For years, scientific studies suggested that smarts were mostly heritable and fixed through young adulthood—nothing one could willfully boost. But some recent studies hint that a segment of smarts, called fluid intelligence—where you use logic and patterns, rather than knowledge, to analyze and solve novel problems—can improve slightly with memory exercises. The alluring finding quickly gave life to a $1 billion brain training industry [Ad blocker needs to be turned off]. This industry, including companies such as Lumosity, Cogmed, and NeuroNation, has since promised everything from higher IQs to the ability to stay sharp through aging. The industry even boasts that it can help users overcome mental impairments from health conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), traumatic brain injury, and the side effects of chemotherapy.
Those claims are clearly overblown and have been roundly criticized by scientists, the media, and federal regulators. Earlier this year, Lumosity agreed to pay $2 million to the Federal Trade Commission over claims of deceptive advertising. The FTC said Lumosity "preyed on consumers' fears about age-related cognitive decline." In the settlement, the FTC forbid the company from making any such claims that the training could sharpen consumers' minds in life-altering ways.
In a study designed to assess the experimental methods of earlier brain-training studies, researchers found that sampling bias and the placebo effect explained the positive results seen in the past. "Indeed, to our knowledge, the rigor of double-blind randomized clinical trials is nonexistent in this research area," the authors report. They even suggest that the overblown claims from brain training companies may have created a positive feedback loop, convincing people that brain training works and biasing follow-up research on the topic.
[Abstract]: Placebo effects in cognitive training
Has any of you tried brain training? If yes, what is your view of such training?
(Score: 4, Funny) by goody on Tuesday June 21 2016, @05:25PM
I can't remember which service I tried, but it was great.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:53PM
Contra-positive??
I looked at Lumosity once and it seemed stupid, waste of time.
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Tuesday June 21 2016, @10:12PM
I'm a Lumosity member. I had an elderly relative purchase it for me as a gift. Prior to that I had watched them play these games every so often and they said it helped keep them sharp. So regardless of anything else, it is entertaining to some people and viewed as exercise in a way.
While I can't make any claims about feeling any smarter, those fucking games are fucking challenging as fuck. I'm getting my enjoyment out of it, and as a bonus, it *might* possibly be good for my brain. That can't be said of a cheeseburger, joint, and couch-lock session.
I'd say at most my short term memory skills got better, but beyond that, it's all entertainment.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:21PM
My grandmother once told us "You know.. I think I am getting that disease that makes you lose your memory... what was it called?"
She was not joking. :(
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tork on Tuesday June 21 2016, @11:38PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @06:54AM
Before I was born I was given the choice: A great memory or a huge pencil. Hmm... I don't remember what I chose.
Hmmm, definitely not great powers of observation. So it must be the other one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @01:12AM
If you can't remember than it must have been http://warpmymind.com/ [warpmymind.com] Judging by the popular files, I take it your wardrobe has shifted lately?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Tuesday June 21 2016, @05:31PM
Besides the placebo factor, attendance/absence is the major factor for doing well or not. A motivated person coming to the classes and going through the homework will always, on average, do better than those who have other interests than education. And, I have the numbers to back up that claim (16...20 year olds).
The major factor we see is that students have low attendance (absent up to 50%). Whether the cause is disinterest or other reasons is only important for changing the situation. The resulting grades are directly correlated and causal to the attendance numbers. Even students who are below average, but attend most classes (relatively) concentrated, are doing better than the talented with a lot of absence.
I have not yet have had a student fail who was willing to come to classes. But that again is related to motivation. So, bad students will be bad and good students will be good, where good and bad does not necessarily relate to or correlate with IQ.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:30PM
attendance/absence is the major factor for doing well or not.
+1
I ran an extremely successful retail operation for 15+ years and at every tri-monthly staff meeting the very first thing done was to have the staff stand and turn to each person beside them and thank them for showing up. Other stores in our franchise network would often send their staff to our meetings because the results were often so positive...
(Score: 2) by morpheus on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:01PM
I am not sure I agree. My experience after over 20 years of teaching (from graduate classes to pseudo subjects like pre calculus) is that motivation matters somewhat and those who do not attend, certainly lack motivation and fail miserably. But among those who do attend, the grade distribution is the usual bell curve. Trying alone does not get you there and I usually have an unpleasant duty to explain that I do not care about effort, only results.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:02PM
Yes, the grades distribute as a bell-curve. That is the general distribution for a normal class. But the point is that, objectively, no single student should need to fail when doing their work, even those with less talent (they just are at the bottom end of the bell curve). That is my experience (also teaching). There are always exceptions to the rule, but lets stick to the "general" case.
I've been plotting grades against absence, and a statistically very significant trend becomes visible. When plotting the cumulative averages, the curve becomes about exponential, when all perform as expected (you can extrapolate the baseline knowledge at 100% absence and optimal average performance at 0% absence). A lovely feature of the cumulative average is that is also indicates if there are poor performing students while having high attendance (the average curve falls at high attendance instead of rising). These students are likely the less talented and may need some extra help (we identified a couple this way, which already were identified by other means).
My point is, students do not need to fail, even the weaker ones. A motivated student is one that has general high attendance. The weaker need more help and may not become stars. But they do not need to fail (lets not talk about exceptions). A full class is easier to manage when all do come all the time. It is easier on both the teacher and the students. That is implicitly reflected in the grades. Motivation correlates with attendance (generally with a causal relation). That is what we try to address, but it is an extremely difficult subject to handle.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by morpheus on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:34PM
My point is, students do not need to fail, even the weaker ones. A motivated student is one that has general high attendance. The weaker need more help and may not become stars. But they do not need to fail (lets not talk about exceptions). A full class is easier to manage when all do come all the time. It is easier on both the teacher and the students. That is implicitly reflected in the grades. Motivation correlates with attendance (generally with a causal relation). That is what we try to address, but it is an extremely difficult subject to handle.
I disagree, again. They absolutely need to fail sometimes. I teach mostly engineering students and mathematics and physics majors and it is my experience that a lot of them got into `science' (or STEM as is so popular to say nowadays) after watching Discovery channel nonsense about how science is `pure fun' and therefore requires little work or skill. I have collected quite a bit of statistics myself and find no correlation between simply attendance and final success. It used to be that only about 20% of engineering majors graduated with an engineering degree and now, due to grade inflation this figure has risen to about 30% but it still means 70% of engineering majors are in the wrong field. I am not sure what kind of causality you are observing but mere attendance does not lead to positive results. Working 2 hours at home for every hour in class (as their handbook requires by the way) seems to produce better results but most of them are under the impression that all the work can be finished in class. I simply have no sympathy for this apathy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by BsAtHome on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:59PM
I think we are talking about two different things here.
The higher educations (university/engineering) usually works like: 100% at start of education; 20..30% leaves during or after first semester; another 30...40% leaves before getting a diploma. From my EE/CS engineering education I remember that fewer than 35% finished getting a diploma (I got one).
You can argue that the ones leaving are the ones that have low grades, and yes, they have low grades and are bad performers, but are usually also the less talented or in the wrong field who should not start at that education (level) at the first place. But I do not count the ones who leave in my statistics. Only the ones who actually go through are counted. But, your point being, that it is /hard work/ to get/earn good grades is for me an obvious fact. Nothing comes easy and you cannot get the happiness if you never suffered the sadness. But that is a lesson of life, not just education.
Grade inflation is a problem, I agree, but higher education is (as far as I am concerned) not about the factual knowledge of the courses, but the ability to have enough discipline to go through the motion of learning, and hard work. That part is undermined by grade inflation and that sucks bigtime. I do not have sympathy for those who think they can "wing-it" through class. That is reflected in the grades. But the unfortunate premise is often that the grades reflect the knowledge acquired and not the ability to use it. The number of students actually reaching to top of Bloom's taxonomy is rather low (and so is my use of the highest grades). But then again, grade inflation has made it near impossible to put enough pressure on the students to get there. That, however, is a completely different discussion.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by morpheus on Tuesday June 21 2016, @10:26PM
Amen, I think I see your point. I thought for a moment that you were arguing an all too popular `everybody is a winner' point of view. I see it is a bit more subtle than that. And a great point about `suffering vs satisfaction' dilemma.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @03:55AM
and those who do not attend, certainly lack motivation and fail miserably.
What about people who self-educate? What if someone already knows the material? Some people who don't show up are actually far more motivated than those who do.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:52PM
I have not yet have had a student fail who was willing to come to classes. But that again is related to motivation. So, bad students will be bad and good students will be good, where good and bad does not necessarily relate to or correlate with IQ.
So if I get what you are saying (and I wasn't really paying attention, my mind was on this really neat puzzle app from Lemonsity that actually creates brain cells by just playing a game!), the billion-dollar industry is a scam, and you are a bad teacher since your bad students stay bad. Am I right? Do I win a prize?
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday June 21 2016, @10:06PM
You are mentally absent when playing games. That is, for all practical matters, the same as physical absence. I do have a couple of those. They generally drop out before getting a diploma and also have (very) low grades...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @04:01AM
Sadly, a majority of those who do go on to acquire degrees do not have a deep understanding of their field of choice. They were able to get their degrees because a grand majority of colleges and universities have low standards, thanks in part to the 'Everybody's gotta go to college' mentality.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ah.clem on Tuesday June 21 2016, @05:59PM
I know there are people that do buy into this crap, but who the hell are they? Like the "Baby Einstein/Baby Mozart" crowd 15 years ago, where are those incredible young composers and scholars? My favorite is, and has been for many years, "Rosetta Stone"; hipsters dumping close to a grand to learn and forget Mandarin in less than a year. And Rosetta Stone is still going strong.
NPR has been on a big downhill slide for years now, but I knew it was close to bottom when they took on ads for Luminosity (excuse me, they don't do 'ads', they just spend 30 seconds giving you all the information about the company, product and how to contact them, not an ad at all...) which I'm sure Luminosity was doing just to buy some cred.
It might sound cruel, but in my opinion, the room temps that get taken by this kind of crap deserve it. More than once I have wished that my moral compass allowed me to take advantage of people, but it just seems wrong. But I have no sympathy for those that buy into this stuff.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:27PM
To be fair, there are a lot more young composers and scholars now than there were in Mozart's time.
None of that is attributable to spammy edutainment bullshit, but they do exist.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:33PM
Rosetta stone is going strong-ish, because people use their learned language, THEN forget it due to disuse.
They tend to use it either Job or recreational travel, but once that is over language skills fall into disuse and the "forgetting" happens quickly.
So almost any language training does work. Which is why they make money. And you never hear about those that continue to use their second language daily in their jobs (police, customer relations, service personnel etc). All you hear about are those that never REALLY needed it anyway.
Additionally, several studies over decades show that re-learning is way faster the second time around if you learned enough to be conversational the first time.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:37PM
but who the hell are they?
Grandma got my wife "baby mozart" cds.
From the point of view of the record company execs, they're like "well, classical genre sales to 20-something wimmin aren't that good, how can we shovel some Mozart?" I don't think they care about the science they just want to shovel more product and if they had a surplus of death metal we'd be subjected to endless stories about how death metal makes babies learn to ... I donno shoot guns earlier or something, and parents who care buy their babies death metal audio CDs to listen to. Would make a hell of an infomercial.
From the point of view of grannie "well, I already bought the baby 62 onesie outfits and 8 pairs of baby shoes and 52 pairs of baby socks, now whats a creative way to spoil the unholy hell out of my unborn soon to be first grandchild?" Oh look a CD young people these days like technology and things (although to her she'd have responded the same way to an 8-track).
From the point of view of my wife "well, wtf do I do with these?" (she used polite wife language, all "the thought that counts" and stuff but running what she said thru the internal wetware app that all husbands run, she was outputting a pretty strong "WTF" signal).
So gifts, yeah.
That's what I don't get about brain training is it smells like a product that sells well as a gift. Because what teenage boy doesn't dream of his auntie coming into town to give him a nice 7th grade math summer refresher book of pre algebra worksheets. What a fun way to spend your summer, if you're a 40-something woman trying to think like a twelve year old boy. Or whatever brain training app these guys are pushing. I'm not seeing the sales model working well for subscriptions and the like. Something auntie can buy for her nephew works, like a cartridge for a nintendo DS and I think I/we actually got that one. But the new startups, I donno about their model.
This late in the startup bubble cycle, the startup model isn't to sell stuff to consumers but to sell BS to investors to cash out and GTFO before it crashes, so it probably doesn't matter.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:20PM
>Wimmin
America is a woman's cuntry.
Women will just fuck the invaders.
While the mmmaaallleeesss are cut down.
(good the mmaaallleeesss like young girls! Jesus hates them! (God of Deuteronomy does not hate them))
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:56PM
I don't know, I torrented The Western Tradition [learner.org] and will make that a gift for lots of young folks as my nephews and nieces start having kids.
It's not super exciting, but it does give young people a flavor for western civilization.
And it helps that Eugen Weber [wikipedia.org] is dead, IMHO.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:01PM
Isn't it basically a cousin of SAT/ACT prep classes which provably turn thousands of dollars into tens of points?
Not necessarily belittling the tens of points. If you're on the bubble at WTF-U and ten points gets you in, and dear old dad had to pay $1000 for a prep class then its "a good deal". For random dude on the street its probably a waste.
I would imagine its cyclical. The first uni I attended pooled all in-state applicants, ordered by ACT, and the historical minimum cutoff for the instate quota was like 20 when I went. Due to a baby-bust or honestly I don't know or care why. You need much higher scores to survive of course. I got a 33 on the pre-ACT prep test the year before so I didn't prep at all and when I took the real test I got a 32. I remember my score to this day because a fellow student, much older than I was, got a 35 when I was just a freshman and that got him a free ride scholarship for four years, so my goal as a high school student was why not get a free ride or maybe if I only get a 30 I'll still get a "big" scholarship like maybe zero tuition. I can assure you that an ACT score of 32 got you exactly jack shit nothing. Nothing. At all. I could have scored a 21 and it wouldn't have affected my situation at all. So that was ... annoying.
Anyway I checked online and there's lots of weasel words and they don't strict rank by ACT and want letters of recommendation and diversity and extracurriculars and BS like that now even for in state applicants, and their cutoff is a much higher an ACT 27 now. I guess if I were applying now, I'd make sure to get a good night's sleep before taking the ACT, maybe even test prep just to make sure just in case I had a bad testing day.
That's supply and demand for you.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:25PM
VLM: interesting post, perhaps you might "translate" it into international vernacular?
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:24PM
perhaps you might "translate" it into international vernacular?
What don't want a car analogy? Just as well, that would stump me.
Too many americanisms to do this right, but I'll try:
Back when VAX/VMS was high tech not retrocomputing, and MSDOS4.0 was merely a gleam in Mr Gate's eye, American high school kids "all" took a fairly generic intelligence / IQ test that's carefully PR'ed and spun into not being called an IQ test because of historical precedent with poll taxes and voting irregularities and discrimination against non-whites and so forth. But call a spade a spade, its an IQ test by any other name. Anyway, standards being a great idea and the only thing better than one standard is having two, we have the competing ACT and SAT companies giving each kid a number on an obscure incompatible range of scores.
In the old days the difference between euro land college funding and burger land college funding, was merely philosophical. Sure we charged kids cold hard cash, but back in the old days it was pretty easy to scrape up $500 tuition, so school was so cheap that even at minimum wage it was practically free even if philosophically it was evil to restrict learning based on finances. Actually it was more expensive to find a place to eat and sleep than to afford to learn. As it should be. Anyway generations of 10% annual inflation in tuition "because your only hope for a future is a degree, so you'll gladly pay anything, right, anything?" just like we determine a fair price for health care. So now tuition at the private engineering college near my workplace is $50K/yr instead of $500 per semester. I would assume in euro land college is still free.
So in the old days if you wanted to go to a public uni, plus or minus baby boom supply and demand foolishness, pretty much if you had a pulse and a checkbook they let you in. They still had more applicants than slots so they needed some strategy and they used the crypto-IQ tests of ACT/SAT as gatekeepers. I assure you if you only scored the minimum you'd never survive till graduation. Anyway, its WAY more competitive now and even public schools require endless hoop-jumping and paper shuffling where in the old days they had like a two page app and you sent them your ACT test results and you were done with the application process. It was easy to get in, in the old days, so prep classes were a waste of time and money, for most people. But even in the old days it was very competitive to get into Harvard or Yale or other ivies (perhaps you've heard of them even in euro-land) and if you felt you were on the bubble of almost getting in, there were coaching services that could improve your test result by like two or three percent, which might have worked. They were expensive and lots of money changed hands accomplishing very little, which sounds like our modern economic system in general. Some things never change.
Anyway my point was that for decades there's been people claiming cognitive and IQ improvement in exchange for piles of money and oodles of time. Mostly it produced very little, which some times is enough, but mostly isn't much. In that way I'd assume no scientific breakthrus having been made that modern "brain training" is about as effective as a SAT-prep class in the olden days. Maybe if you really put some effort into it you'd gain the equivalent of a couple IQ points, but its not likely to be much more than a couple points and not likely to matter much in the big picture.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:18PM
We can ship you an accelerated training course in how to interpret that...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:40PM
I bumped by SAT score from 610+610=1220 to 670+670=1340 through self-study over the course of 6 months. This was enough to move me off the bubble in 2008 (www.floridastudentfinancialaid.org/ssfad/PDF/BFEligibilityAwardChart.pdf). The 1220->1340 improvement was enough to get "110% of tuition" covered (all tuition, all fees, and a small allowance for books/supplies).
When heading off to grad school, I attempted the same thing. Improvement from 550+630=1180 to 560+740=1300 was observed, which was not enough to meet the 1450 cutoff for another full ride (I found another institution to pay for it, who required a 1200+ score and 40 hours/week of work ).
Self-study paid off the first time, and didn't the second. Of course, it is possible that I am simply a ~1300 point person. My B+ average seems to back up that theory ;).
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:48PM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:02PM
Wow ACs, I take back everything I've ever said about Florida, that is one nice scholarship plan you folks have. Nothing like that where I grew up.
You have to be fair of course... back when I was a kid instate tuition was like $3000 per semester at the most expensive public uni and I had to pay or take out a loan for all $3K. I just checked online and next year its $10500 per semester for instate. BTW the minimum wage has only roughly doubled, as a point of comparison, although youth unemployment has risen from about zilch to about half, so for half the kids the summer income is $0.
I'm impressed to see room and board is almost $9K now, the dorms must be like luxury hotels now.
So on one hand back in the old days the smartest kids didn't get to go for free, on the other hand every kid got a $7500 discount every semester compared to today so it kinda balances out.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:02PM
Standardized testing prep 'works' by getting students familiar and comfortable with the paradigm. Lets people know the kind of questions that get asked and whether/when it's appropriate to guess. This can be a big help for people who have a lot of test anxiety.
Luminosity and the like work the same way. They basically are a number of the tests researchers typically do for things like working memory and executive function. If you practice those tests, you can get better at those tests. If you practice those tests, and someone evaluates your "IQ" with a different test, you won't be any better.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:54PM
This can be a big help for people who have a lot of test anxiety.
I would agree with you AC as I was pretty chill when I took the ACT and all went well, but an acquaintance type girl drove me home and I considered trying to get her to go on a date with me (teen boy, what do you expect, at that age I'd have asked a girl out at a funeral if she was hot) but she was crying pretty badly being freaked out about the test and OMG how will she ever get into med school and she can't take the stress and the waiting for the result woe is me and if she can't get into a good school to go to med school what will she ever do blah blah blah.
Also some years later I took the ASVAB test to get into the Army Reserves. Its yet another lightly disguised IQ test. They don't even bother disguising the results, mine were all like 140s and I was thinking you guys suck you can't even properly fake the results into not being an IQ test. I was pretty chill and admit I worried mostly about getting the shortest AIT humanly possible so as to get back home to go to school in time for the fall semester, which I barely accomplished, although I qualified for most any MOS I wanted. I'm thinking to myself why would I want an eleven month AIT as a reservist? Eleven months extra of basic training? Oh hell no. I would have been happy with a three week 71L course to become a file clerk. I ended up being an ammunition database sysadmin with a rifle, which is how it should be if you're a sysadmin. I supported the system those 71L grads used. That MOS no longer exists which is part of why I never re-enlisted. Also the unit I was in no longer exists as part of the Clinton era post cold war drawdown, reason #2 I didn't reenlist. Anyway the ASVAB has like 20 timed sections and at the end of the whole thing a very large and very angry looking dude jumped up, snapped his pencil in half, thru it across the room, shouted "this is bullshit, fucking bullshit" and stormed out of the room, this dude defined what storming out of a room should look like. Everyone's mouth just hanging open in shock, even the SSG running the test. I don't think anyone even blinked for like 15 seconds after he slammed the door.
Some folks just don't test well. For them, just faking a test until they chill out about testing is probably worth 10% of the points. Medication would probably be cheaper and more effective, however.
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:15PM
Re: ASVAB results, it amazes me the range of results people get on that test, and how seriously they're taken. I was shocked to learn that (a) there were people at the Intelligence School for AIT who had received ASVAB waivers (i.e. they didn't meet the minimum score for enlistment, but were allowed to join up anyhow), and (b) that for officers with the same date of rank (i.e. simultaneous graduates from an Academy or Officer Candidate School) the general technical (GT) component gets used as an unofficial pecking order to determine chain of command and order of succession. The looks on the faces of all the lieutenants in my unit when they found out that a newly minted Private had scored higher on that component than any of them were priceless.
Good times :)
PS - for anyone planning on taking the test, learn to recognize word problems where the solution boils down to a pair of similar fractions. Most of the "hard" math problems on the test were of that sort, and if I were faster at doing math in my head I'd have gotten a better score. Refreshing your memorization of multiplication and division tables would probably help with that.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @05:01PM
Similar experience, when I got to my second duty station the CO informed me that I had the second highest GT score in the unit with a single butter bar beating me by three points. With me a lowly PFC.
I made wagers with the NCOs and other officers in my unit that I had a higher GT then them I got a number of free beers that way.
I even remember they had practices to get a higher GT score which they would then go retake the asvab. Crazy I say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:39PM
Standardized testing prep 'works' by getting students familiar and comfortable with the paradigm. Lets people know the kind of questions that get asked and whether/when it's appropriate to guess. This can be a big help for people who have a lot of test anxiety.
I never took a prep course but I read a prep book for the GRE and indeed it was all about the test formatting and the many ways that it trips people up as well as how the adaptive nature of the computer testing worked: those first five questions are the most critical and after those it's just fine-tuning the score, if it feels like the questions are getting harder and harder and then tapering off after those first several then you're probably doing well.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:22PM
Actually I think these are more useless than the standardized test classes.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @04:09AM
The SAT and ACT mostly test for rote memorization and not a deep understanding of the material. The fact that people take them so seriously is an indication that our society does not value real education, but easy-to-understand test results.
(Score: 1) by jdavidb on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:19PM
$1 billion brain training industry [forbes.com] [Ad blocker needs to be turned off]
Something doesn't sit quite right with that long of a warning being in the story. I'm thinking Forbes will let me know that if and when I go there, unless I've got good enough ad blocking that they can't detect it, so no reason to disrupt the flow of the article by distracting me thinking about ad blocking.
Which is a wonderful technology all the way, maybe we should all talk about ad blocking some more... :D
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:42PM
Agreed. I'm too getting tired of people submitting stories full of warning about java this, or scripting that, and adblockers, or, (horrors!: a pdf), and what have you. Either find another site carrying the same story, or drill down to the print-link and submit that instead.
It seems some of those pontificating about scripting the loudest seem to post more links with warnings. Which makes me wonder how they found the story in the first place.
You can always find another link.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:38PM
Amazing how I haven't read a Forbes article since they started that, and yet feel as if I've missed nothing at all.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 1) by jdavidb on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:46PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:35PM
Probably, you can't up your 'Intelligence', but you should be able to up your I.Q. which is just a measurement of your ability to answer certain questions.
But, by reading, learning and having experiences, you should be able to be 'smarter' than if you just sit inside all day playing minecraft and
...wait
...ah, yes, i was digging towards that underwater temple. Damn Guardian fish.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:47PM
There's something here about bootstrappers, the American hard work dogma, and “if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?” but I can't put my finger on it. (At least not well enough to churn out a rant!) Instead followed a link from the Wikipedia page for Flowers for Algernon to a WaPo obituary for Daniel Keyes [washingtonpost.com]:
He taught in the early years of his career in New York schools and later was a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and at Ohio University. He said he never forgot an encounter with a pupil in a class for the developmentally disabled.
“Mr. Keyes, this is a dummy class,” he recalled the student saying, according to Newsday. “If I try hard and get smart before the end of the term, would you put me in a regular class? I want to be smart.”
In another class, Mr. Keyes said that he witnessed the dramatic progress of a learning-disabled student who then regressed when he was removed from lessons.
“When he came back to school, he had lost it all,” Mr. Keyes said. “He could not read. He reverted to what he had been. It was a heartbreaker.”
Also relevant ST:TNG episode [wikia.com].
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 21 2016, @09:18PM
Love your sig! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @06:55PM
A lot of gadgets marketed for fitness, like the old Health Rider, don't do very much because they don't work you hard enough. Indeed, the sales pitch is that you don't have to work hard. Unfortunately, no pain, no gain.
So the news that mental exercises like casual video games most likely do squat, is not surprising. But learning a foreign language well enough to give you confidence to sally forth into a foreign country, and away from the bilingual areas, probably is worthwhile for brain health. Ditto for mastering a year or two of math or science more advanced than where you left off in high school or college.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:11PM
Hopefully this spells an end to the "Lumosity" ads heard all the time on the likes of NPR.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:03PM
No such luck. All the settlement required of them was that they stop making specific claims of benefits from use of their service. They still have the ads on NPR, they just say something really generic like "Lumosity, supporting research into brain health" or something like that. Just like all the "dietary supplements" that are unregulated by the FDA as long as they make no specific health claims, these programs will never go away. And just like with dietary supplements, millions of people will always believe they are super effective.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:16PM
I do a lot of sudoku puzzles and crosswords as I ride the train for a few hours per work day. But I don't really think it made me any smarter. It makes me fill out 9x9 matrices really fast but I'm not really sure it translates to much else that is actually useful. Same with crosswords really, it might have improved my vocabulary somewhat - but at the same time a lot of the words in various crossword puzzles are not common words used in every day conversations so once again I doubt it really translates into something good and worthwhile. I figure it can't hurt my brain, it makes it feel like time passes faster (but it doesn't) and it keeps me somewhat entertained. But I don't really see it as "brain training".
The only one I tried was quite a few years ago - it was some "game" for one of the portable hand held consoles - but I can't remember which one or the name of it - so clearly it didn't work. It was probably the PSP and called Brain trainer or something. It was some japanese game I think.
The issue with Lumosity (etc) seem to be that they more or less claim to cure or prevent various brain conditions or diseases - I seriously doubt it will cure brain-cancer, dementia or Alzheimer disease just from playing some game for a little while per day. I am not even sure it really improves memory - I would think that if you play game A you become better at playing Game A and I'm not really sure it translates into other tasks.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:31PM
If the games they make you play have actual relevance to your other real world stuff then it could help in those other stuff.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by g2 In The Desert on Tuesday June 21 2016, @07:55PM
Yeah, I sat next to a doc on a flight who was doing real cognitive research and she explained how the tools were rubbish. I asked "Well, what about cross word puzzles, they keep you sharper, right?" She said "Doing lots of cross word puzzles makes you better at doing cross word puzzles, that's all". She didn't have anything to sell but a simple ol' research book. These guys have real money on the line.
(Score: 3, Touché) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday June 21 2016, @08:18PM
The alluring finding quickly gave life to a $1 billion brain training industry [Ad blocker needs to be turned off].
First of all, no it doesn't. I'm using uBlock and saw the whole page.
Secondly, if anything needs to [verb] off because an adblocker does stop something working, it's Forbes.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 21 2016, @10:24PM
uBlock and Ghostery here. Forbes is doing something odd with their ad blocker blocker. Usually I'll just click Forbes links twice. The first time will go to the quote of the day, and the second time will go to the actual article. I double checked and found that if the quote of the day just sits there, eventually it'll load the article after somewhere around 30 seconds.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 21 2016, @11:34PM
Does it really matter if the effect is "placebo" or not, if you're getting the desired results?
Sure, a "sham" exercise could do the same thing, so publish the sham method that works as well and let people use that for free.
If the results are measurable, significant, and any kind of lasting, who the hell cares if it is "no better than placebo"?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 22 2016, @02:13AM
This bothered me as well. What is an educational placebo? There is enough confusion and malfunction when it comes to effective pedagogy that I don't believe anyone would be able to measure such an effect, since there is no effective standard to compare it to. And this is why I recommend all students study Latin. Mindless repetition, drill, practice practice, practice, all on a language you will in all likelihood never use, and your test scores will miraculously improve! In all subject areas (except CS, YMMV:)! Of course, unlike Klingon, nobody owns Latin, so not likely to happen.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Wednesday June 22 2016, @03:59AM
What do they think I am? Stupid?
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.