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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: 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.
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(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.