Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory
pnas.org
pnas.org
http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall10/psy8935/default.htm
In the seminar, the assembled faculty members, graduate students, and interested members of the general public (I am in the last category) discuss research papers in psychology and try to make sense of what new papers are claiming. We look at the study methodologies to see if sample sizes are adequate, control groups are adequately assembled, and statistical analysis of the data has been done properly. If my recollection is correct, this particular paper was mentioned at least in passing at one of the seminar sessions last school year, when I began attending the seminar.
Looking at all the issues that one would look at while examining a research paper,
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
it seems to me that this paper suggests an intriguing area for further research, but I would be doubtful of taking this to the bank by signing up for the training course mentioned in the paper in the expectation of increasing my IQ score (much less, in the expectation of increasing my performance in the real world outside the testing room). Working memory plainly has something to do with real world cognitive performance--all the intelligence researchers are looking at that issue these days--
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=working+memory+IQ
and working memory plainly can be improved by some forms of training. But there is a long way to go before we can say with confidence which form of training will have the most impact at least expense and inconvenience for the greatest number of human beings grappling with real-world cognitive tasks.
"The adaptive character of the training leads to continual engagement of executive processes while only minimally allowing the development of automatic processes and task-specific strategies."
In Iconclast, Gregory Burns talks about 2 pathways in the brain, one used for tasks we know how to do and one for new tasks. Using the latter, he says, is when we are being creative. And he presents ways to use the latter more frequently.
In meditation, one of the most important lessons is to realize that there is the thinking brain, which is the conditioned mind and is concerned with time, the past and the future.
And there is the listener, the one that gets a chance to solve problems when the thinker gives up. We can't even see how it works. There is no visible linear thought process. The brain is not using that automatic pathway. It lives in and pays attention to the present, not what happened in the past or what may someday happen. It is about being present.
So training this listener part of the brain, the unconditioned part, makes sense to me. We've all known people that are stuck repeating conditioned behaviors. There's no doubt this interferes with achievement.