High IQ Pro Software » Mindware

i3: The Most Sophisticated Brain Training Software That Exists

MAS — Sun, 01 May 2011 15:41:23 +0000

i^3® Software

i3 (pronounced ‘i cubed’) is the most sophisticated brain training software that exists. It has been released today, and we are very excited about it. Over a decade of research by cognitive psychologists and psychometricians have gone into its development. It combines a type of dual n-back training (with different speed settings, letter vs number, and error feedback options), with more than 50 screens of fun brain-teasers, targeting the five factors of your IQ. There are also four different language options – English, Italian, German and Spanish.

This software is much more advanced than the standard scientifically established dual-n-back training.

This advanced software application systematically trains the five factors of general intelligence – or ‘G’ – as measured by valid IQ tests:

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knowledge base

Gc: Crystallized intelligence – general knowledge, verbal ability.

thinking skills

Gf: Fluid intelligence – reasoning and novel problem solving ability.
Gv: Visual intelligence – the ability to manipulate mental visual images to solve problems.

cognitive efficiency

Gsm: Short term / working memory – the amount of information that can be integrated and processed at the same time.

i³ Software Specifications:

Dual n-back training – the original algorithm
Different speed settings
Letter or numbers for auditory mode
Error feedback option
4 different language options: English, Italian, German and Spanish

Additional targeted brain-teaser training (with more than 40 pages of puzzles) of:

Processing speed (Gs)
Crystallized intelligence (Gc)
Fluid intelligence (Gf)
Visual intelligence (Gv)
Quantitative intelligence (Gq)
General intelligence (G)

Additional features:

Online resources for follow up training of all the above factors.
Money back guarantee for a 10-20 point IQ test increase on any professionally administered IQ test.

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Order your instant i³ download here:

Single User License: $44.99

(Windows, Mac & Linux compatible)

Pay by PayPal or Credit Card here

IQ Mindware

click here

$14.99

E-mail us for details.

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I³® Mindware application runs on Adobe AIR and has the following system requirements.

WINDOWS

Intel® Pentium® III 1GHz or faster processor, 512MB of RAM
Recommended: Pentium 4 2GHZ or faster, 1GB RAM
Windows 7, Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise including 64 bit editions, Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2 and SP3, Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows 2003 Server

MAC OS X

Intel Core™ Duo 1.83GHz or faster processor; PowerPC® G4 1GHz or faster processor
Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Mac OS X 10.5.4, 10.5.5, and 10.6
512MB of RAM

LINUX

Intel® Pentium® III 1GHz or faster processor, 512MB of RAM
Recommended: Pentium 4 2GHZ or faster, 1GB RAM
Fedora 8 and later, Ubuntu 7.10 and later, OpenSuse 10.3 and later
xterm should be present on the system

Mind-Hacking With The Framing Effect

MAS — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:13:25 +0000

We tend to assume that we make logical decisions based on the available facts – and that our memories are an accurate record of what happened to us. In this blog we look at what is called a ‘cognitive bias’ – one of many that distort our thinking and even alter our memories.

Today we will look at what psychologists call ‘framing effects’, often used in advertising.

The way a question is “framed” often has an influence on how people answer that question: the exact same problem produces different answers based on how the problem is described. That’s what the term framing effect means.

How framing can distort our reasoning

Here is the scenario presented in a classic study of the framing effect:

You work for the Centers for Disease Control and there is an outbreak of a deadly disease called “The Mojave Flu” in a town of 600 people. All 600 people in the town are expected to die if you do nothing. Someone has come up with two different programs designed to fight to the disease:

With Program 1: 200 people in the town will be saved
With Program 2: There is a 1/3rd probability that 600 people will be saved, and a 2/3rds probability that no people will be saved.

Which would you pick?

In the original study, 72 percent of the subjects picked Program 1.

Now consider these two programs:

With Program 3: 400 people in the town will die
With Program 4: There is a 1/3rd probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3rds probability that 600 people will die.

Which of these do you pick?

In the study, 78 percent of the subjects picked Program 4. This shows the framing effect because Programs 1 and 3 mean the same thing, and Programs 2 and 4 mean the same thing – exactly the same thing. The only difference is the way the information is presented – how it is ‘framed’. In one ‘framing’ of the program 72% of people chose is, in another ‘framing’ of the exact same program, only 12% chose it.

How framing can distort our memories

Framing effects don’t only distort our reasoning, they also distort our actual memories. The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown this in a classic study in which participants saw a film of a traffic accident, after which they were asked questions about the event. Some people were asked ‘About how fast were the cars going when they contacted each other?’ Others were asked the same question but the verb ‘contacted’ was replaced by either hit, bumped, collided, or smashed. So there were 5 different ways of framing the question . Even though all of the participants saw the same film, the wording of the question had an impact on their answers. The speed estimates were 31mph for contacted, 34mph for hit, 38mph for bumped, 39mph for collided, and 41mph for smashed.

One week later, the participants were asked whether they had seen broken glass at the accident site. The correct answer was ‘no,’ but 32% of the participants who were given the ’smashed’ condition said that they had.

So just using a choice word in a single question asked in the past can distort our memories!

Mind Hacking: How advertisers, politicians & the media use framing

Mind hacking is when the critical faculty of the mind is deliberately bypassed to establish ‘selective’ thinking. Framing can be a method for mind hacking.

Framing is used in advertising all the time. Keep an eye out for examples, and share them if you find any good ones.

Framing effects are also widely used in politics – to great effect. Buzzwords and political terms are constantly being coined and promoted to try to stay on the positive side of public opinion.

Frank Luntz is an example of a political consultant who has worked with Republican candidates to frame various policy issues to make them more appealing to the general public. Among other things, Luntz is responsible for the re-framing the term “global warming” to “climate change”. Pro Republican media outlets such as Fox News, then adopt the term and broadcaste it to the general public.

How we can overcome framing effects

Framing effects are powerful, and can be deliberately manipulated to great effect. When we recognize that this bias exists, we can gain some control over it. This blog post is an example of what is called ‘Mindware’ – in this case knowledge can use to overcome a powerful thinking bias. The next time you hear a politician or an advertisement for some product, listen closely and decipher if there is any framing going on.

Research by Stanovich and West (2008) also shows that when you are aware that there may be a framing effect trying to ‘mind hack’ you, the more intelligent you are the more likely you are to overcome the bias. Overcoming the bias needs you to hold back your automatic response and reason it through. This takes working memory power. The ability to overcome automatic responses is improved using our High IQ Pro® software.

How Making Mistakes & Intuition Made Magnus Carlson Chess No 1

MAS — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:52:33 +0000

Grandmaster at 13, Number One in the world at 19: Magnus Carlsen

The latest issue of Time Magazine has a profile of Magnus Carlsen, the youngest number one world ranking chess player ever:

Genius can appear anywhere, but the origins of Carlsen’s talent are particularly mysterious. He hails from Norway — a “small, poxy chess nation with almost no history of success,” as the English grand master Nigel Short sniffily describes it — and unlike many chess prodigies who are full-time players by age 12, Carlsen stayed in school until last year. His father Henrik, a soft-spoken engineer, says he has spent more time urging his young son to complete his schoolwork than to play chess. Even now, Henrik will interrupt Carlsen’s chess studies to drag him out for a family hike or museum trip. “I still have to pinch my arm,” Henrik says. “This certainly is not what we had in mind for Magnus.

Even pro chess players — a population inured to demonstrations of extraordinary intellect — have been electrified by Carlsen’s rise. A grand master at 13 (the third youngest in history) and a conqueror of top players at 15, he is often referred to as the Mozart of chess for the seeming ease of his mastery. In September, he announced a coaching contract with Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest player of all time, who quit chess in 2005 to pursue a political career in Russia. “Before he is done,” Kasparov says, “Carlsen will have changed our ancient game considerably.

Intuition – key to expertise

According to Kasparov intuition is the key to Carlsens’ success – his ability to ‘feel’ what moves have potential and give him the edge over the long term – and which moves to avoid.

Carlsen has a knack for sensing the potential energy in each move, even if its ultimate effect is too far away for anyone — even a computer — to calculate. In the grand-master commentary room, where chess’s clerisy gather to analyze play, the experts did not even consider several of Carlsen’s moves during his game with Kramnik until they saw them and realized they were perfect. “It’s hard to explain,” Carlsen says. “Sometimes a move just feels right.”

What built Carlsen’s amazing intuition?

Carlsen doesn’t calculate in his head what moves to make running through countless possibilities using his reasoning ability, he ‘intuits’ them – some moves feel good, some bad, some look strong, some look weak. Why? Because he’s had huge amounts of practice on online computer chess. Computer chess is on tap 24/7, and Carlsen often plays multiple games simultaneously. With all this practice – and it has to be deliberate and focused – he builds up a bank of how he feels making certain moves based largely on all the mistakes he’s made in the past. Hundreds and thousands of errors – and the bad feelings they have caused – have become translated into accurate intuitions about what moves to make – that he can’t begin to explain.

Neils Bohr said it well: an expert is

a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Mistakes weigh in more than successes. We learn much more from feeling bad from cocking something up than when we breeze through. Successes shape our intuitions, but mistakes shape them more powerfully.

And this is why Magnus Carlson, raised on chess computer programs, can be even more intuitive than his elders – the traditional grandmasters. The software allows him to play more chess, which allows him to make more mistakes, which allows him to build his super intelligent intuitions at a rate of knots.

Mindware take home: make mistakes to build intuition and expertise

Three tips.

The highest experts have the most highly developed intuitions – intuition is valuable and we should try to build it to master anything.
Lots of practice is essential for expertise. The practice has to be deliberate, focused and involve experimentation and risk-taking. During practice, we make predictions and form expectations about how things will turn out. 3. We need to make mistakes – lots of them.
We have to learn to positively value mistakes, and the negative feelings that go with them! The more we explore through practice, the more mistakes we will make, and the more we can benefit from this in building our intuitions. Feeling bad through making mistakes – through failures – drives us to greater expertise and higher levels of excellence. This is true in chess and it is true in anything requiring expertise.

I’ve failed over, and over, and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

…Michael Jordan, professional basketball player.

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If anyone has any experiences of building expertise through intuition and making mistakes, it would be great if you’d share it with us.

Dealing With Distraction: Executive Control

MAS — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:46:26 +0000

As quick as you can say out loud the colour of every word - but NOT the word you read!

Ignore the word, just say the colour of the ink.

(right click to download image if it is not visible)

How did you do? Any problems?

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The Stroop Effect

This is a famous test in cognitive psychology called the Stroop task (named after the psychologist John Stroop who first studied it).

The fact you were slowed down – or made errors – while trying not to let the meaning of the words interfere with your ability to say out loud the colours - is called the Stroop Effect.

In the first two lines, there should have been no problem in naming the colours - because the meaning of the words and the colours match. But in the next lines, the meaning of the words and the colours are a mismatch – there is a conflict and this causes the problem, slowing you down and causing errors.

IQ Insight

What explains the Stroop effect? The effect can be explained by theconflict between two types of information processing:

a type of information processing that is natural and automatic -reading the words: something you have done countless times.
a type of information processing that requires deliberate selective attention to unusual information that you have been instructed to process (naming the colours), while suppressing/ignoring the natural interference from your automatic, well learned response to the word meaning.

The ability to flexibly attend to different aspects of our world in ways that are not routine or automatic is at the heart of our fluid intelligence. You cannot use your fluid intelligence on autopilot. And there is good evidence that your fluid intelligence is closely related to your ability to stay on track in a task or while pursuing a goal - and not to get distracted by interfering information or automatic modes of thinking or behaving that don’t help you attain your goal.

Our High IQ Pro® software helps train fluid intelligence, and because of this it helps with task focus and ignoring distraction and there is scientific evidence that it improves performance on this Stoop brain twister.

The 8 Pillars of Brain Fitness & IQ

MAS — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:02:36 +0000

“Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.”

George Santayana, philosopher.

“There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.”

Robert G. Ingersoll, Civil War Veteran & Political Leader.

Eight scientifically proven methods stimulate brain cell growth, promote mental sharpness and increase IQ. We can call them the 8 Pillars of IQ.

1. Confidence in your own intelligence.

Academic performance and other types of IQ work – learning something new, taking on a project, solving a problem – depends critically on your confidence in your own cognitive ability. To be intelligent, you have to believe that you are capable of solving problems and making decisions and achieving goals intelligently.

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.”

Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company.

“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.

Michael Jordan, Retired Professional Basketball player.

2. New, challenging experience.

We need astimulating environment involving new experience. We need to take risks, and get out of our comfort zones for continual learning and mental alertness.

“The person who lives a sheltered life, who seeks constancy and sameness, who gravitates strongly to the predictable, may be extremely well adapted to that niche. However he isn’t growing.”

Carver & Scheier, Psychologists.

“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”

James Joyce, Novelist

3. A healthy diet and brain nutrition.

Brain foods include Omega 3, B6, B12, Zinc, Epicathechin, and Folic Acid. Avoid sugar and bad fats – e.g.trans fatty acids such as you find in margarine. These kill brain cells. Creatine has been shown in clinical trials to increase IQ, particularly as we age.Creatine supplies extra energy for mental work. Good food may work synergistically with exercise.

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”

Aristotle, Philosopher

4. Regular exercise.

Just like training working memory, jogging and other types of aerobic exercise stimulate the production of new neurons in part of the brain called the hippocampus needed for flexible learning and intelligence.

“Being a runner, to me, has made being depressed impossible. If ever I’m going through something emotional and just go outside for a run, you can rest assured that I’ll come back with clarity and empowerment.”

Alanis Morissette, Singer-songwriter

5. Working memory brain training.

Software now exists to expand working memory capacity. Our ‘Working memory’ is our short term memory for information that we actively process to think, solve problems and make decisions, while ignoring distractions. The capacity of working memory is highly related to IQ level. By training working memory capacity we increase IQ level. This is the only known way to increase IQ. Our company High IQ Pro provides this scientific training software (link)

“Increasing intelligence is possible after all using working memory training…with more training leading to greater gains…across the spectrum of abilities.”

Robert Sternberg, Professor of Psychology

6. Being free from chronic stress: meditating.

Cortisol is a hormone that seriously damages the brain. It destroys brain cells at a rapid rate. Mindfulness meditation is an excellent practice to reduce stress levels.

“Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.”

Frederick Saunders.

7. Having good sleep.

Sleep is essential for mental alertness and a high IQ. There is strong evidence that deep sleep is essential for recovery from mental work while REM (dreaming) sleep stimulates long term learning of complex, intelligence-demanding tasks. This is arguably the main function of dreaming.

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”

John Steinbeck, novelist

8. Mindware.

All of the practices above generate new brain cells, prevent brain cell death, and foster intelligence. But intelligence needs knowledge and information to work with. It requires knowledge and procedures for tackling any situation intelligently.

In summary, these are the 8 pillars of intelligence and what you need to know to increase IQ – to ’see things as they are’ and preserve your cognitive liberty.

“Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.”George Santayana, philosopher. ”There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.”Robert G. Ingersoll, Civil War Veteran & Political Leader.

Running Improves Fluid Intelligence

MAS — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:27:02 +0000

Four things are important for optimal brain function:

a stimulating environment involving novelty, requiring continual learning
brain nutrition (e.g. Omega 3, B6, B12, Zinc, Epicathechin, Folic Acid) and avoiding sugar and bad fats (e.g. trans fatty acids such as you find in margarine).
brain training (executive process training such as High IQ Pro),
regular aerobic physical exercise

We can add to this:

not having chronic stress – cortisol is a hormone that seriously damages the brain
having decent sleep – REM (dreaming) sleep is essential for complex learning

Aerobic exercise

Another study has just come out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that cognitive health benefits of a regular run. Neuroscientists in Cambridge – a Ph.D friend from the CNBC program among them – recently joined forces with researchers at the US National Institute on Ageing in Maryland to investigate the effect of running on the brain.

They looked at rats’ brains. A lot can be said about how human brains work by looking at the workings of other mammal brains. There are remarkable similarities, and most differences in all but the highest cognitive functions are differences of degree.

They found that running stimulates the brain to grow new neurons – new grey matter – in part of the brain used for spatial memories called the hippocampus. The hippocampus is also critical for our fluid intelligence. Brain tissue taken from the rodents showed that the running mice had grown fresh grey matter during the experiment. Tissue samples from the hippocampus revealed on average 6,000 new brain cells in every cubic millimeter! The hippocampus is one of the few areas of the brain that can grow new neurons throughout adulthood – a process called ‘neurogenesis’.

Cell death in the hippocampus is relatively high as we age – a process called ‘cognitive aging’ -making exercise that much more important for maintaining peak performance as we age.

How it works

“We know exercise can be good for healthy brain function, but this work provides us with a mechanism for the effect,” said Timothy Bussey, a behavioural neuroscientist at Cambridge.

So what do all these new brain cells do? In their study they found that running – and new cell growth – benefited rats not so much in basic memory tasks such as learning a new object and its location, but in tasks where the objects that were to be remembered were physically identical but could be distinguished based on their spatial relations (e.g. left vs right). The running mice clocked up an average of 15 miles (24km) a day! Their scores on this type of memory test was nearly TWICE as high as those who did no exercise.

It seems that the continual growth of new neurons in the hippocampus ensures that similar events in our experience are encoded uniquely based on their context – in both space and time (x happened after y is a kind of context in time, just like x is to the left of y is a context in space).

This kind of memory translates into our ability to remember what a person had for dinner yesterday and the day before, or where they parked on different trips to the supermarket – exactly the kind of context-dependent memory that is vulnerable to cognitive aging.

Link with fluid intelligence and the High IQ Pro ‘dual n-back’ working memory exercise

This is also precisely the kind of memory that is essential to working memory and fluid intelligence but on a smaller time scale. For instance in the High IQ Pro working memory exercise, you have to continually update in your short term memory the location of a small square and a letter. It is only the relative location of the square and its order in time that enables you to keep track of it in memory.

Fluid intelligence is our on-the-spot reasoning and problem solving ability. It is this kind of advanced short term memory that needs new brain cells for each act of cognition that is needed for fluid intelligence.

Just like jogging, the High IQ Pro brain training exercise will certainly stimulate the production of new neurons in the hippocampus highly useful for flexible learning and fluid intelligence. While a study has been done showing cell growth in the frontal and parietal lobes with our exercise, this particular study looking at its effects on brain cell production has not yet been done. I’m looking forward to seeing the lab that first does it.

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When I run, I think about everything: physics, family problems, plans for the weekend. I haven’t made any big discoveries on a run, but it does give me time to think through problems. Some solutions are obvious, but they are only obvious when you are relaxed enough to find them.

…Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel prizewinning physicist, MIT

Being a runner, to me, has made being depressed impossible. If ever I’m going through something emotional and just go outside for a run, you can rest assured that I’ll come back with clarity and empowerment.

…Alanis Morissette, singer-songwriter