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People's 'Plastic Memories' can Be Trained to Improve Intelligence
Most of the IQ tests attempt to measure two types of intelligence--crystallized and fluid intelligence.
While crystallized intelligence draws on existing skills, knowledge and experiences to solve problems by accessing information from long-term memory, fluid intelligence draws on the ability to understand relationships between various concepts, independent of any previous knowledge or skills, to solve new problems.
Headed by Swiss postdoctoral fellows Susanne M. Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, working at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the research indicates that this fluid part of intelligence can be improved through memory training.
"When it comes to improving intelligence, many researchers have thought it was not possible. Our findings clearly show this is not the case. Our brain is more plastic than we might think," says Jaeggi. "."
The researchers reasoned that just like crystallized intelligence is dependent on long-term memory; fluid intelligence relies on short-term memory, or what one calls the "working memory," which people use to remember a phone number or an e-mail address for a short time. But beyond that, working memory refers to the ability to both manipulate and use information briefly stored in the mind in the face of distraction.
For the study, they recruited four groups of volunteers and trained their working memories using a complex training task called "dual n-back training," which presented both auditory and visual cues that participants had to temporarily store and recall.
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