Think back to think smarter

Posted by SonOfKrypton - 08/26/08 at 09:08:27 am

Have you ever heard that your IQ is constant?  That nothing you do can increase your God-given intelligence?  Doesn’t sit well with you - one who likes to improve as much of yourself as possible - does it?  Well, today we destroy that false paradigm.

In a first of its kind claim, Martin Buschkuehl, a psychology researcher based at the University of Bern, Switzerland, purports to have discovered a method that actually significantly improves ones ‘fluid intelligence’, a marker previously thought to have been genetically dictated.  Fluid intelligence is a measure of how one adapts to new scenarios and solves problems they’ve never encountered before.  It differs from crystallized intelligence which accounts for knowledge gained thru education and practiced skill sets - like math, science, and history.

It’s not unheard of that students who take many IQ tests generally improve their scores.  But they simply become better at taking the test, not at improving their intelligence.  Therefore, the results from their improved tests don’t translate into the real world and problems they encounter.

This is why Buschkuehl’s research is making waves.  He and his team were able to take 34 subjects, test their IQ’s, train them in a completely separate memory task, and watch their IQ test scores rise significantly.  This transfer of improved ability is rarely observed between any two tests.

The research team’s subjects trained in a complex routine called the “n-back task” — a strenuous visual/auditory memory test.  On average, they initially scored 10 questions correctly on the IQ test.  But after training with the “n-back task” for 25 minutes a day over a period of 19 days, they averaged 14.7 correct answers, an improvement of over 40 percent.  A control group for this experiment who did not train in the “n-back task” showed a minimal performance increase.

Buschkuehl and his team posit that the n-back task serves to improve working memory — a measure of how many pieces of information one’s head can hold simultaneously — as well as the brain’s ability to focus its attention.  Since the training improved performance in these underlying skills, positive results were also extended to the practitioners general intelligence.

A typical round of the n-back task goes like this:  participants are subjected to a sequence of images presented every few seconds.  In a 2-back (where 2 replaces the variable, n) task, you must identify when a certain image was shown two image ago.  However, this is the simplest version.  In more complicated n-back tasks, such as the one Buschkuehl’s subject underwent, you are simultaneously subjected to an audio sequence of letters, presented at the same time images are.  You are to indicate an image was shown two images ago while also indicating a letter was heard, two letters ago.  As you practice and your brain becomes more adept at handling 2-back, the challenge increases, all the way to 9-back.  Good luck with that.  Seriously.  

If you want to try your hand at n-back, try this free page.  Unfortunately, you are subjected to unremarkable sounds (not letters) with it, and as such, I’ve found it to not be as effective in truly practicing n-back as your brain has no previous associations with the sounds being thrown at you.  If any of you manage to find a better implementation of n-back online (with letters for audio), please post its location in the comments below.

If you’re interested in reading more about n-back, visit this ’Wired’ page.

And if you’re an owner of an iPhone or iPod Touch, there is a N-back implementation in the iTunes App Store named “IQ Boost”.  Read more about it here.  I’ve been training with it for the past week now so if you’re interested in how well the application works in hand, leave me a note on my Gyminee page and I’ll be sure to let you know!

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