No gain from brain training
21–28 of 28 posts
Re: No gain from brain training
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try doing sit-ups or push-ups that much and that often. I'm pretty sure you'll improve over six weeks. That said, more works needs to be done.
Agreed, but you would only improve at sit-ups or push-ups, and there is a point where you will plateau. Doing push-ups 3 times a week for 10 min. won't make you good at pull-ups, which it seems is what people are expecting with these brain 'training' games. If you want to improve your mind, you do have to work it, but the work needs to be varied and consistent: work on your memory, read, learn to play a musical instr…
Couldn't agree more. But then that's the problem with the concept of fluid intelligence.
Re: No gain from brain training
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
All volunteers are self-selected. Nature is the right venue. It will spur much more research which is the only way to evaluate the science.
Admittedly I wasn't clear there about the volunteers, these are people who volunteered via a BBC programme called 'Bang goes the theory' and I suspect probably also recruited via the BBC's website. They do not represent a broad demographic, they are extremely biased. They are not, and never will be, a good group to base any sort of scientific test on. It violates the scientific method and these 'results' should never…
Yup, college undergrads are the perfect research subjects - easily available and inexpensive.
That said, wouldn't Popper care more about replication and falsification then with sample design?
Re: No gain from brain training
#24As a counter to this, Dominic O'Brien, the world's memory champion, is a terrific example of how far mental training could take you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien He started training his memory at the age of 30 and is also dyslexic. Good youtube interview too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60_d8vvl9I
Mental training, or innate ability?
Mental training, highly recommend his book: "How to Develop a Perfect Memory" - I practice his system and it works
Re: No gain from brain training
#25Re: No gain from brain training
#26The volunteers were self-selected so probably already did this sort of thing online, the exposure extremely short and the testees from a broad age range who are not the intended audience for these type of games. All outlined in the article, but I restate it as it's a travesty that attention grabbing 'research' like this still gets published and worse still reported on.
Good points. This far outside my field, but the largest thing that stuck out at me was how limited the amount of training was. If I did less than 4 hours worth of free weight training over a period of 6 weeks, I would not expect to see noticeable results at the end of it.
You will be surprised how much you can gain from weekly exercise: http://www.amazon.com/Super-Squats-Pounds-Muscle-Weeks/dp/09... and http://www.ironworkout.com/20_rep_squat.htm
And supersquats are extremely short exercise program: you warm up, you supersquat, you go home to eat and sleep.
About 40 minutes for all steps, except for going home. (40/60)*6 is exactly 4 hours. ;)
(if your supersquat weights are huge, you will need full week to rehabilitate)
Re: No gain from brain training
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mental training, or innate ability?
Mental training, highly recommend his book: "How to Develop a Perfect Memory" - I practice his system and it works
Hmm, I'll have to dig out the Oreilly Brain Hacks, see what was there
Re: No gain from brain training
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mental training, highly recommend his book: "How to Develop a Perfect Memory" - I practice his system and it works
Hmm, I'll have to dig out the Oreilly Brain Hacks, see what was there http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101534/ http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007799/
I've read "Mind Performance Hacks" - it's a cool book. The author put up a great wiki on this stuff too: http://www.ludism.org/mentat
Though I went right ahead to Dominic O'Brien's stuff first - he's the world's best. Like any skill though, it's tedious to get the system down first, but once you do, it's a life skill that gets better w/ practice.