree is why the task is so clean: one grid, one rule, one number. It was never designed as a "brain booster", and it does not become one by being sold as an app.
So, should you bother?
Yes, if you want any of these:
- a quick daily exercise for sustained attention that takes five minutes and costs nothing,
- a wider useful field of view and faster visual search, which the best evidence says is trainable,
- a repeatable number to track how your attention responds to sleep, stress or a new routine,
- with the Gorbov variant, a real attention-switching workout.
No, if you expect it to raise your IQ, treat an attention disorder, or replace sleep.
The practical part - technique, session length, the mistakes that make the whole thing pointless - is in How to use a Schulte table. Try it on paper with a free printable set, or in the Focus Tables app for iOS and Android, which does the timing and the tracking for you.
Sources: Ball, K. et al. (2002). Effects of cognitive training interventions with older adults: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 288(18) · Rebok, G.W. et al. (2014). Ten-year effects of the ACTIVE cognitive training trial on cognition and everyday functioning in older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 62(1) · Green, C.S., Bavelier, D. (2003). Action video game modifies visual selective attention. Nature, 423 · Simons, D.J. et al. (2016). Do "brain-training" programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3).