April 30, 2008
Researchers Develop Software That Makes You Smarter
A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports to have found a method for improving the general problem-solving ability scientists call fluid intelligence, otherwise known as "smarts." Previously, fluid intelligence was thought to be genetically hard-wired, but the finding suggests that with about 25 minutes of rigorous mental training a day, healthy adults could improve their mental capacities.
Fluid intelligence measures how people adapt to new situations and solve problems they've never seen before. Fluid intelligence differs from crystallized intelligence, which takes into account skills and knowledge that have been acquired -- like vocabulary, grammar and math. It's not hard, for example, for students to improve their IQ scores by taking lots of IQ tests. however, learning how to take IQ tests doesn't improve the underlying smarts. The students just get better at taking tests. In practical terms, people can get better at taking tests, but in daily life, don’t have a blazingly quick new brain.
In a limited trial, Martin Buschkuehl, a psychology researcher based at the University of Bern, Switzerland and colleagues from the University of Michigan were able to make 34 test subjects significantly better at answering IQ test questions after training them on a completely separate memory task.
But in this case, subjects trained on a complex version of the so-called "n-back task" -- a difficult visual/auditory memory test -- improved their scores on a set of IQ questions drawn from a German intelligence measure called the Bochumer Matrizen-Test. (The Bochumer Matrizen-Test is a harder version of the well-known Ravens Progressive Matrices).
Initially, the test subjects scored an average of 10 questions correctly on the IQ test. But after the group trained on the n-back task for 25 minutes a day for 19 days, they averaged 14.7 correct answers, an increase of more than 40 percent. (A control group that was not trained showed only a very slight performance increase.)
Buschkuehl's team postulates that the n-back task improves working memory -- how many pieces of information subjects can keep in their head -- as well as the ability to control the brain's attention. Fluid intelligence tests require those types of thinking, and the training improved performance in these underlying skills.
The researchers point out that "there is a long history of research into cognitive training showing that, although performance on trained tasks can increase dramatically, transfer of this learning to other tasks remains poor. Here, we present evidence for transfer from training on a demanding working memory task to other measures. This transfer results even though the trained task is entirely different from the intelligence test itself."
The possibilities are interesting...
April 20, 2008
Happiness and Aging
Since 1972, the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center (GSS)has asked a cross section of Americans the same question: "Taken all together, how would you say things are these days - would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" The question was administered in face-to-face interviews of population samples that ranged from about 1,500 to 3,000.
A study done at the University of Chicago and published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review, the official journal of the American Sociological Association looked at happiness data from 1972-200 found that Americans grow happier as they grow older. The data also suggests that baby boomers are not as content as other generations, African Americans are less happy than whites, men are less happy than women, happiness can rise and fall between eras, and that, with age the differences narrow.
The happiness measure is described as a guide to how well society is meeting people's needs. The lead author Y. Yang charted happiness across age and racial groups and found that among 18-year-olds, white women are the happiest, with a 33 percent probability of being very happy, followed by white men (28 percent), black women (18 percent) and black men (15 percent). Differences diminish over time, however, as happiness increases. Black men and black women have just more than a 50 percent chance of being very happy by their late 80s, while white men and white women are close behind.
The hypothesis called the "age as maturity hypothesis," describes that there is an increase in happiness with age. According the author, 'with age comes positive psychosocial traits, such as self-integration and self-esteem; these signs of maturity could contribute to a better sense of overall well-being.' In addition, group differences in happiness decrease with age due to the equalization of resources that contribute to happiness, such as access to health care, Medicare and Medicaid, and the loss of social support due to the deaths of spouses and friends.
On another measure, Yang found that happiness in the country is not static. Looking over the study's 33-year period, she noticed definite upticks when the nation flourished economically. For example, she found that 1995 was a very good year on the happiness scale.
Source: Medical News Today
April 17, 2008
New Report On PTSD And Major Depression In Iraq And Afghanistan
In a study released by the RAND corporation today, Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment.
In the first analysis of its kind, researchers estimate that PTSD and depression among returning service members will cost the nation as much as $6.2 billion in the two years following deployment — an amount that includes both direct medical care and costs for lost productivity and suicide. Investing in more high-quality treatment could save close to $2 billion within two years by substantially reducing those indirect costs, the 500-page study concludes.
The findings are from the first large-scale, nongovernmental assessment of the psychological and cognitive needs of military service members who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past six years. The RAND study is the first to comprehensively assess the current needs of returned service members from all branches of the military.