How to improve your intelligence fluids

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Fluid intelligence measures how people adapt to new situations and solve problems they've never seen before. Fluid intelligence differs from crystallized intelligence, which takes into account skills and knowledge that have been acquired -- like vocabulary, grammar and math.

It's not hard, for example, for students to improve their IQ scores by taking lots of IQ tests.

Trouble is, learning how to take IQ tests doesn't improve the underlying smarts. The students just get better at taking tests. In practical terms, people can get better at taking tests, but in daily life, don't have a blazingly quick new brain.

And that's where Buschkuehl's research, which appears today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claims to be groundbreaking.

In a limited trial, he and his team were able to make 34 test subjects significantly better at answering IQ test questions after training them on a completely separate memory task.

David Geary, a professor at the University of Missouri and author of The Origin of Mind, who was not involved with the study, said training in one test generally doesn't generate gains on a different test.

"Transfer is tough to get," Geary said. "Training in task A doesn't typically improve performance on task B."

But in this case, subjects trained on a complex version of the so-called "n-back task" -- a difficult visual/auditory memory test -- improved their scores on a set of IQ questions drawn from a German intelligence measure called the Bochumer Matrizen-Test.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/smart_software

You might have heard about this a few years ago. Well, it was replicated last year and this year, both which confirmed the results: the only known way to improve your fluid intelligence is training with the n-back task.

What is particularly startling about this is that the gains people made stuck around well after they stopped doing it. Also, they have not identified an upper limit to the improvement one can make.

The original 2008 study
The 2010 study (abstract only)
The 2011 study

edit: added links and info about the most recent studies

[Bruno]

I'd like to find some decent upbraining software that doesn't cost several hundred dollars.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I'd like to find some decent upbraining software that doesn't cost several hundred dollars.

Ta-da!

http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

[Elder Iptuous]

Sweet, Net!
thnx for the links...

[Elder Iptuous]

also, quick search of app store shows two iPhone apps with Dual n-Back... one is two bucks, the other three...

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Sweet, Net!
thnx for the links...

My pleasure.

[Elder Iptuous]

also,
here's a free flash version i just found...
http://cognitivefun.net/test/5
is not easy! 

[Epimetheus]

Going to use this, definitely! Was doing Lumosity till I had to pay for it.

[Elder Iptuous]

Going to use this, definitely! Was doing Lumosity till I had to pay for it.

i had the lumosity app for my phone, but it became tiresome and they kept sending me a ton of spam email.

and i'm still stupid! 

[Triple Zero]

I tried that game, but it was HARD!!!

However if you all are going to use it and become smarter I shall have to keep up!!

[Pæs]

I am going to play this game all day. Every day.

[Bruno]

I'd like to find some decent upbraining software that doesn't cost several hundred dollars.

Ta-da!

http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

I am amaze

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

also,
here's a free flash version i just found...
http://cognitivefun.net/test/5
is not easy! 

That's awesome. It automagically adjusts the test difficulty and logs your stats.

According to the Jaeggi and Buschkuehl 2008 paper, "The averaged n-back level in the last session is therefore not critical to predicting a gain in [fluid intelligence]; rather, it seems that working at the capacity limit promotes transfer to [fluid intelligence]." So it sounds like it should be hard or you're doing it wrong.

I found the 1-back too easy after about 5-10 minutes. Once I got the hang of the conditioned responses (audio=left arrow and visual=right arrow) I quite steadily improved.

I THINK I CAN FEEL IT WORKING ALREADY!

[Bruno]

I just had an idea.

Somebody should make a scholarship where the students log into a computer and do n-back exercises. The better they do, the more money they get.

[Epimetheus]

I just had an idea.

Somebody should make a scholarship where the students log into a computer and do n-back exercises. The better they do, the more money they get.

BUT THEN SOMEONE WILL TRAIN PERFECT N-BACK SLAVES TO COLLECT THA MONEY