Elizabeth J. Meinz of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and David Z. Hambrick of Michigan State University wanted to look at working memory capacity, the ability to keep relevant pieces of information active in your mind –the type of memory system improved by High IQ Pro® training. Pianists use working memory when they read music. They aren’t reading the notes their fingers are currently playing; they’re looking ahead to read the notes that are coming next.

For the new study, published in Psychological Science pianists were asked to sight read six pieces from a book of sight-reading tests. The book was chosen because it’s rarely used in the United States. Musicians have to do this kind of test routinely in auditions. They were given pieces with various levels of difficulty. Judges graded each pianist based on technical proficiency, musicality, and overall performance. The pianists were also asked about their piano-playing history, including how many hours per week they had practiced in each year they’d been playing, and took tests that measured their working memory capacity.

Practice was definitely important. The amount of time a person had spent practicing explained about 45 percent of the variance in sight-reading skill. But working memory capacity was important, too; when the researchers took out the effect of practice, another seven percent of variance in sight-reading skill was explained by working memory capacity. The researchers proposed that working memory capacity (the sheer amount of information that can be held in mind at once) may have a role in setting limits on what can be achieved by practice.

“Practice is absolutely important to performance,” says Meinz. “But our study does suggest that cognitive abilities, particularly working memory capacity, might limit the ultimate level of performance that could be attained.”

An implication of this is that expanding working memory capacity by training with the dual n-back (High IQ Pro®) may result in an overall long term improvement in musical performance – at least in terms of sight reading.

When not sight-reading it may also allow for more complex musical scores to be processed and learned. This will – I expect – be investigated in future studies.

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness, Working Memory Capacity & Emotional Intelligence
2. The Working Memory – IQ Connection
3. Mindsets And How They Can Improve Our Vision

Actions

To make a decision requires a choice, and different choices depend on different actions:  marry or not marry, book an activity holiday in South Africa or a beach holiday in Cyprus, start making a coconut curry or – alternatively – a spaghetti bolognaise. Making a decision involves taking an action.

Outcomes

Second, the actions taken in making a decision result in different outcomes – either positive (gains) or negative (costs). If we choose one job over another (decide to accept job X rather than job Y), the action of signing a contract has real consequences in terms of income, location, career development, and so on.

‘Fateful moments’

Anthony Giddens (Modernity and Self Identity), has called those decisions that have the most profound consequences on our lives ‘fateful moments’.

Fateful moments are times when events come together in such a way that an individual stands, as it were, at a crossroads in his existence…

Gidden’s examples of decisions that are ‘fateful’ in this way include: the decision to get married, the decision to separate, giving up one job in favour of another, or investing a life’s savings into starting a business.

Risk and Uncertainty

Giddens also identifies and important relationship between important decisions and risk:

fateful moments… stand in a particular relation to risk. They are moments when the appeal of fortuna is strong, moments at which in more traditional settings oracles might have been consulted…

Both fateful choices and more run of the mill choices typically occur in conditions of uncertainty – where the outcomes are not entirely predictable, and where an action taken may involve risk – the chance of loss.

Commitment

To this extent, when you are fully conscious of what is at stake in making a consequential choice, your chosen action involves a commitment – to act in one way rather than another.  Signing a contract requires a commitment. Being able to fully commit – and not be choked by doubt and irresolution – seems to be a requirement of effective decision making – although I’m not aware of any scientific study looking at this directly.

The Desirability of the Outcome: Gains and Costs

There are gains and costs associated with the outcomes of decisions you make. Gains are what you desire or value, costs the opposite.  Gains and costs motivate our decision making. If there was nothing to lose or gain in making a decision there would be little point in making it. There are many different types of gains that can result from our decisions – for example:  sensual pleasure, monetary gain, a positive relationship, being recognized for an achievement, a new skill acquired or something learned, an improved strategic position, and so on. Similarly for costs – ranging from physical pain to loss of face to financial hardship to strategic weakness.

For good decision making it is important to be able to rank different types of gains and costs in terms of degrees of desirability or aversiveness – in a single metric as it were. In choosing a holiday it is useful, for example, to be able to convert into a single ‘desirability scale’ the sensual pleasure of relaxing on a sunny beach, with the sense of accomplishment of climbing a mountain, and rank one over the other – even though these two types of gains are very different., the physical pain, sense of failure, embarrassment, and so on, that may result from an action all need to be ranked in a single ‘loss scale’, such that it makes sense to say ‘the embarrassment that might result from action x is worse to me than the personal sense of failure that might result from action y’.

The positive or negative ‘desirability’ of an outcome is called the outcomes’ utility by scientists in the field of decision-making.

Related posts:

1. How Making Mistakes & Intuition Made Magnus Carlson Chess No 1
2. Cognitive Health & Cognitive Aging

I am a prominent figure in the IQ community and have an IQ above 177 minimum. That is why I am here. What can you do for a 19-year-old whiz kid?

Naturally I advised him to train his working memory with High IQ Pro® and observe its impact on his already exceptional cognitive powers.

High IQ Societies limit their membership to people who score within certain superior percentiles on a standardized IQ test. They exist to build communities - for communication and exchange of resources between members. Below is a list of the better known high IQ societies – including Mensa.

You can locate the membership requirement IQ score (including Mensa requirements) on the IQ bell curve that shows percentages in the population that achieve certain scores.

IQ bell curve

You can see that with a professed IQ of 178, our young whiz kid has a truly remarkable IQ!

Exceptionally difficult IQ tests for the most exclusive high IQ societies

Most IQ tests are designed so that the average score (100) is obtained by most people. These tests are designed around the average person. The tests discriminate between individuals’ IQs in the middle ranges, where the difference between an IQ of 100 and 105 may be a matter of several questions on the test itself. But at their upper end, these tests don’t discriminate as well: a the five-point difference between IQ scores of 145 and 150, for example, may translate into test score differences of only one or two questions.

There have been various high IQ society tests devised over the years that make fine distinctions in the highest IQ stratosphere. These tests are so difficult that only the highly gifted will get average scores, and only near genius intellects are able to achieve the highest scores!

One of these IQ tests is the Mega IQ test by Ronald Hoeflin, founder of the Mega Society – a high IQ society much more demanding than Mensa. Only 1 in 20,000 Mensans would qualify for Mega Society membership! A score of 1 (out of a total of 48 questions) means you have an IQ of between 100 and 110.

For a selection of high IQ Society tests, visit this site.

Related posts:

1. Mensa & High IQ Societies
2. A Mensa Primer: Get Into Mensa

Individuals differ in their levels of overall intelligence, and their specific cognitive abilities. The American Psychological Society gives the following definition for this:

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought.

David Wechsler, originator of WAIS IQ tests, defined intelligence simply as:

A global concept that involves an individual’s ability to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment.

There are three aspects of intelligence that can be picked out from these definitions. In scientific research each tends to be studied independently, but all three are critical to living an intelligent life.

1. IQ . General intelligence as measured by IQ tests, also called ‘psychometric G’ or simply ‘G’.  This involves abstract thinking and reasoning skills, ability with language, general knowledge, and information processing efficiency.
2. Strategy. Skill in flexible managing and planning to attain long-term ends. This is the ability to adapt flexibly to circumstances, responding to opportunities, while moving effectively towards long-range goals and objectives in a purposeful way. Being strategic in life means you are not simply ‘coasting’ on automatic pilot, but are living purposefully with long-range vision. Much of this kind of effectivness is social and cultural.
3. Expertise. Skill, knowledge & mastery in particular areas or domains. Expertise is acquired slowly, through experience and deliberate practice, over many years. It accounts for many of the extraordinary feats that humans are capable of – whether an intellectual or artistic ‘masterpiece’ or an amazing pitch of performance. It also accounts for the peaks of professional expertise.

Mindware

Each of these three facets of intelligence is greatly enhanced by the ability to utilize ‘mindware’. Mindware can be thought of as a type of ‘embedded cognition’ or ‘embodied cognition’ in which we intelligently make use of technologies, systems and  networks (e.g. computers, the Internet, databases, software applications, expert networks, etc) to support these 3 aspects of our intelligence. Without effective use of the technologies and networks that are available to us, our intelligence is bounded in a way that will handicap us greatly. The more effectively and extensively we use  mindware , the more powerful our intelligence may become.

In addition to these three traditional aspects of intelligence of the ‘embedded mind’, there are two dimensions of being intelligent that are not considered in most scientific accounts:

4. Mind hacking

There is another aspect of being intelligent that is not directly investigated by scientific research: the ability to resist being ‘mindhacked’. Mindhacking occurs where other agents (individuals, groups, organisations, etc) bypass your critical faculties, and make you an intrument of their purposes. Advertisers, governments, PR agencies, and professional agencies -  as well as persuasive personalities – may induce preferences, beliefs, attitudes and ideologies without a person’s awareness and critical judgment playing a role in the process. İt is known that humans are naturally impressed by charisma and power, and susceptible to the influence of authority and the pressure of conformity.
An intelligent individual, compared to a less intelligent person, is not as susceptible to mind hacking. Intelligent minds are ‘strong’ minds, alert and independent, and able to judge for themselves, even if they arrive at beliefs, preferences or values shared by others.

5. Mindfulness

Scientific research shows that people can be highly intelligent in sense above but egoistic and biased in their attitude to life. We know that ‘myside bias’ is as likely among those with very high IQs as though with low IQs. Machiavellians with little regard for interests other than their own can be highly intelligent according to traditional scientific definitions. Similarly, ambitious individuals who have never reflected on the meaning of what they do, but unthinkingly adopt conventional goals and values, becoming agents and mouthpieces for their ‘interest group’ (perhaps a religious group, or professional group, or political group), can be highly intelligent.

But lifelong reflection on and scrutiny of, the ‘ends’ shaping one’s life  is also essential to a truly intelligent life. Cultivating self-awareness, openness to other perspectives, and awareness of the ‘bigger picture’ of life’s meaning and value, is critical to living intelligently. These are aspects of mindfulness. Mindfulness cultivates wisdom and wisdom is an aspect of intelligence.

Summary: The Five Factors of Intelligence

Intelligence is a richer concept than scientists would have us believe: There are five key dimensions to intelligence.

1. IQ and ‘G’
2. Strategy and purposefulness
3. Expertise and mastery

These 3 depend on, and are greatly expanded by, the intelligent use of mindware.

1. Independence of mind (mind hack proof)
2. Mindfulness and wisdom

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Related posts:

1. Mind-Hacking With The Framing Effect
2. Mindfulness, Working Memory Capacity & Emotional Intelligence
3. 4 Days Of Mindfulness Meditation Improves Cognitive Efficiency

How the IQ Factors change on average over the lifespan

The diagram below shows how our different cognitive abilities change over the lifespan on average in the population. This is from data collected by comparing scores in different age groups on IQ tests that measure the different factors of IQ. Of course, these are average scores, and as an individual you can show a very different pattern.

The ‘thinking skill’ IQ factors that are trained by High IQ Pro are circled in red.

You can see from the graph that short term memory and fluid intelligence (Gf) can benefit from training beyond the mid-thirties. Speed of processing is the most dramatically affected by aging so this too may be a focus for brain training. Fortunately, intelligent decision making and problem solving often does not require processing speed abilities. The cognitive ability that is most resistant to cognitive aging is crystallized intelligence – our store of knowledge,  information and skills. This continues to grow until the mid 60s.

You can find exercises to train each of the factors of IQ discussed above at this link.

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Related posts:

1. Talking Aloud When Solving Problems Heightens Intelligence In Older People
2. Mindfulness, Working Memory Capacity & Emotional Intelligence
3. Running Improves Fluid Intelligence

In the square of 64 slots there are 34 hidden consecutive associations which you must discover. An association is a coherent relation between two adjacent slots or two slots that are connected diagonally.

The slot of origin is e-3, from here you must choose the next slot (and always one at a time, without skipping) in the direction you consider most convenient (right, up, left, down or diagonal). Keep in mind that there are 30 slots that don’t contain a real useful relation.

Each correctly chosen association is worth a point.

One error is permitted in the sequence of associations. Only the points obtained in a consecutive manner starting from the slot of origin will be counted.

The associations need to be described through letters and numbers. For example: c6-d7

Some associations require convergent thinking and others powerful divergent thinking. In general, logical, numerical, symbolic and spatial connections are presented. Alternative thinking is the key to success. Keep in mind that despite the “ameable” aspect of the test, it is highly challenging. Work as had as you can.

Required cultural level: medium

Estimated time for complete resolution: between 2 and 4 hours.

Send your answers to: hiqland@gmail.com

A few days after your answers have been received you will be e-mailed a score report.

Take as much time as you need.
References are allowed.
Please, do not discuss solutions in public forums.
No norm is available yet.

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No related posts.

In 2008 a team of cognitive neuroscientists from Bern, Switzerland and Michigan, United States, demonstrated that a very specific type of cognitive training called the dual n-back can improve intelligence. The article entitled ‘improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory’ can be found here.

This was the first documented experimental effect of brain training on IQ in over40 years. Why did it take so long to discover an effective training method?

Our short term memory is a big part of the story. We use our short term memory all the time for any storage of information that is short term – perhaps over a matter of 10 or 20 seconds – for example, while remembering directions have have just heard while driving. This  is memory by rote and is essentially a passive form of memory storage.

Working memory: what is it?

But more important than just remembering information by rote is being able to do mental operations on that information – to solve a problem, to figure something out, or reason through something to find an answer. For instance, while figuring out a 15% tip, or how much currency is worth while you are in another country. The ability to hold information in mind for brief periods, and manipulate it mentally is a type of short term memory called working memory. You have to do mental work on the information, not just store it. That is why it is called ‘working memory’.

The capacity of working memory

Most people have a working memory capacity of about 2 or 3 – much less than the classic short term memory span of around 7 (‘magical number 7′) for just storing information without doing any cognitive operations on it such as comparing or ordering or adding.

The working memory-IQ link

People vary widely in their working memory capacity. It is now known that these differences are linked to IQ level. General intelligence – measured by standardized IQ tests – depends on working memory because working memory affects a wide range of complex cognitive tasks besides figuring out a tip, involving reasoning problem solving, and making sense of things. We use working memory every single time we reason, plan and problem solve. Even comprehending long sentences (like the ones in this article) requires working memory!

Working memory and the intelligence behind our IQ level both share the same brain circuitry – part of the frontal cortex of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. (‘Dorsal’ means up, and ‘lateral’ means to the side – hence ‘dorsolateral’). This is one of the most recently evolved parts of the brain.

How to improve IQ – the logic

The logic is simple: If you can improve your working memory capacity by training it directly, you can therefore improve your intelligence level. There is, in technical terms, a ‘transfer effect’ from working memory training to gains in intelligence and IQ.

Intelligence can now be improved by 40% – as a side effect

The cognitive psychologists at the University of Bern in Switzerland and the University of Michigan in the States, demonstrated that by training on a specifically designed working memory exercise you can increase working memory capacity by over 65% over just 19 days of training.

This improvement in this type of short term memory capacity had a remarkable side effect: a 40% gain in intelligence – as measured by a version of the time limited Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices IQ test – one of the most valid and highly regarded IQ tests for culture fair intelligence.

To find out about this working memory training software, click here.

Related posts:

1. Working memory capacity enhances piano sight reading performance
2. Mindfulness, Working Memory Capacity & Emotional Intelligence

Our thoughts and inner mental life is encoded not in the electrical firing of individual brain cells or neurons, but in patterns of electrical activity in networks (or circuits) of neurons. There are many different networks in the brain – each serving a different function – and many different possible patterns of activation within these networks.

Life can be understood as a series of problems – better called ‘challenges’ – that need to be solved. …How to fix w, how to save for x, how to negotiate y, how to meet z. The more intelligent we are, the better we are able to tackle these problems efficiently and effectively. The AI researcher Kurtzweil defined intelligence as:

the ability to optimally use limited resources – including time – to achieve goals.

Intelligence involves applying rules, heuristics (rules of thumb) or strategies to solve problems, and exploring a ‘problem space’ with these rules. For example, finding a wallet may involve applying the rule ‘search one room at a time’.

Insights through trial and error

But new insights and new types of solutions usually also need lots of room for trial and error – for experimentation. Here is an example.

My dad and I were trying to move a very heavy bag of cement down a steep hill and then over a shoulder height wall onto a terrace. Applying our intelligence (!), we knew we’d make the task much easier a) working together, and b) using a wheelbarrow. We shared the load of the bag to get it into the wheelbarrow, and got to the bottom of the hill in no time. But then we were confronted with the problem of how to get it over the wall onto the terrace. We tried lifting it together but it was too heavy. Dad got up onto the terrace, and we tried pushing and pulling. We were experimenting – trial and error wise. But nothing was working. Then I had an ‘ah ha’ moment – a flash of insight. Why not break open the paper covering of the cement, and just scoop it up in handfulls?! That will work. Problem solved. In this example, trial and error gave way to a strategy – a new rule – that worked just fine.

Our daily lives are filled with these kinds of experiences, in which we abandon old behaviours that are no longer efficient or effective and develop new, more appropriate ones. This ability lies at the heart of our general intelligence (link). A recent study, pulibshed on May 13th in the journal Neuron, has investigated exactly what is going on in neural circuits during these ‘insight’ moments that follow from periods of trial and error, in which a better strategy arises to deal with a problem.

Recent research shows what is happening in the brain

“The ability of animals and humans to infer and apply new rules …relies critically on the frontal lobes,” explains Dr. Jeremy K. Seamans from the Brain Research Centre at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.

In our study, we examined how groups of frontal cortex neurons in rat brains switch from encoding a familiar rule to a completely novel rule that could only be deduced through trial and error.

Rats are intelligent mammals. Like humans they appear to figure out new rules through trial and error when trying to solve problems. Dr Seamans and his colleagues looked at networks of neurons in the rat’s frontal cortex as the rats worked on a task to obtain food that needed a new, ‘insightful’ solution. While it took many attempts of trial and error to figure out the new rule, the researchers found out that the network of brain cells did not change its electrical pattern gradually, but showed an abrupt transition to a new pattern, corresponding to the new, effective behaviour – as if the network had experienced an ‘ah ha’ moment.

In the present problem solving context where the animal had to infer a new rule by accumulating evidence through trial and error, such sudden neural and behavioral transitions may correspond to moments of ’sudden insight’.

Dr. Durstewitz.

Problem solving, sleep & brain plasticity

So insights, that are experienced as ‘break throughs’, have a real basis in the brain that involves a rapid reorganisation of electrical patterns into new, more adaptive, configurations. This is a type of very rapid brain plasticity, and is an essential aspect of applying our intelligence in daily challenges in life.

Interestingly, other research indicates that sleeping on a problem can help with just this kind brain plasticity. Dream (REM) sleep, has been shown to help attain solutions to new problems by stimulating associative networks, allowing the brain to make new and useful associations between unrelated ideas (link).

Reference

Daniel Durstewitz, Nicole M. Vittoz, Stan B. Floresco, Jeremy K. Seamans. Abrupt Transitions between Prefrontal Neural Ensemble States Accompany Behavioral Transitions during Rule Learning. Neuron, 2010; 66 (3): 438-448 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.03.029

Related posts:

1. Brain Plasticity
2. Brain Plasticity & Its Power
3. Dreaming Boosts Fluid Problem Solving

Stereotypes about aging

There are two stereotypes in circulation about aging and mental ability – a negative one and a positive one. We associate aging with becoming slower, less ‘on the ball’, and with memory loss. We also may link aging with the idea of wisdom and negotiation skills – useful for many contemporary social problems.

In our arguably youth-centered culture, exercising more cynicism, we may reflect and assume that there will indeed be scientific evidence for the negative stereotype, but – let’s be realistic – not the positive one. We may perhaps assume that the positive stereotype exists just to make older people feel better about their lot. But what we find is that both stereotypes find support. That in some – very important – domains, being older puts a person at an intellectual advantage. Cognition can be better in old age compared to young adulthood and being middle aged.

The evidence for both losses and gains in mental ability

There is a substantial body of scientific evidence that indicates that, yes, as we age many of our mental processes become less efficient  - notably our fluid intelligence. For this reason, we recommend exercise, nutrition that stimulates neurogenesis (such as creatine), and brain training with High IQ Pro that specifically targets the fluid intelligence and short term memory neural circuitry this is most vulnerable to degeneration during aging.

These cognitive declines may be a concern if you’re in your mid-60s plus. But there are important gains that can offset these losses in the overall balance sheet of cognitive abilities. A recent study by Grossmann and his colleagues, published in a prestigious scientific journal – the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – tested the idea that as we age our wisdom improves, in the sense of gaining in the ability to mediate and resolve interpersonal conflicts. To quote from their abstract:

We asked participants to read stories about intergroup conflicts and interpersonal conflicts and predict how these conflicts would unfold. We show that relative to young and middle-aged people, older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge. Our coding scheme was validated by a group of professional counselors and wisdom researchers. Social reasoning improves with age despite a decline in fluid intelligence. The results suggest that it might be advisable to assign older individuals to key social roles involving legal decisions, counseling, and intergroup negotiations. Furthermore, given the abundance of research on negative effects of aging, this study may help to encourage clinicians to emphasize the inherent strengths associated with aging.

This is a very welcome result. Note that it is a result concerning reasoning ability – an aspect of intelligence – and not just interpersonal relations. It’s genuinely a statement about the quality of thought.

So there is a scientific basis to our culture’s ‘wisdom of age’ cliche. Older people are smarter in dealing with social conflicts. Since social conflicts lie at the heart of our political and social world, this gives a potentially very strong edge for the older – 60 plus – individual.

For more information on the effects of aging on cognition, click here.

Reference

Grossmann, et al (2010), Reasoning about social conflicts improves into old age, PNAS, 2010, 107, (16), 7246-7250. (link)

Related posts:

1. Talking Aloud When Solving Problems Heightens Intelligence In Older People
2. What Causes Loss Of Reasoning Ability From Middle Age?
3. Intelligence, Strategy, Mastery, Mind Hacking & Wisdom

Researchers, led by Ellen Langer at Harvard University, have recently investigated the idea that many of our limits are of our own making, by studying the effects of mindset on something most people would assume was fixed: eye sight.

One experiment made use of the common belief that pilots have good eyesight. Students in the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) were given army fatigues to wear, and instructed to fly in a flight simulator. After doing some simple flight maneuvers, they did an eyesight test by reading markings on the wings of planes in front of them. In fact these were lines from an eye chart. A control group of ROTC students also wore the uniform, but they were informed the simulator was broken, and that they should pretend to fly the plane. The participants in the experiment who had performed like pilots, as opposed to those who just pretended, saw a full 40 percent better!

These findings suggest that even visual acuity – how sharp your vision is – can be influenced by your mindset. Because this is true, your vision can be improved by psychological means – for instance by having confidence in your visual abilities, or learning to believe you can see better. The research is part of a larger inquiry into the psychology of possibility. Langer’s lab questions how many of our limits are of our own making. There are clear implications for intelligence – a trait like eye sight that many believe is fixed in stone.

Belief in your capacity to improve your intelligence may facilitate the known effects of intelligence increasing training programs such as High IQ Pro. While the experimental results demonstrating the 40% gains in fluid intelligence as a result of training with our software did not depend on belief in the possibility of change, this kind of belief may enhance the observed effects. This study needs to be done!

Related posts:

1. Working memory capacity enhances piano sight reading performance