Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower

NY Times ^ | April 29, 2008 | NICHOLAS BAKALAR

[neverdem]

A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth.

Until now, it had been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience — what psychologists call fluid intelligence — is innate and cannot be taught (though people can raise their grades on tests of it by practicing).

But in the new study, researchers describe a method for improving this skill, along with experiments to prove it works.

The key, researchers found, was carefully structured training in working memory — the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it. This type of memory is closely related to fluid intelligence, according to background information in the article, and appears to rely on the same brain circuitry. So the researchers reasoned that improving it might lead to improvements in fluid intelligence.

First they measured the fluid intelligence of four groups of volunteers using standard tests. Then they trained each in a complicated memory task, an elaborate variation on Concentration, the child’s card game, in which they memorized simultaneously presented auditory and visual stimuli that they had to recall later.

The game was set up so that as the participants succeeded, the tasks became harder, and as they failed, the tasks became easier. This assured a high level of difficulty, adjusted individually for each participant, but not so high as to destroy motivation to keep working. The four groups underwent a half-hour of training daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days, respectively. At the end of each training, researchers tested the participants’ fluid intelligence again. To make sure they were not just improving their test-taking skills, the researchers compared...

[Revolting cat!]

Intelligence is a very tricky concept.

Yes, certainly, appearance and other things you mention can be confused for intelligence. Also, and I experienced it as a child, a listening ability (in other words, silence.) That said, tell me, do you consider IQ tests and scores valid measures of intelligence?

I took one once, became bored and tired of it three quarters into it and finished it just to finish it by making quick blind guesses. I still got a high score, which I no longer remember, mainly because I dismissed the whole thing, concluding that the test tested a particular skill of puzzle solving (and, of course, one's patience, which my psychological profile, and probably the horoscope as well, say I lack.) I think that musicians, engineers and computer programmers would do well on such tests, but writers and philosophers would do badly.

[Revolting cat!]

I mean, is a card shark highly ‘intelligent’? What about x42? We know that he’s manipulative, has figured out the game, we know that he’s affable, and affability is one characteristic that is often confused for intelligence. How intelligent is Bill Gates to do such dumb things as his non-Microsoft activities (throwing money into the garbage dump of Africa, foir example)?

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I used to enjoy reading several of them, however, to say that “science hasn’t even yet caught up (with them)” is, I have to say, faint praise.

I like to point out that science is in many ways like chess, a game of very explicit rules. If you follow those rules, all you have really done is follow the rules and played the game, nothing more. To interpolate and extrapolate beyond the game itself is a questionable endeavor.

The analogy is a good one, for Napoleon Bonaparte used military units in maneuver much like chess pieces move on the board, and was able to achieve an astounding victory, the capture of an enemy army at Ulm, almost entirely through maneuver. But to say that in a war, the winning army will be the one used most like chess pieces in a game of chess, is an almost laughable extrapolation.

And yet people think nothing of making equally broad extrapolations to scientific experiments.

But science cannot account for capabilities that are not universal. It cannot explain what it is about him that makes Itzhak Perlman a virtuoso, and other equally practiced violinists just ordinary. He is an irreproducible result, and thus cannot be a science.

So all science will ever be is just a game, like chess. A useful game, but terribly limited.

But it raises the question of a system of knowledge that is *better* than science. Theories that such a thing might be possible have long been on the periphery of imagination, but are tantalizingly invisible.

That there must be such a system of knowledge must be a given, however, and knowledge is far too vast to be unorganized. Society would collapse without specialization, as who would want to visit a dentist who knew something about dentistry, something about botany, and something about auto mechanics, instead of being entirely a dentist?

But at the same time, while he might be brilliant in dental theory, he might have a deep disgust with the idea of putting his hands in other people’s mouths, or be utterly incapable of the talent that is needed to be a dentist.

So a theory of knowledge “better than science”, has to account for the obvious. Not just the ability to universally reproduce a result, but taking into account talent and even extraordinary talent.

And this is where Gurdjieff, et al., come into play. That is either people are already specialized in some difficult to determine way, that would make them inherently talented; or they can be manipulated in such a way to maximize their talent in a given direction.

For example, science and the 20th Century philosophies are of the mind that anyone can be trained to be a soldier. However, what if a sub-class of humanity have as part of their inherent design, the ability to be “warriors”?

That is, a warrior “clan” of people who are inherently more capable to be fighters than everybody else. Who will always be superior in a fight, no matter the style of conflict. Whose “design specifications” are already specialized.

If you look in martial arts, or even in the military, there are individuals who are so inherently better warriors than everybody else, that they can out fight 100 ordinary soldiers. A small army of just such people could overwhelm even a vastly superior force, technology notwithstanding.

But being a “warrior” would be just one specialty among people. By determining what other “clans” exist among people, society itself could be reordered.

However, even if such clans exist, Gurdjieff, et al., point out that while a major variable, they are just one variable. One system of order overlaid with other, equally specialized systems.

This is a major stumbling block. Unless there is some means of accurately determining what the major variables are in human specifications, people have to spend a lifetime to discover what they are, and so will never have full benefit of knowledge of their design for most of their lives.

And while they are to a great extent directed by their specifications, much of what they do will be wasted in efforts that will never pan out. They will not, cannot become virtuoso violinists, at most becoming fiddlers, despite much wasted effort and anguish. Importantly, even if they know that they will never achieve virtuosity, many will try anyway, so there is little downside to their knowing themselves, their design specifications.

Thus it seems that mankind is stuck in a quandary. Unless we can develop some means of accurately and technologically distinguishing are specifications, we will never be able to fully optimize their use. I say technologically, because far too few people are able to make what should be a common determination.

So we need a scientific technology that will enable us to perceive things beyond scientific understanding. We know something is there, but how can we build a machine to detect it?

[Museum Twenty]

Bump