Our intelligence measured by valid IQ tests is our ability to grasp situations, reason, problem solve, and learn and act efficiently and effectively. David Wechsler – the creator of the most widely used IQ test, the WAIS – defined intelligence as:

“the global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment.”

Intelligence is better conceived as being switched on and competent rather than being just ‘book smart’ or ‘good at math’. As Napoleon Hill put it: “Action is the real measure of intelligence”.

The value of IQ

IQ level is known to be positively correlated with many valuable things. Some that have been demonstrated in peer reviewed research are: achievement motivation, altruism, artistic ability, creativity, dietary preference, educational attainment, emotional sensitivity, health, sense of humor, income, breadth and depth of interests, leadership, longevity, linguistic abilities, memory, moral reasoning, motor skills, occupational status and success, and social skills. IQ is inversely associated with accident proneness, obedience, alcoholism, authoritarianism, crime, dogmatism, neurosis, impulsivity, racial prejudice, smoking and obesity.

The practical advantage of having a high IQ increases as our work/career environments become more changeable and complex – more novel, ambiguous, unpredictable, or multifaceted. A high IQ is key to strategic thinking in which planning, decision making and problem solving unfolds in the midst of complexity and uncertainty. IQ is thus of prime value for entrepreneurs who are strategizing and problem solving their way to success in far from stable environments.

“The more new situations you experience, the greater your ability to adapt to ever-changing circumstances.  For a long-term employee, being laid off may come as a serious blow.  But for a long-term entrepreneur, losing a particular client is just par for the course.  The entrepreneur has learned  [how to]  make it easy to add new income streams, while the employee may have much lower intelligence in this area.  Similarly, people who interact socially with new people every day will develop much greater social intelligence than those who interact with the same people over and over.”

Steve Pavlina

IQ Increasing Technologies: A Review

This article reviews three of the most effective IQ-increasing interventions that have a firm scientific basis – a basis in experimental laboratories and the exacting standards of peer reviewed scientific journals. The methods described below are part of the accumulated understanding of the scientific community about what can increase IQ – not just temporarily but long-term. Cognitive-enhancing nutrition, exercise and meditation is not covered in this review, which focuses on the use of intervention technologies.

1. Brain Training Software

Far-reaching advances in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience over the past decade have identified a close link between frontal lobe ‘working memory’ circuitry, and fronto-parietal problem solving, self-control and fluid reasoning circuitry. Our working memory is used for holding information in mind (images, concepts, language, numbers) for brief periods while engaging in active, goal-focused thinking or comprehension, while screening out distracting information. Working memory has a limited capacity, and the bigger that capacity the more the cognitive ‘RAM’ power a person has for processing information – to make connections, generate alternatives, and grasp relationships. This brainpower lies at the core of being smart. If super brain Eddie Morra in Limitless changed one thing in his brain, it was his working memory circuitry!

Software has now been developed for selectively targeting working memory circuitry, resulting in long term neuroplasticity changes increasing short term memory capacity, problem solving ability, self-control and overall IQ. This software is based on a training exercise called the n-back. A scientifically credible product is IQMindware.

A review published this year on the effectiveness of n-back working memory training by an old grad school friend, Dr Jason Chein, concludes:

“core working memory training studies seem to produce far-reaching transfer effects, likely because they target domain-general mechanisms of working memory. The results of individual studies encourage optimism regarding the value of working memory training as a tool for general cognitive enhancement.”

(Quoted from: Does working memory training work?  Psychon Bull Rev 2011)

In choosing an n-back working memory training application, ensure that you have a version and training program that has been demonstrated to increase IQ in a published scientific study – such as the landmark paper by Dr. Susan Jaeggi and colleagues (link) that first drew public attention to the benefits of n-back training. There are a number of n-back training programs on the market that do not replicate what is known to work. Avoid them.

2. Nootropics (‘Smart Drugs’)

The issue of using medication for cognitive enhancement is highly controversial, but the ethics of smart drugs is not discussed in this article. I’m simply presenting the facts.

Nootropics – also known as smart drugs, memory enhancers, cognitive enhancers and intelligence enhancers – are drugs, supplements, nutraceuticals (a product isolated or purified from foods) that are designed to improve cognitive functions such as memory, attention and intelligence. The use of nootropics for cognitive performance is widespread.

In January, the prestigious science journal Nature launched an informal survey into readers’ use of cognition-enhancing drugs, and found large-scale use (link).  One in five respondents said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory.

In 2008, Nature ran a commentary on this topic: Towards responsible use of cognitive enhancing drugs by the healthy. This article is well worth the time it takes to read. The authors outline the evidence in favor of the effectiveness of “smart drugs” and I will quote at length from the section “Paths to Enhancement” which reviews the nootropics known to boost brain power:

Ritalin and Adderall

Many of the medications used to treat psychiatric and neurological conditions also improve the performance of the healthy. The drugs most commonly used for cognitive enhancement at present are stimulants, namely Ritalin (methyphenidate) and Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts), and are prescribed mainly for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Because of their effects on the catecholamine system, these drugs increase executive functions in patients and most healthy normal people, improving their abilities to focus their attention, manipulate information in working memory and flexibly control their responses…

Modafinil

A newer drug, Modafinil (Provigil), has also shown enhancement potential. Modafinil is approved for the treatment of fatigue caused by narcolepsy, sleep apnoea and shift-work sleep disorder. It is currently prescribed off label for a wide range of neuropsychiatric and other medical conditions involving fatigue as well as for healthy people who need to stay alert and awake when sleep deprived, such as physicians on night call. In addition, laboratory studies have shown that modafinil enhances aspects of executive function in rested healthy adults, particularly inhibitory control. Unlike Adderall and Ritalin, however, Modafinil prescriptions are not common, and the drug is consequently rare on the college black market. But anecdotal evidence and a readers’ survey both suggest that adults sometimes obtain modafinil from their physicians or online for enhancement purposes.

Aricept

A modest degree of memory enhancement is possible with the ADHD medications just mentioned as well as with medications developed for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease such as Aricept (donepezil), which raise levels of acetylcholine in the brain. Several other compounds with different pharmacological actions are in early clinical trials, having shown positive effects on memory in healthy research subjects.

The authors focus at length on the potential risks and ethical concerns of using nootropic cognitive enhancers, but conclude:

Like all new technologies, cognitive enhancement can be used well or poorly. We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function. In a world in which human workspans and lifespans are increasing, cognitive enhancement tools — including the pharmacological — will be increasingly useful for improved quality of life and extended work productivity, as well as to stave off normal and pathological age related cognitive declines23. Safe and effective cognitive enhancers will benefit both the individual and society.

3. Cortical Stimulation

A number of studies in the last few years have shown very promising results from applying electrical current to the brain using a technology known as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). tDCS is a noninvasive technique in which a weak current is applied to the brain constantly over time to excite or inhibit the activity of neurons.

In late 2010, a group of researchers from University College London and Oxford University published a study showing that tDCS applied to the parietal lobes enhanced a person’s mathematical ability selectively, without influencing other cognitive functions. The improvement was found to have persisted six months after the training, showing the IQ gain was long-lasting.

Earlier this year a study was published in Clinical Neurophysiology showing that tDCS of a the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) improves working memory functioning. The dlPFC is a region in the frontal lobes toward the top and side: hence dorso (top) and lateral (side). The researchers report that there was significant improvement in speed of performance following  tDCS on an n-back working memory task.

In another study published earlier this year, a team at Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney demonstrated that tDCS can dramatically improve insight problem solving. Three times as many cortically stimulated individuals succeeded in solving puzzles needing creative insight. People find it difficult to think outside of the box because their problem solving ‘mind set’ becomes crystallized by past experience. By inhibiting the activity of the left temporal lobe, and stimulating activity in the right temporal lobe, this team changed the balance between the two hemispheres of the brain, leading to better release from mental sets and better creative insight. One of the team, Professor Snyder, believes brain boosting headgear could be widely used.

“The thinking cap of the future is not one that helps us to remember facts as the internet has solved that problem, but one that facilitates learning and unlearning mindsets. It’s all about being original.”

Professor Snyder

Some of the most recent work on tDCS was presented in September this year by Professor Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg and her colleagues at Oxford University. They found that just ten minutes of motor cortex brain stimulation increases the speed of learning motor skills. In their study a musical keyboard sequence was the learning task.

“While the stimulation didn’t improve the participant’s best performance, the speed at which they reached their best was significantly increased.”

Professor Johansen-Berg

The researchers envisage the technique could be used to help in the training of athletes and suggest that the same method could be applied to other parts of the brain (such as the frontal or parietal cortex) to improve educational learning simply by positioning the electrodes in different locations so the current is focused on the correct area.

The potential for self-experimentation is exciting. As this BBC report on cortical stimulation states:

“The relative simplicity, low price (around £2,000 per unit), and portability of the technology may mean that, following further research, a device could be designed to be automated for use at home.”

Research Summary

One of my research areas is IQ and methods for increasing IQ. In this article I have reviewed three technologies that have been shown to have a substantial IQ increasing effect by the exacting standards of peer reviewed scientific research. The most effective technologies directly target working memory – the general purpose RAM power of our brain. But technologies can be effectively applied in a targeted way to enhance more specialized aspects of cognitive function such as motor learning, numerical ability or insight problem solving.

Intelligence augmentation is a cultural enterprise that is gaining momentum, but the technologies reviewed above take us into largely unexplored territory. The risks have not been fully quantified. It is our privilege to be in an era of both imaginative brain science, and biohackers’ responsible self-experimentation, to forge ahead in mapping out this territory in the spirit of pioneers.

Please join me in this journey by subscribing to our blog’s RSS feeds (right panel) or my CogPsyLab cognitive intervention research group for updates on our research and beta testing.

The infographic of what we are now doing is shown below, and we are focusing on a number of core dimensions of brain functioning:

• Psychometric IQ (measured by IQ tests)

• Problem solving skills & strategies

• Working memory and executive functioning

• Decision making skills and strategies

• Emotional intelligence (EQ)

• Nootropics (brain nutrients and supplements)

• Mindfulness meditation

To create iterative improvements in the applications’ effectiveness, we are building in continual feedback from the CogPsyLab experiments and analysis, anonymous performance data from the application use itself, and systematic customer feedback on what was and what was not effective and user friendly.

This is shown in the infographic below (click twice to enlarge):

To get more involved in this R&D developmental process you can sign up to CogPsyLab for monthly newsletters, opportunities to get involved in research and vouchers for free or reduced software – often at beta stages of development.

To explore the IQ Mindware website click here. To explore our new HighIQPro website for capacity-strategy training click here.

This article has been written as a response to those of you who are interested in how best to train your working memory using the dual n-back – specifically using  IQ Mindware working memory training software.

What are the best strategies for increasing my  n-back level in HighIQPro or i3 Mindware training?

The answer to this also applies to dual n-back training in general. Some of you apply a kind of ‘internal counting’ strategy, rehearsing the letters and visualizing the locations in mind after each new presentation. Some of you use an ‘intuitive’ strategy in which you let your ‘subconscious’ mind guide your responses in the task. Some of you may use ‘chunking’ strategies where you rehearse series of letters or numbers in a strategic, broken-up way, allowing your attention to flexibly focus on getting the minimum score to maintain or go up a level.

Which of these is the best strategy for increasing your working memory capacity and for improving your overall cognitive functioning?

Before we tackle this question directly, let us review some of the basics. Both HighIQPro and i3 Mindware train your working memory.

Working memory definition

Working memory has been defined as:

“It is a set of skills that helps us keep information in mind while using that information to complete a task or execute a challenge.”

Matthew Cruger

A useful metaphor for working memory is the ‘mental workspace’.

“a flexible, capacity limited, mental workspace used to store and process information in the service of on-going cognition”

Morrison & Chein, 2010

Working memory has two separate short term stores for two types of information: verbal and visuo-spatial. These are sometimes called the ‘phonological loop’ and the ‘visuo-spatial scratch pad’.

Model of the components of working memory

There is also a ‘super-system’ called the ‘Central Executive’ that controls the flow of information into these two short term stores, and the filtering out of irrelevant information in order to focus on and remember information that helps with our goals and current tasks. This is an attentional control system.

Working memory capacity definition

Working memory capacity reflects the ability to maintain a few task-relevant items of information (such as concepts, rules or images) in the face of distracting irrelevant information. Since working memory makes information available for more advanced cognitive processing, working memory capacity – the number of distinct ‘chunks’ of information you can hold in mind at the same time – is one of the main rate limiting factors for higher-order cognitive functions such as fluid intelligence, planning, complex decision making, comprehension, and creative problem solving.

In general terms, the larger your working memory capacity or ‘mental workspace’, the greater your capacity for higher order cognition and thus academic and professional achievement. An example of this relationship is shown below.

Effective working memory training: Dual N-Back training

The aim of all WM training programs is to expand working memory capacity. The most widely studied brain training exercise targeting WM capacity is the N-back task. The N-back task involves viewing a continuous stream of items (e.g., letters) and deciding whether each item matches the stimulus presented n stimuli back. In Dual N-back training, a verbal and a visuo-spatial stream of items is presented simultaneously and item matches have to be detected for both types of information. This dual task requires updating items in both the visual short term story and the verbal short term stores of working memory.

We have now reviewed the necessary background information to answer the main question of this article:

What are the best strategies for doing the working memory n-back exercise in my HighIQPro or i3 Mindware training?

Two types of dual n-back training: strategy training and core training

There are two basic types of training for IQ Mindware’s dual n-back and other working memory training programs: strategy training and core training (review Morrison & Chein, 2011).

The key difference between these is one type is what cognitive scientists call ‘domain-specific’, while the other type is what cognitive scientists call‘domain-general’.

Domain specific means for a particular type of information.Training with domain-specific strategies allows you to remember increasing amounts of information of a particular type – whether visual/spatial or verbal/audio. An example of this kind of training is rehearsal – repeating letters to yourself to keep them in mind.

Domain general means something that deals any type of information. Core training targets domain-general working memory functions such as attentional focus, ignoring irrelevant information, processing visual and audio stimuli both at the same time, and responding to targets. These kinds of functions are the most important ones in your working memory training, and have the most wide-reaching benefits for your cognition.

Let us look at each type of training in more detail.

1. Strategy training

This involves using specific techniques or strategies for keeping in mind either audio/verbal or visuo-spatial information on the n-back task. There are three types of strategy training that are often used in the IQ Mindware training software.

1. Rehearsal. Both children and adults can improve on the dual n-back through using, and practicing with what is called rehearsal. For the audio stimuli, this is experienced as a inner voice – or ‘sub-vocalization’ – that repeats the string of letters to keep them in mind, continually updating the list as new letters are presented. The letters may even be said aloud using this strategy. For the visuo-spatial stimuli, this is experienced as a point-by-point ‘scanning’ of the different locations of the squares. This may involve imagining the locations or actually moving the eyes.  Both the sub-vocalisation and scanning are ‘rehearsal’ strategies, and they may improve working memory capacity the efficiency of working memory’s Central Executive.

2. Chunking. Sometimes during the dual n-back task, a letter or location may be repeated one two or even three times. When this happens it is easier perform on the n-back exercise because with only one ‘place holder’ there is less information to ‘encode’ to do the task. Or at other times, there may be a meaningful string of letters that forms a word or acronym, or the sequence of locations forms a known shape. When items can be grouped together like this, easing the burden on our memory system, this is called ‘chunking’. Chunking can also benefit from practice.

3. Attention jumping.  As you get more experienced with the HighIQPro or i3 Mindware n-back task, it is possible to strategically direct your attention in ‘jumps’ to useful strings of letters or square locations in order to maintain or go up an n-back level.  Using this strategy, you are not actually updating the items in your working memory continuously, but are ‘counting through’ a particular string of items and then refreshing it from the start again for the next string.

Which of these strategy training methods is best for developing your working memory functioning and your overall cognitive ability?

There is a clear answer to this question: rehearsal. Rehearsal can contribute to the overall efficiency and performance of your working memory system.

Using the other two strategies is counter-productive for working memory training. And here’s why. Both these strategies are actually was of getting around  (i.e. compensating for) limitations of working memory capacity to increase your n-back performance. But getting practice with these strategies doesn’t actually help increase working memory capacity itself.

You can always avoid attention jumping. Sometimes it is impossible to help yourself ‘chunking’ because repetitions or meaningful  combinations of items or patterns just happen randomly from time to time in the exercise. That’s OK. But don’t  make a point of looking for patterns and getting practice with this strategy.

IQ Mindware software differs from other dual n-back versions in that it has a ‘hard’ setting which prevents attention jumping as much as possible. This option is shown highlighted in red in the IQ Mindware option panel below.

Benefits of rehearsal strategy training

There is evidence that rehearsal training can transfer to other working memory tasks and increase memory for other types of information – e.g. rehearsal training for letters could result in improvements for words or numbers. This could be useful in everyday life for remembering instructions, or telephone numbers or passwords!

There is also some evidence (in studies with children) that training with a rehearsal strategy benefits mental arithmetic and the ability to follow instructions.

Rehearsal strategy training has been reported to improve working memory and every day memory in older adults.

2. Core training for working memory

Core training is the most important part of your working memory training, and HighIQPro and i3 Mindware are specifically designed to be a core training exercises.

Core training targets the domain-general Central Executive of your working memory system – not the two sub-systems we looked at in the model.  It is the Central Executive that is responsible for the attentional control that controls the follow of information in your mental workspace – how you filter, update and monitor the information flow for both audio and visuo-spatial items.

When you do the dual n-back exercise in HighIQPro and i3 Mindware  you are benefiting from core working memory training because the training:

• Minimizes the effects of practice and automatization. You cannot go onto ‘automatic pilot’ to do the task, but have to constantly focus and work at it to perform well. Practice doesn’t make it easier!
• Requires that you process both visual and audio information together and can switch attention between them, keeping track of two modalities.
• Requires that you ignore distracting information – focusing on only what is needed for ‘matches’.
• Enforces quick encoding and memorization of both visual and audio information.
• Requires that you continually update the contents in your working memory ‘workspace’ in a continuous stream of information, and keep track of the order.
• Adapts to your varying level of performance, so you always have high attention and processing demands.
• Requires that you monitor yoru ongoing performance and change your effort and strategies based on your performance.

It is this kind of Central Executive training that spans both modalities that most effectively expands the workspace of your mind, and thus improves performance on a wide variety of cognitive skills.

How can you improve core training with IQ Mindware’s software options?

You can’t help but do core training when you do the n-back task. But there are ways you can ensure that you are doing the best core training that you can:

1. Intuition. When you feel like you are doing the n-back ‘intuitively’ (rather than by rehearsal), provided that you are not using an ‘attention jumping’ strategy (described above) and your n-back level is improving, you are doing core training – so there is no problem there. We suggest that you combine rehearsal with intuition in your training to be most efficient. If you feel like you are attention-jumping, go back to rehearsal. Otherwise, experiment with intuition.

2. The best  training settings for core training in HighIQPro and i3 Mindware are:

• 1 second setting (fast) to increase the ‘workload’ of your training. It also speeds up your training sessions which helps with motivation.
• Error feedback – so you can better learn from your mistakes. This is a better way to monitor your performance.
• ‘Hard’ n-back performance setting – to help prevent the attention jumping strategy we’ve already talked about.

These settings are shown highlighted in red in the options panel.

Once you have best optimized your core training, you can expect many benefits to your overall cognition.

Cognitive benefits of core training for working memory

Core training benefits extend beyond the trained task and has been shown to have the following benefits (Review: Morrison & Chein, 2011):

• Increased short term memory in general – for any type of information.
• Better able to ignore distractions and focus on the task at hand.
• Reading comprehension.
• Your memory for personal events and experiences.
• Fluid intelligence.
• Reduced symptoms of ADHD (Klingberg et al., 2005). A key deficit in ADHD is impairment of WM and abnormalities in the frontal lobe.
• Improvements for multiple sclerosis – everyday memory, quality of life.
• Improvements for schizophrenia patients – everyday memory, quality of life.
• Improvements for stroke patients (Westerberg et al., 2007)

Summary

In summary, when it comes to strategy training, use rehearsal and get practice using this. Aside from this, make sure you focus on core working memory training training, and use the recommended settings to optimize core training.

Reference

Morrison, A. B., & Chein, J. M. (2011). Does working memory training work? The promise and challenges of enhancing cognition by training working memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(1), 46–60. doi:10.3758/s13423-010-0034-0

• An explanation of what matrices IQ tests are and how they are used

• A closer look at the different types of Raven Matrices tests

• A basic tutorial on strategies to solve Raven matrices problems, with examples

The Matrices Test

A matrices test is a non-verbal ‘culture fair’ multiple choice IQ test, that measures your fluid intelligence  (Gf) – your reasoning and problem solving ability. Fluid intelligence is a core component of  g – your general intelligence.

In each test item, the subject is asked to identify the missing element that completes a pattern of shapes. The patterns are presented in the form of a 4×4, 3×3, or 2×2 matrix, giving the test its name. An example of a matrices test is shown here, from Smart-kit.com.

Because of the simplicity of their use and interpretation, and their independence of language and reading and writing skills, Matrices tests have  widespread practical use  - as a measure of intelligence in the general population for both adults and children, for job applicants as a psychometric test, for applicants to the armed forces,  and for assessing clinical (e.g. Autism) populations.

Matrices Tests Measure Fluid Intelligence (Gf)

Fluid intelligence – is the ability to reason and solve problems using new information without relying on previously acquired knowledge and skills. The ability to deal with novelty, to adapt one’s thinking ‘fluidly’ to a new, unfamiliar problem.

Fluid intelligence is contrasted with crystallized intelligence which is previously acquired knowledge and skills that have become ‘crystallized’ with experience.

Matrices IQ tests measure fluid intelligence. Because there is a high correlation between fluid intelligence and general intelligence (g), matrices tests are often used as a general IQ test – for overall cognitive ability.

Raven Matrices Test

Matrices tests were originally developed by John C. Raven back in 1936. The Matrices are available in three different forms for participants of different ability:

• Standard Progressive Matrices: These were the original form of the matrices, first published in 1938.  The 60 problems  in this test get  increasingly difficult, demanding greater cognitive capacity to solve . This test can be taken here.
• Coloured Progressive Matrices: Designed for children aged 5 through 11 years-of-age, the elderly, and mentally and physically impaired individuals. This test contains questions from the standard matrices, as well as other test  items.
• Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM): The advanced form of the matrices test contains 48 problems.  These items are appropriate for adults and adolescents of above-average intelligence.

“Parallel” forms of the standard and coloured progressive matrices were published in 1998 – to address the problem of the Raven’s Matrices being too well known in the general population.

Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) – III

The CFIT (or ‘Cattell’) IQ test has four kinds of problems – series completion, classification, matrices and conditions. These should all be self-evident for the easier problems below. For the ‘conditions’  type problem there are different elements such as “dot”, “circle”, “square”, and a set of relationships that need to be figured out – such as “inside”, “outside”, “not”, “and”. The object is to figure out the something like “dot inside circle and outside square” (making 3 the only viable answer below).

High IQ Societies & Matrices Tests

Generally, there are two ways to prove that you qualify for Mensa: either take the Mensa test, or submit a qualifying test score from another test. There are a large number of intelligence tests that are “approved”, including the Cattell Culture Fair Test (IQ score 148).

The Triple Nine Society, a high IQ society, accepts the Advanced Progressive Matrices  for one of their admission tests. They require a score of at least 32 out of 36 on or before December 31, 1999 on the RAPM. The International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (ISPE) and International High IQ Society also accept the RAPM as a qualification for admission.

The Triple Nine Society is a high IQ society that uses the CFIT-III as one of their tests for admission. A combined raw score of 85 on forms A and B is required for admission; however, the TNS does not accept this score if taken after September, 2008. Also, the TNS accepts the Cattell Intelligence (verbal) test, Scale IIIB, qualifying score of 173, but again, not if taken after September, 2008

How To Use Strategies To Get A High Score On A Matrices Test

Each Raven test has the same format: a 3 x 3 matrix in which the bottom right entry is missing, and must be selected from 8 alternatives.

Solving Raven’s matrices type problems essentially requires figuring out the underlying rules that explain the progression of shapes.

Here is an example to try to figure out:

The correct answer is 5. The variations of the entries in the rows and columns of this problem can be explained by 3 rules.

1.  Each row contains 3 shapes (triangle, square, diamond).

2.  Each row has 3 bars (black, striped, clear).

3.  The orientation of each bar is the same within a row, but varies from row to row (vertical, horizontal, diagonal).

From these 3 rules, the answer can be inferred (5).

Raven Matrices 5 rules for strategic problem solving

John Raven designed all the problems for his IQ tests to be based on five basic types of rule. Each problem might have combinations of different rules or different instances of the same rule.

In order to solve Raven matrices problems effectively, you will benefit from learning these rules,

These are the rules:

1.  Constant in a row. This is ‘rule 3’ in the matrix example above – the orientation of the bar is the same in each row, but changes down a column.

2.  Quantitative progression. An increase or decrease between adjacent entries in size, position or number. An example of this rule is shown below:

The correct answer is 3. The number of black squares in each entry increases in the top row from 1 to 2 to 3. Similarly, the number of black squares in the first column decreases from 3 to 2 to 1.

3. Figure addition or subtraction.  A figure from one column is added to or subtracted from another column to produce the third. An example is given below:

Correct answer 8

 The extended tutorial with the entire rule set is accessible  with
our HighIQPro IQ-increasing software package. This includes a link to the orginal
Advanced Progressive Raven’s Matrices test for practice & links to two
scientifically valid, standardized matrices IQ tests based on the Raven tests.

Applying The Rules Successfully: Capacity-Strategy Training

Applying rules to solve problems means the same as applying strategies to solve a problem. Applying a rule or procedure is a strategy. The store of different strategies you have in long-term memory that you can apply to problems is called your ‘mindware’.

Applying rule-set strategies to solve problems under pressure is not easy! 

The ability to try out different rules and then keep track of them in the more complex problems requires not only knowing how to pinpoint the rules themselves (having the ‘mindware’) but also having the working memory capacity (the processing power) to successfully apply those rules.

Strategy and capacity training work synergistically. The more working memory capacity you have, the better able you are to learn and apply and manage the rules and methods that help to solve a problem.

Our HighIQPro brain-training software application is specifically designed according to  this synergistic learning method: capacity-strategy training.  The more you train  and improve your working memory and executive control, the more effectively you can learn and apply the strategies you learn in the tutorials to successfully solve matrices test problems.

HighIQPro – Click to learn more

The Bell Curve was a seminal work on IQ and its impact in society, published in 1994 by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein (now deceased) and libertarian political scientist Charles Murray. Its central argument is that human intelligence, measured by IQ tests, is  influenced substantially by both inherited and environmental factors, and IQ is better predictor of  financial income, job performance, and involvement in crime than are  parental socio-economic status or education level.

Another thesis of The Bell Curve is that that those with high intelligence, the “cognitive elite”, are becoming increasingly separated from those of average and below-average intelligence – and that this has important social implications.

This claim is supported by the facts. Here  is a ‘bell curve’ distribution of IQ scores in the general US population. It is called a bell curve because of its bell shape. It has a similar shape for all populations in which IQ has been measured.

This curve tells us that the average IQ score is 100, and about 95% of the population have an IQ score (measured by a valid IQ test) somewhere between 70 and 130. 68% have an IQ level between 85 and 115. Each 15 IQ point interval is called one standard deviation – so we can say that 95% of the population have an IQ between -2 and +2 standard deviations from 100. Mensa requires an IQ of 130 which puts you in the top 2% of the population.

Now look at this data on college students. First, going back to 1930 (translating back from standard deviations to IQ scores!) you can see that the average IQ of all college graduates was 111. The average IQ of Ivy League colleges was 120. That’s not that different.

But if we jump forward to 1990, just before The Bell Curve was written, you see a very different picture.

While the average IQ of all college graduates in the country has barely changed (from 111 to 113), the average IQ of Ivy League college graduates has shot up from 120 to 142. That’s a massive difference!

The mean of the elite 12 universities in the US rose to over 140. Refer to the bell curve above to see just how ‘off the curve’ that is.

That was back in 1990. Now the IQ level may be even greater, assuming it has not reached close to its natural limit – as we find in elite athletes.

Mainstream science on intelligence: The 1994 IQ manifesto by IQ Experts

The Bell Curve was controversial, and generated a lot of inaccurate and misleading public reports and discussion about IQ.  To counter these reports an IQ manifesto was issued in the Wall Street Journal in December 1994, signed by 52 professors specializing in intelligence and related fields, including around one third of the editorial board of the journal Intelligence.  This IQ manifesto – called ‘Mainstream Science on Intelligence’ represents the findings widely accepted in the expert community in 1994. We have come on since then in our understanding of IQ considerably but these points are still accepted and provide a good starting point for our current understanding.

WSJ – Mainstream Science on Intelligence

18 conclusions on intelligence and IQ scores

The following 18 conclusions are taken from Mainstream Science on Intelligence (1994):

1. “Intelligence is a very general mental capability … it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings …”
2. “Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments.”
3. “While there are different types of intelligence tests, they all measure the same intelligence.”
4. “The spread of people along the IQ continuum … can be represented well by the … ‘normal curve’.”
5. “Intelligence tests are not culturally biased”
6. “The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little understood”
7. “Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level”
8. “The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered”
9. “IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes … Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance”
10. “A high IQ is an advantage because virtually all activities require some reasoning and decision-making”
11. “The practical advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life’s settings become more complex”
12. “Differences in intelligence certainly are not the only factor affecting performance in education, training, and complex jobs … but intelligence is often the most important”
13. “Certain personality traits, special talents, [etc] are important … in many jobs, but they have narrower (or unknown) applicability or ‘transferability’ across tasks and settings compared with general intelligence”
14. “Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 … indicating genetics plays a bigger role than environment in creating IQ differences”
15. “Members of the same family also tend to differ substantially in intelligence”
16. “That IQ may be highly heritable does not mean that it is not affected by the environment … IQs do gradually stabilize during childhood, however, and generally change little thereafter”
17. “Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it”
18. “Genetically caused differences are not necessarily irremediable”

How has expert opinion been revised since 1990? 

Heritability estimates show that between 20% and 60% of individual differences in IQ are due to environmental influences, including education, diet and training. Many IQ experts now – since research findings from around 2008 onwards – believe that working memory training methods such as the n-back (e.g. Jaeggi et al, 2008; Jausovec & Jausovec, 2012) can change IQ and create substantial IQ differences.  There is universal consensus that working memory training has widespread benefits for ‘executive functioning’ – critical to overall intelligence. This was not known back in 1990 (Point 17).

What is also becoming apparent is that IQ and problem-solving IQ training – such as you find in elite universities – strongly interact. A higher IQ may give you entry to an elite university, which in turn provides a training environment to develop cognitive skills and strategies, raising the student’s IQ even further. IQ levels on entering Harvard may be 10 or more points lower than IQ levels on leaving Harvard.

The opposite is the case for children who graduate from high school and end up in environments that do not stimulate their minds. Their IQ levels could – over a four year period – drop from high IQs of 115 or more to average levels.

Relevance to IQ Mindware brain training: strategy capacity training

IQ Mindware  programs  simulate the positive ‘feedback’ cycle that  is found in elite colleges: learning problem solving strategies works synergistically with training raw cognitive capacity (upgraded n-back training) resulting in substantial IQ gains as proven by thousands who have taken pre- and post-IQ tests. We call this ‘strategy-capacity’ training.

This combination is a unique approach to brain training and one which we believe is uniquely effective. N-back training alone may not result in substantial IQ gains. There is some new research suggesting this is the case with some student populations – such as this one. Simply training on straight dual n-back exercises  may not achieve the desired result. And learning thinking skills alone may not either if one’s ‘raw’ processing power is limited. But the combination of both works synergistically. That is our concept, and the data supports it’s effectiveness.

An IQ study conducted at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute challenges the idea that IQ is something we can measure with an IQ test and apply consistently in any situation. The key concept that this study puts in the spotlight is IQ EXPRESSION. You might have your IQ measured at 120. This is a high IQ and you should be pretty smart. But you might find yourself in a situation where you feel dumb and can’t express this level of IQ. Particularly – as we shall see in the data –  if you are a woman.

Read Montague and his group at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute demonstrated that certain social situations can make smart people dumber – by around 20 IQ points. Which situations? Those in which you find yourself in a small group where evaluating each other in terms of how smart you are!

“You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well,”

Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and the Computational Psychiatry Unit, VTCRI

The IQ status experiment

In their study smart people with similar baseline IQs (with a high average of 126 compared to the national average of 100) were put into groups of five and ranked for their performance on mental tests. When rankings within the group were shown publicly as group members worked on the test questions, those who came out with lower rankings started under performing in subsequent problems, and this effect increased over time – creating a greater and greater divide between high ranking and low ranking individuals. The difference in high ranking and low ranking individuals ended up near 20 IQ points – a hefty difference.

Let me repeat: around 20 IQ points.

Brain activity associated with becoming dumber

Everyone in the group was affected by the social ranking that they were all made aware of to the extent it actually changed their brain activity patterns – measured using fMRI brain imaging magnets.

Amygdala and Prefrontal Cortex and IQ

Performance on the problem solving tests activates both the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is an almond shaped nuclei with a central role in emotion processing and fear conditioning. The pre-frontal cortex is located at the front of the frontal lobe and is involved in higher order cognition such as reasoning, planning and problem solving and decision-making.

At the beginning of the problem solving test, all group members had lowered prefrontal activation and raised amygdala activation – perhaps reflecting the emotional stress associated with doing a test. But By the end of the task, the high-performing group showed lower amygdala activation and an increased prefrontal cortex activation. This pattern of brain activity is associated with an increased ability to solve more difficult problems.

By contrast, the brains of those who had a feeling of being ‘lower ranking’ didn’t dial down the amygdala alarm bell, allowing the higher parts of the brain to do their HOCS thing (higher order cognitive skills). At the beginning of the problem solving test, all group members had lowered prefrontal activation and raised amygdala activation – perhaps reflecting the emotional stress associated with doing a test. But By the end of the task, the high-performing group showed lower amygdala activation and an increased prefrontal cortex activation. This pattern of brain activity is associated with an increased ability to solve more difficult problems.

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex and IQ

There is another part of the brain called the anterior cingulate (shown below) that responds to errors or a conflict between an appropriate response and actual behaviour. The anterior cingulate of lower ranking individuals was more active – indicating perhaps that they were aware of a mismatch between their inability to solve problems and what they ought to be managing.

Women more susceptible to becoming dumber under social pressure

This pattern of results was the same for different ages and different ethnicities. However, there was a gender difference. Fewer women ended up in the high-performing group and significantly more (10 of 13) fell into the low-performing group – even though on average men and women started out with the same IQ level. The social status competition drove the females performance down more steeply than the men’s.

It’s not just social stereotyping that can lower IQ

The researchers believe that the same thing happens in more subtle ways in everyday group situations. Social cues about who ranks higher than others sends out shockwaves in brain activity that greatly affect cognitive performance. These small groups could be anything ranging from class-room interactions, self-assessment meetings, committee meetings, board room meetings – anywhere where people may be evaluating each other in terms of cognitive ability – where there is this kind of social pressure.

Previous behavioural studies suggest that broad stereotypes about social status are harmful to individuals’ intellectual performance. This study shows that the at a ‘micro’ level, labelling can also occur in small groups and dramatically affect performance.

“We don’t know how much these effects are present in real-world settings. But given the potentially harmful effects of social-status assignments.. future research should be devoted to what, exactly, society is selecting for in competitive learning and workplace environments. By placing an emphasis on competition, for example, are we missing a large segment of the talent pool? Further brain imaging research may also offer avenues for developing strategies for people who are susceptible to these kinds of social pressures.”

Kenneth Kishida, a research scientist with the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute

Getting to the center of IQ power circles

When there is a ‘cult of smartness’ among powerful politically influential groups in society, this kind of labelling effect can have serious implications.

“We need to remember that social dynamics affect not just educational and workplace environments, but also national and international policy-making bodies, such as the U.S. Congress and the United Nations.”

Kenneth Kishida

Related to this idea is an interesting article by Christopher Hayes in The Nation.

“In Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, anthropologist Karen Ho shows how the obsession with smartness produces “a meritocratic feedback loop,” in which bankers’ growing influence itself becomes further evidence that they are, in fact, “the smartest.” According to one Morgan Stanley analyst Ho interviewed, those being recruited by the firm “are typically told they will be working with ‘the brightest people in the world. These are the greatest minds of the century.’” Robert Hopkins, a vice president of mergers and acquisitions at Lehman Brothers, tells her of those who inhabit Wall Street: “We are talking about the smartest people in the world. We are! They are the smartest people in the world.”

Christopher Hayes, The Nation

What happens when smart guys from Wall Street or the Federal Reserve or economists from an Ivy League university get in a room with our politicians to determine economic policy? Could it be that bravado and other ‘smarts’ signalling triggers those brain patterns and our politicians feeling ‘outsmarted’ while temporarily bottoming out in their IQ  – precisely at the point when they need to be at their sharpest to hash out strategy and policy?

President Barack Obama with Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve

And this idea generalizes to any group situation where some individuals send out signals to the effect that ‘I’m smarter than you’.

A provocative hypothesis!

Please let us know if you have had any experience of this phenomenon at any level.

Reference

Kishida, K. T., Yang, D., Quartz, K. H., Quartz, S. R., & Montague, P. R. (2012). Implicit signals in small group settings and their impact on the expression of cognitive capacity and associated brain responses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1589), 704 –716. doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0267

I am often asked to give my view on Lumosity brain training exercises that tar­get a variety of cog­ni­tive func­tions includ­ing atten­tion, pro­cess­ing speed, visual mem­ory and exec­u­tive func­tions.

A new randomized controlled study has just come out looking at the effects of Lumosity’s brain train­ing exercises on Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI). This is one scientific study that looks directly at the effects of Lumosity training and provides evidence that - for individuals with mild cognitive impairment – it has quite limited value:

The published study can be found here: Com­put­erised Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Older Per­sons With Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment: A Pilot Study Using a Ran­domised Con­trolled Trial Design. This is what they did and what they found.

The MCI study

Twenty five older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) were ran­domised into either the treat­ment or non-training groups. Six­teen par­tic­i­pants com­pleted the 30-session computerized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram. It was found, as expected, that those who had done the training improved with practice on the trained tasks. However, the only evidence for a cognitive benefit beyond practice effects on specific exercises was for visual sustained attention – not for executive function, processing speed or memory. And there was no effect of training on the participants’ own reports of their everyday memory functioning or mood.

These results contrast with more effective training programs reported in this scientific article. This article reports benefits in:

activ­i­ties of daily liv­ing and sub­jec­tive mea­sures of mem­ory, mood and over­all well-being

In conclusion, Lumosity brain training programs, relative to other brain training programs that have been studied in laboratory conditions, appear to have only limited value in helping with cognitive aging and mild cognitive impairment.

The Nature study

In the largest ever brain training study, 11,430 people, aged 18 to 60 were recruited to participate. They were asked to play online brain games designed by the researchers to improve their memory, reasoning and other skills for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week. These brain games are typical of the types of games offered by companies such as  Lumosity and Nintendo.

Results showed clearly that while players got progressively better at the games, the gains did not transfer to general intelligence, the journal Nature reports.

Players gained nothing in terms of general reasoning, memory, planning or visuospatial abilities, experts found. Tests before and after the training showed none of the interventions boosted people’s ability to do everyday thinking tasks, although they did get better at playing the individual games and the specific cognitive tasks these involved.

Dr Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council, said:

The results are clear. “Statistically, there are no significant differences between the improvements seen in participants who played our brain training games, and those who just went on the internet for the same length of time.

Leading game maker Nintendo said their Dr Kawashima ‘Brain Age’ brain training games did not claim to be scientifically proven to improve cognitive function. In a statement Nintendo stated:

In this way it is like a workout for the brain and the challenges in the game can help stimulate the player’s brain.

Game-like Incentives – non-transferable practice gains

Lumosity has a very good incentive system (with accumulated points, levels, and a lot of feedback). Clearly there is improvement on the specific Lumosity games, and the reward system associated with this improvement is highly motivating. But improvement on  these games is limited to the games themselves. The training does not transfer to more general cognitive abilities, except (as with some video games) to visual attention abilities.

What training does transfer?

Here is a review of IQ Mindware brain training that does transfer beyond the task itself – to IQ test scores, problem solving ability, memory and REM sleep. As they report in the article:

 I’ve used it since 2009 with great success, boosting my IQ at least 18 points (I took standardized IQ tests before and after). Dave “only” gained 12 IQ points from it, but he didn’t do as many sessions as I did, and he’d already raised his IQ with other methods.

From an efficiency perspective, that’s incredible. I gained 2.75 IQ points for every hour of brain training I did.

Smooth ice is paradise for those who dance with expertise.

Nietzsche

The positive psychology concept ‘flow’ proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is based on the idea of fulfilling skilled activity.  Flow is a mental state in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Synonyms of ‘flow’ include: to be on the ball, in the moment, present, in the zone, wired in, in the groove, or owning.

How do we gain the high levels of skill or expertise that are required for experience of flow – whether in sports, the arts, music, science or business.  How do we ‘get in the zone’ and get the most out of our work and activities?

More mundanely, how do we perform at high levels?

Practice and Performance

Psychologists researching this question have found out that a big part of the answer is practice — lots and lots of practice. In a famous early study, Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they set aside for practice, and when they started playing. Those students who had been identified as the ‘best’ players by the academy, had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours. ‘Good’ players had accumulated just under 8,000 hours, while the least skilled came in at under 5,000 hours.

So imagine you decided to take up the guitar NOW, and practiced 5 hours a week. How long would it take you to get really good at something according to this study? 2000 weeks – or 38 years!! This would drop to 19 years for 10 hours per week, and 9.5 years for 20 hours per week! That takes dedication – the kind of sustained practice we usually only see with professional athletes, academics and professionals.

Malcolm Gladwell, summarizing Dr Ericsson’s research in his famous book ‘Outliers’, states that practice isn’t “the thing you do once you’re good” but “the thing you do that makes you good.” General intellectual ability – a persons IQ – he argues is not that important:

Once someone has reached an I.Q. of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measureable real-world advantage.

In his book “Talent Is Overrated,” Geoff Colvin, argues along similar lines that IQ is not critical to high levels of skilled performance:

IQ  is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once a person has been at a job for a few years, IQ predicts little or nothing about performance.

IQ and performance

This ‘practice makes perfect’ conception of what enables us to be in the zone at the highest levels of performance  is now being augmented by recent research showing that IQ (a measure of intelligence)  matters for success in many fields — and not just up to a point.

The study that broke waves here was one done with intellectually gifted children – those who scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13 – directed by the researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow at the Vanderbilt University. (SAT scores correlate highly with IQ. The psychologist Howard Gardner has called the SAT a “thinly disguised” intelligence test.) What Lubinski and Benbow found was that participants who were in the 99.9 percentile for intellectual ability (the ‘profoundly gifted’) were between 3-5 times more likely than those who scored in the 99.1 percentile to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish a journal article or literary work. Here a super high level of intellectual ability gave an impressive real world advantage.

The work of the psychologists David Hambrick and Elizabeth Meinz, in addition,  has shown that working memory capacity, the key component of IQ targeted by the IQMindware training applications, predicts performance in a wide variety of complex skills. In one study, they recorded both the practice habits and working memory capacity of pianists. The pianists were then asked to sight read pieces of music without preparation, and scores on this were recorded. The most important factor determining how well a pianist performed in their sight-reading performance was amount of practice. But working memory capacity made a sizeable contribution too. As they explain:

… if you took two pianists with the same amount of practice, but different levels of working memory capacity, it’s likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on the sight-reading task.

The take home is that working memory capacity and IQ level impact performance levels – impact our ability to ‘get in the zone’ and enjoy exercising our skills. IQ impacts the performance levels we can achieve with practice. Practice alone doesn’t make perfect. Practice and IQ makes perfect! Geoff Golving was wrong. IQ predicts quite a bit about performance.  Increase your IQ and you can increase the performance levels of your well-practiced skills.

A biohacker is like a computer hacker who creates and modifies computer software or computer hardware as a hobby, but he or she does it with their body and biology.

One branch of biohacking has evolved into in a philosophy of scientifically based self-experimentation and interventions to improve the brain’s potential and performance.

Here are the key interventions that improve brain function and performance.

Brain foods

Brain nutrition can have a direct impact on brain plasticity and cognitive efficiency. A diet high in saturated fat and sugar (junk foods) not only increases risk of cardio-vascular disease and cancer, but sharply reduces the brain’s production of new neurons and results in cognitive decline. On the positive side, several natural brain foods and brain supplements have been shown in laboratory tests to promote brain plasticity and improve brain function & cognitive efficiency. For a summary of our best brain nutrients and their brain function benefits, click on the table below. Many of the brain foods directly impact IQ level, but there are diverse brain function benefits.

For detailed information on these brain nutrients, explore these external natural brain food and brain supplements web pages.

For one well research general nutrition plan check out the complete illustrated one page bulletproof diet over at The Bulletproof Executive.

Exercise

Regular physical exercise (walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, yoga) is known to be effective in the prevention of hyper-tension, heart disease, cancer, type II diabetes, osteoporosis and depression. It is less well known that exercise is one of the best ways to stimulate brain plasticity in the hippocampus and improve brain function & cognitive efficiency throughout the lifespan. Regular exercise on some measures results in 2-3 times as many new neurons being produced by the brain. A physically active lifestyle can also prevent or delay loss of cognitive efficiency with aging, and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Sleep

Sleep is needed to regenerate certain parts of the body, especially the brain, so that it may continue to function optimally. After periods of sleep deprivation the brain may begin to malfunction, affecting many behaviors. Certain stages of sleep are needed for the regeneration of neurons in the brain while other stages of sleep seem to be used for creating new brain circuits in learning and forming new memories.

Sleep deprivation affects frontal lobe function in problem solving and novel and creative thinking. Processing speed decreases in sleep deprived people – they have a more difficult time reacting well to unpredicted rapid changes. Lack of sleep lowers our ability to simultaneously focus on several different related tasks. Also, we may be able to react to a complex scenario but we are more likely pick an unoriginal solution.

Part of the frontal lobe, the prefrontal cortex, is targeted specifically by IQMindware software. It serves several functions including short term memory, impulse control, attention, and problem solving. While the prefrontal cortex becomes more active as a person remains awake for long periods of time, metabolic activity in this part of the brain can drop as much as eleven percent after a person has missed sleep for only twenty four hours.

REM sleep (dreaming sleep) stimulates areas of the brain used for learning and memory. When a person is taught a new skill performance improvements depend largely on adequate REM sleep.

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

Abraham Lincoln

‘Screw up’ brainwaves

There are two universal reactions to mistakes in the brain, both of which can be detected as distinct electrical waves measured by an electrode cap.

The first – 50 milliseconds after a screw-up, originating in the anterior cingulate cortex that helps monitor performance for errors. This neural reaction is quick and involuntary and can occur below the radar of awareness. This is a signal for the brain that reality is not flowing as it should do.

The anterior cingulate cortex

The second electrical wave (called the Pe signal) arrives later after the cock up – up to half a second into the perceptual event. It occurs over the parietal cortex and signals the subjective experience of actively paying attention to the error and evaluating it, perhaps engaging emotions of regret, guilt, disappointment or anger and imaging what could have been better in the mind’s eye.

The learning brain – Pe brainwave signals

A distinct brainwave profile of these two signals helps us identify good learners. Many studies show the best learning brains have: 1) a bigger initial brainwave response to the mistake and 2) a stronger and more consistent later Pe brainwave.

A question arises: Why do some people have better Pe waves? Why are some people so much more effective at learning from their mistakes?

Enter Jason Moser at Michigan State University:

In a study coming out in Psychological Science Moser and his colleagues show that our subjective belief about intelligence and learning is a major factor in determining the size of our Pe wave, our ability to learn from mistakes, and our performance gains.

Fixed mindsets vs growth mindsets on IQ

Some people have a fixed mindset, believing IQ to be fixed in stone, impervious to change. IQ is like height – fixed in young adulthood. Others have a growth mindset about their mental capacities, believing they can get better at almost anything with enough time and effort.

Mosner found that our mindsets about our brainpower determine how we respond to cock-ups, which in turn determines how well we learn and improve our performance.

One big difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how they respond to mistakes.

Jason S. Moser

Mosner’s mindsets-Pe wave experiment

Moser first gave out a questionnaire to determine which participants in his experiment had a fixed mindset or a growth mindset about intelligence. In the experiment a simple task was used in which performance was monitored. It was boring enough that people would frequently zone out and make mistakes. While performing the task, participants wore EEG caps, monitoring their brain waves.

Results showed that those participants with a growth mindset were significantly better at learning from their mistakes. Those with a growth mindset generated a much larger Pe signal (up to x3 as big), revealing increased attention to their mistakes.

And what’s more, this increased Pe signal was closely linked to improvement in performance on the task after the errors. Because the subjects were thinking about what they got wrong, they learned how to get it right.

It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.

David Feherty

Failure in the classroom: Lessons for all of us

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck is known for her research on fixed vs growth mindsets.

Her most famous study was done in twelve different schools involved giving more than 400 fifth graders. Students were given feedback that either induced a fixed or a growth mindset, and Dweck looked at the effect of this on how they tackled a series of tests.

Test Set 1: Creating the mindset

First they were given a test of nonverbal puzzles – not a hard test at first. After the test, the students were told their score, and given a single line of praise. Half of the kids were praised for their intelligence.

“You must be smart at this,” the researcher said.  This encouraged a ‘fixed mindset’.

The other students were praised for their effort:

“You must have worked really hard.” This encouraged a ‘growth mindset’.

Test Set 2: Choosing a challenge

The students were then allowed to choose between two follow up tests – the first described as a more difficult set of puzzles, the second an easy test, similar to the one they just took.

Depending on the ‘fixed’ vs ‘growth’ feedback, there was a dramatic difference in the choice of test:  nearly 90% of the kids praised for their effort chose the harder test. But most of the kids who were praised for their intelligence chose the easier test.

Why? According to Dweck, praising children for intelligence encourages them to hold onto an image of ‘looking’ smart. Making a mistake could threaten this privileged (fixed) status. Those who were praised for effort were focusing more on the learning process itself, not concerned about protecting a fixed image of themselves as good or bad.

Test Set 3: Grit

Dweck went on to show that fear of failure actually impairs learning. She gave the same fifth graders yet another test. This test was difficult — it was originally written for eighth graders – and Dweck wanted to see how the children would respond to the challenge.

Again another dramatic difference: The kids who had the growth mindset worked hard at figuring out the puzzles. Those with the fixed ‘I’m bright’ mindset were easily discouraged. Mistakes were seen as a sign of failure.

Test Set 4: Learning from others

After test set 3, the two groups of students were then given the option of looking either at the exams of students who did worse or those who did better. Another big difference: Students praised for their intelligence almost always wanted to see the poor performers – to affirm their status as bright. Students praised for hard work were more interested in looking at the higher scoring exams. They wanted to learn from their errors and do better.

Test Set 5: Overall gains in performance

The final round of tests was the same difficulty level as the first test. Students who were praised for their effort – with a growth mindset – exhibited significant improvement, raising their average score by 30 percent. With a growth mindset these students were willing to challenge themselves, even if it meant failing at first, they ended up performing at a much higher level.

By contrast, those who were praised for being smart saw their scores drop by nearly 20 percent. The aversion to failure and error had actually resulted in regression for these children.

Dweck’s Mindset Model

Here’s Dweck’s mindset model:

Take Home: Succeed through failure over self-image safehavens

Don’t fear failure and seek to avoid it, but embrace it as one of the best mindhacks for performance gains that’s out there. The better you think you might be, the more you should be doing this to cultivate your ability.

Unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong — that surge of Pe activity a few hundred milliseconds after the error, directing our attention to the very thing we’d like to ignore — the brain will never rewire itself to do better. We’ll keep on making the same mistakes, forsaking self-improvement for the sake of our self-image.

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. ..I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Michael Jordan

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