tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post8235509281313271170..comments2023-10-01T06:53:25.728-07:00Comments on IQ's Corner: Traing working memory increases fluid intelligence (Gf): New researchKevin McGrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07945625852793502565noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post-83097350512589030942008-08-26T10:39:00.000-07:002008-08-26T10:39:00.000-07:00"My prediction is that if he trains two groups - o..."My prediction is that if he trains two groups - one of mildly retarded and one of mildly gifted, the latter group would increase its g advantage over the former."<BR/><BR/>FINE. What's wrong with that? <BR/><BR/>"The presumed fact that g could be boosted is quite a different matter from society's main problem: dealing with differences in g between individuals."<BR/><BR/>Why is that "society's main<BR/>problem"? Who says? <BR/><BR/>"What is needed is finding a way<BR/>o erase IQ differences, not merely to boost IQ undiscriminately (and hence to magnify pre-existing genetic differences)."<BR/><BR/>WHY?<BR/><BR/>I think we need was to boost<BR/>I.Q. indiscriminately.<BR/><BR/>PS: there's plenty of unexploited<BR/>technologies for steepening the<BR/>sides of the bell curve, i.e.<BR/>for reducing I.Q. differences,<BR/>at least on the low end (i.e. get<BR/>rid of most of the very low <BR/>numbers). ERASURE of differences<BR/>should not be the goal, and<BR/>will not be possible in any<BR/>case. But getting rid of a lot<BR/>of the low numbers is quite<BR/>possible.Alanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12678235324848455330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post-85576647281202754832008-08-26T10:38:00.000-07:002008-08-26T10:38:00.000-07:00"My prediction is that if he trains two groups - o..."My prediction is that if he trains two groups - one of mildly retarded and one of mildly gifted, the latter group would increase its g advantage over the former."<BR/><BR/>FINE. What's wrong with that? <BR/><BR/>"The presumed fact that g could be boosted is quite a different matter from society's main problem: dealing with differences in g between individuals."<BR/><BR/>Why is that "society's main<BR/>problem"? Who says? <BR/><BR/>"What is needed is finding a way<BR/>o erase IQ differences, not merely to boost IQ undiscriminately (and hence to magnify pre-existing genetic differences)."<BR/><BR/>WHY?<BR/><BR/>I think we need was to boost<BR/>I.Q. indiscriminately.<BR/><BR/>PS: there's plenty of unexploited<BR/>technologies for steepening the<BR/>sides of the bell curve, i.e.<BR/>for reducing I.Q. differences,<BR/>at least on the low end (i.e. get<BR/>rid of most of the very low <BR/>numbers). ERASURE of differences<BR/>should not be the goal, and<BR/>will not be possible in any<BR/>case. But getting rid of a lot<BR/>of the low numbers is quite<BR/>possible.Alanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12678235324848455330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post-16070997390526604912008-06-17T12:59:00.000-07:002008-06-17T12:59:00.000-07:00It would seem pretty clear that working memory is ...It would seem pretty clear that working memory is tied to gF. In the study, the subject's experienced an increase in both. However, the authors were careful to investigate this, and they found that even though there was an increase in working memory, it wasn't enough to account for the entire increase in gF. They hypothesize that the rest comes from an increase in the ability to make fast connections between items.<BR/><BR/>Anonymous:<BR/>If this task just raised everyone's intelligence by a constant amount, sure we'd still have inequalities, but I would argue it's still a better world. Better to have everyone smarter than to stay where we are.<BR/><BR/>If anyone is interested, my wife and I have written an open source implementation of the dual-n-back training task. It's at http://www.soakyourhead.com/N-Back.aspx . And the source code is at: http://www.soakyourhead.com/dual-n-back-open-source.aspx .Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post-85340049323066393822008-06-11T18:38:00.000-07:002008-06-11T18:38:00.000-07:00Interesting thoughts!I've been watching recent rep...Interesting thoughts!<BR/><BR/>I've been watching recent reports of genetic changes in the brain in response to challenging stimuli (aka training) with growing excitement. After reading Jaeggi's research results I went out and built software to allow people to achieve the same results at home. I'm hoping that we'll get some anecdotal data. But if degus can learn to use rakes, I'm confident that the assumption that intelligence can't be trained will one day be consigned to myth...<BR/><BR/>Want to prove me wrong? Try this for yourself -- it's miraculous.<BR/><A HREF="http://iqtesttraining.com" REL="nofollow" TITLE="iq test training prep">www.iqtesttraining.com</A><BR/><BR/>It follows Jaeggi's method.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post-43436513566646061112008-06-10T19:37:00.000-07:002008-06-10T19:37:00.000-07:00Klingberg's research is fundamentally flawed with ...Klingberg's research is fundamentally flawed with the following difficulty: <BR/>1. The g factor is the differential capacity to profit from training.<BR/><BR/>2. The WM training was a type of training, and therefore, its efficacy depends on the g factor of the subjects SELECTED (N = 3) for training. <BR/><BR/>My prediction is that if he trains two groups - one of mildly retarded and one of mildly gifted, the latter group would increase its g advantage over the former. <BR/><BR/>The presumed fact that g could be boosted is quite a different matter from society's main problem: dealing with differences in g between individuals. <BR/><BR/>What is needed is finding a way to erase IQ differences, not merely to boost IQ undiscriminately (and hence to magnify pre-existing genetic differences).<BR/><BR/>I bet that nobody will find any time soon a solution to this challenge.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post-50461847229239914862008-06-10T13:46:00.000-07:002008-06-10T13:46:00.000-07:00I wouldn't call that a failure since it wasn't the...I wouldn't call that a failure since it wasn't the study's purpose—besides, they are working on that aspect as we speak.<BR/><BR/>Torkel Klingberg found a similar phenomenon in one of his studies: http://www.klingberglab.se/pub/Westerberg2007b.pdf<BR/><BR/>He also found that gains were still remarkably positive after eight months from the end of training. My hunch is that the plasticity related to working-memory training is similar to the plasticity related to musical training. There a severe cortical changes that are now "hardened" in the musician's brain after many years of training. I bet that it will be the same with many years of working-memory training.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11327954.post-84050369909487058262008-06-09T21:03:00.000-07:002008-06-09T21:03:00.000-07:00you miss the major failure of the study: we do not...you miss the major failure of the study: we do not know for how long the result will last. The history of IQ enhancement is littered with miracle improvements that have vanished a couple of years down the road. In other words, snake oil...and plenty of naive buyers...Sigh.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com