Will mastering chess make you increasingly strategic? Does playing Sudoku speed up your mind? Do smart-ass teasers help you think increasingly logically?
Sadly the wordplay is: probably not.
From a 2016 review by Simons et al.:
[W]e find wide-stretching vestige that brain-training interventions modernize performance on the trained tasks, less vestige that such interventions modernize performance on closely related tasks, and little vestige that training enhances performance on distantly related tasks or that training improves everyday cognitive performance.
Another study tracked participants over two years of working memory training. They found that the training had no impact on measured intelligence. The authors concluded, These results question the utility and validity of [working memory] training as ways of improving cognitive ability.
Likewise, Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet performed a meta-analysis on whether studying chess and music affects wonk or cognitive skills. They found only minimal effects. Some studies supported benefits from training, but the higher quality the study, the weaker the effect. Summarizing their review, the authors remark that, this pattern of results casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of chess, music and working memory training.
Its easy to see why people are attracted to the idea of smart-ass training. Intelligence is associated with nearly every positive life outcome people experience. A procedure that increases intelligence with only a small value of daily effort would be life-altering.
Brain training moreover makes sense if you hold a false (but seductive) view of the mindthe idea that the mind is like a muscle.
The Mind-Muscle Myth
The idea that the mind is like a muscle has a long history. In his famous treatise on education, John Dewey linked the weighing to the English philosopher John Locke. But its likely much older. The idea is so tightly interwoven in our folk psychology that few people plane question it.
The mind-muscle metaphor goes something like this:
- Muscles modernize through training.
- Strengthening your biceps by lifting dumbbells, for instance, will make you stronger at lifting groceries, luggage or rocks.
- Mental skills modernize through training.
- Therefore, strengthening your mind through puzzles, for instance, will make you smarter in business, school and life.
Items 1-3 are unproblematic. Its #4 that gives the mind-muscle metaphor its appeal. Its moreover where the illustration breaks down. Unfortunately, training on specific tasks doesnt make you often largest at many variegated things.
The primeval takedown of the mind-muscle metaphor dates to Edward Thorndike. In 1901, he began a series of studies that showed practice on quite similar tasks didnt lead to resurgence in unrelated tasks. Thorndike interpreted his results in terms of identical elements: post training, performance improves on tasks that overlap in the stimulus or response required, but not vastitude this.
Summarizing his view, Thorndike wrote, the mind is so specialized that we yo-yo human nature in small spots.
Psychology has progressed considerably since Thorndikes day. Yet the idea that skills are specific is a resulting finding in psychological research. In their 1989 monograph, The Transfer of Cognitive Skill, John Anderson and Mark Singley argued for what amounts to an updated version of Thorndikes identical elements model. Skills transfer to the extent that the knowledge and procedures used between tasks are the same. If skills rely on variegated methods or ideas, training in one wont help with another.
Thorndikes identical elements model, and modern theories such as Andersons ACT-R, show why smart-ass training doesnt work. But are there any other ways to get smarter?
Does Education Boost Intelligence?
Brain-training fails considering it focuses on a very narrow kind of task. Judging a good chess position and good merchantry visualization dont use the same procedure. Thus learning strategy in chess doesnt make you increasingly strategic or constructive in business.
Education doesnt necessarily suffer the same shortcoming considering it aims to impart a much broader set of skills. Algebra might only be suitable for problems that use algebra, equal to the identical elements model. But there are lots of problems you can solve with algebra! Similarly, learning to read may not transfer (directly) to other skills, but reading can be a gateway to acquiring knowledge in practically any field.
Stuart Ritchie reviewed studies on the impact of spare years of education. He found that an uneaten year of schooling was typically associated with 1-5 increasingly IQ points. These studies often rely on a quasi-experimental design. The authors studied situations where a sudden, unexpected transpiration in policy resulted in some people getting increasingly education than others. Testing people just surpassing and without the cutoff let them tease out the effect of education without a formal experiment.
The optimistic take on this research would be that education improves unstipulated thinking by equipping people with diverse cognitive tools. This unrestrictedness has power. Plane if a particular task is only helped by a subset of school training, many years of schooling make an overlap between skills and tasks increasingly likely.
The pessimistic stance would be that education trains you at narrow tricks that work for passing testssitting still for a prolonged period, guessing well when you dont know the answer, watching out for trick questions, etc.and these tricks moreover help on IQ tests.
Applications for an Identical Elements View of Learning
My perspective is that the only way to wilt smarter is by learning. The vital units of learning are specific, but when widow together, these specific chunks can wilt impressive proficiency.
A touchable illustration would be language learning. Fluency isnt a muscle you improve. It results from knowing many words, grammar, and pronunciations and using that knowledge quickly and unhesitatingly. It can be impressive to watch someone at a mastery level converse in a language you struggle with. Still, there is nothing increasingly to it than thisif you knew everything she did, you too would be fluent.
Similarly, intelligence in real life is well-nigh having the vocabulary of methods and knowledge to deal with a wide variety of problems. Each unit of learning may seem unmpressive on its own, but combine unbearable of those units, and the unifying is wisdom.
But to unzip this possibility, we must let go of the false promise that broad-ranging skills can come from practice on narrow tasks. Smart-ass training is a dead-end, but learning is timeless.
The post Brain Training Doesnt Work first appeared on Scott H Young.
The post Brain Training Doesn’t Work appeared first on Scott H Young.
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