Read Online Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties by Patricia Marx - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Patricia Marx
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your ambitions are loftier than successfully regrouping a bunch of animated amphibians? Will becoming super-duper at playing computer games translate to sharper overall cognitive performance? Will it enable you to differentiate Emma Watson from Emma Stone from Emma Roberts from Emma Woodhouse? Help you remember where you parked the car? Help you remember you don’t own a car? Provide you with the mental capacity to understand why there is more matter than antimatter in the observable universe? (See me if you know the answer. We can share the Nobel.) Moreover, will those benefits be long-lasting? Such is the hallowed mission of all brain game designers. You can answer either yes or no to these questions, and either way you will be in the company of reputable scientists.
There are studies that conclude exercising your brain makes you a more logical problem-solver and more capable multitasker, improves your short-term memory, boosts your IQ, delays mental decline by ten years, lowers your risk of an automobile crash, revs up skills that would make you a more reliable air traffic controller, tunes up your motor coordination so thatyou can perform laparoscopic surgery optimally, helps you manage physical pain, and makes you happier—and also sexier. (Not really about that last one.) Controlled studies have shown that after just ten hours of cognitive conditioning, gains can persist for as long as ten years. I have also read studies—and meta-studies—that dispute each of these studies, followed by critiques of those critiques.
One of the most influential studies (and one that has been both proven and disproven too many times for my little hippocampus to keep track of) was done in 2008 by Susanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, who demonstrated that playing a certain memory game enhanced the player’s intelligence. The game in question was based on the n-
back task
. Subjects were shown a sequence of rapidly changing screens on which a blue square appeared in various positions. At the same time, a series of letters was recited to the group. The subjects were then asked whether the screen and/or letter matched the corresponding items from two cycles ago. Depending on the subject’s performance as the game progressed, the number of cycles he or she was asked to remember increased or decreased—hence the
n
in
n
-back. And you thought charades was hard to follow. Doesn’t this game sound like a barrel of laughs? Funor otherwise, the longer the subjects played, claimed Jaeggi and Buschkuehl, the better they scored on tests that measured general intelligence.
A few years earlier, a researcher in Sweden, Torkel Klingberg, showed that children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) could become smarter if they played memory-augmenting computer games. I am mentioning Torkel Klingberg here because I love his name. Also, as you will see if you consult Google Images, he is very cute.
It was partly as a result of the
n
-back findings that many scientists started to believe that the wrinkly guck inside our skulls might be trainable. Given that supposition, we were a mere metaphor away from the proposal that we can have hunky brains if we just do a few exercises—not unlike the way you lift weights and do abdominal crunches to stay as buff and adorable as ever. This is not an unreasonable theory.
How come you can’t just do crosswords? To everyone who has solved today’s puzzle: Sorry, but this is no guarantee you will end up less nutty than the rest of us. Says Alvaro Fernandez, CEO of SharpBrains (the market research firm concerned with brain health, in case you’ve forgotten), “Once someone has done hundreds or thousands of puzzles, the marginal benefit tendstoward zero because it becomes just another routine, easy activity—probably a bit more stimulating and effortful than watching TV, but not enough to bring benefits other than becoming a master at crossword puzzles.” If you’re practiced enough to know
There are studies that conclude exercising your brain makes you a more logical problem-solver and more capable multitasker, improves your short-term memory, boosts your IQ, delays mental decline by ten years, lowers your risk of an automobile crash, revs up skills that would make you a more reliable air traffic controller, tunes up your motor coordination so thatyou can perform laparoscopic surgery optimally, helps you manage physical pain, and makes you happier—and also sexier. (Not really about that last one.) Controlled studies have shown that after just ten hours of cognitive conditioning, gains can persist for as long as ten years. I have also read studies—and meta-studies—that dispute each of these studies, followed by critiques of those critiques.
One of the most influential studies (and one that has been both proven and disproven too many times for my little hippocampus to keep track of) was done in 2008 by Susanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, who demonstrated that playing a certain memory game enhanced the player’s intelligence. The game in question was based on the n-
back task
. Subjects were shown a sequence of rapidly changing screens on which a blue square appeared in various positions. At the same time, a series of letters was recited to the group. The subjects were then asked whether the screen and/or letter matched the corresponding items from two cycles ago. Depending on the subject’s performance as the game progressed, the number of cycles he or she was asked to remember increased or decreased—hence the
n
in
n
-back. And you thought charades was hard to follow. Doesn’t this game sound like a barrel of laughs? Funor otherwise, the longer the subjects played, claimed Jaeggi and Buschkuehl, the better they scored on tests that measured general intelligence.
A few years earlier, a researcher in Sweden, Torkel Klingberg, showed that children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) could become smarter if they played memory-augmenting computer games. I am mentioning Torkel Klingberg here because I love his name. Also, as you will see if you consult Google Images, he is very cute.
It was partly as a result of the
n
-back findings that many scientists started to believe that the wrinkly guck inside our skulls might be trainable. Given that supposition, we were a mere metaphor away from the proposal that we can have hunky brains if we just do a few exercises—not unlike the way you lift weights and do abdominal crunches to stay as buff and adorable as ever. This is not an unreasonable theory.
How come you can’t just do crosswords? To everyone who has solved today’s puzzle: Sorry, but this is no guarantee you will end up less nutty than the rest of us. Says Alvaro Fernandez, CEO of SharpBrains (the market research firm concerned with brain health, in case you’ve forgotten), “Once someone has done hundreds or thousands of puzzles, the marginal benefit tendstoward zero because it becomes just another routine, easy activity—probably a bit more stimulating and effortful than watching TV, but not enough to bring benefits other than becoming a master at crossword puzzles.” If you’re practiced enough to know
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