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New study: Fluid intelligence not trainable

6/19/2012

 
A few months ago the New York Times published an article on the training of working memory titled "Can You Make Yourself Smarter?" I suggested that the conclusions of the article might be a little too sunny--I pointed out that reviews of the literature by scientists suggested that having subjects practice working memory tasks (like the n-back task, shown below) led to improvement in the working memory task, but not in fluid intelligence.
N-back task
I also pointed out that a significant limitation of many of these studies was the use of a single measure of intelligence. A new study solves that problem.

The study, by Thomas Redick and seven other researchers, offers a negative result--training doesn't help--which often is not considered news (link is 404 as I write this--I hope it will be back up soon). There are lots of ways of screwing up a study, most of which would lead to null results. But this null result ended up published in the excellent Journal of Experimental Psychology: General because the study is so well-designed.

Researchers gave the training plenty of opportunity to have an impact--subjects underwent 20 sessions. There were enough subjects (N=75) to afford decent statistical power to detect an effect, were one present.  Researchers used a placebo control group (visual search) as well as a no-contact control group. They used multiple measures of fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, multi-tasking, and perceptual speed. These measures were administered before, during, and after training.

The results: people got better at what they practiced--either n-back or visual search--but there was no transfer to any other task, as shown in the Table (click for larger version).

data table
One study is never fully conclusive on any issue. But given the previous uneven findings of the effects, this study represents another piece of the emerging picture: either fluid intelligence is trainable only in some specialized yet-to-be-defined circumstances, or it's not possible to make a substantial improvement in fluid intelligence through training at all.

These results make me skeptical of commercial programs offering to improve general cognitive processing.

Redick, T. S., Shipstead, Z., Harrison, T. L., Hicks, K. L., Fried, D. E., Hambrick, D. Z., Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (in press). No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training: A randomized, placebo-controlled study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.



Scott Johnson
6/19/2012 09:23:21 am

Jaeggi et al make some statements about the restrictions of and about this research. They illustrate several unanswered questions. It appears akin to the impasse we approach often in education. The one best illustration is accountability testing:

-All over the country classrooms of kids focus on specific academic criteria three+ months out of the year. Subsequently some kids benefit from this practice but others do not. Too often, teachers continue this practice and yet the data, overall, shows little improvement on test scores for the large groups. If the test is changed then any gains generally fall back to previous levels.-

So if we focus on specific criteria, the thinking goes, we get better results. The goal of higher educational proficiency is lost in deference to achieving high scores. Well that has not panned out in most places. Children cannot encounter higher educational demands with this thinking college testing indicates.

gF may be changed through WM training, or not. What matters is the benefit: transfer. Show me that the highest performing kids have the highest WM's, or reverse. Follow that up with training a few hundred kids over the summer on WM then track school gains or losses. This would be simple to do. Even if WM training has some effect on WM, we could see if there is transfer and sustainability in practice.

I watch so many districts struggle year in and year out. It's not about bad teachers or bad kids. The issue is whether or not we have support in place to motivate change when necessary. That means positively influencing kids from home, environment, having books to read, and positive classroom settings that encourage goal setting.

The point is that we spend so much time connecting dots we forget that we were headed for a specific goal.

Randy Engle link
6/20/2012 12:25:48 am

Working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence (gF) are highly correlated but they are not the same thing. I think the focus of most of the training work is misdirected at the idea that changing WMC will lead to a change in gF. Height and weight are correlated at about the same level as WMC and gF but would anyone seriously consider that if one gains weight she would become taller? In my humble opinion (maybe not so humble) we need to focus on where changes in WMC should have an effect on real-world cognition. We just finished a training study in my lab that starts that process and found rather sizable transfer but only to those tasks that should reflect WMC. The results are being prepared for publication now and I hope to talk about them at Psychonomics in November.

Kersje link
6/20/2012 01:26:28 am

I am considering to have my 15-year old son have Cogmed training. The short duration of the training makes me, as a lay-person, suspicious. How can it lead to any lasting effect? I assume you know the meta analysis by M. Melby-Lervagt and C. Hulme and the commentary it elicited on the Cogmed.com site. Indeed, I too am especially interested in independent research on people with WM-impairments in my son's age group. Do you know any high quality research is forthcoming?

Randy Engle link
6/20/2012 03:05:46 am

We just had a paper accepted reviewing the evidence on COGMED. If you send an email to [email protected], the lead author, Zach Shipstead, will send you a copy of the paper.

Dan Willlingham
6/20/2012 06:24:13 am

Randy, thanks for stopping by with your comments, and for offering the reprint!

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7/13/2012 06:52:59 pm

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8/8/2012 07:50:27 pm

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kokoa
8/9/2012 09:22:34 pm

exist or not the Gf gain after tarining ,it is dependent of your personality

BARRY GRANT link
8/15/2012 04:32:57 am

I was searching the code which is used professionally. Then I saw your blog. I want to congratulate you on such a wonderful blog. 


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