Borderland

People tend to think of intelligence as a static quality, something that some people have more of than others. Yet we know that our brains are developed through experience, by stimulating neuronal connections. Yet, all experience isn’t equally valuable. And some experiences may even inhibit intellectual growth. Our goal as teachers should be to stimulate habits of mind that promote growth and development.

Maybe we should begin thinking of learning as more than just a psychological event. An article on the SharpBrains blog, Can Intelligence Be Trained? provides evidence that fluid intelligence, the ability to deal with new problems, may be influenced by exercising working memory.

A memory training experiment conducted by Martin Buschkuehl and Susanne Jaeggi is described in which participants in the experimental group far outperformed members of the control on a test of fluid intelligence that wasn’t directly trained. The question of whether any kind of memory training would have produced the same result was answered by pointing to other studies in which memory training did not transfer positively to fluid intelligence.

The authors of this study believe their memory training program was effective because it was challenging, complex, and it was designed so that participants could not develop task specific strategies that allowed them to “beat the game.” Working memory capacity, they claim, was truly extended through this training.

The best part of this whole article is that the memory training program is available online. Try it yourself. It’s tough, and it’ll take some practice. The more they trained, the more they gained, say the researchers. Who doesn’t want to try it?

A download version of Braintwister may soon be available.