Improving fluid intelligence - Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, Perrig (2008) - Article

Fluid intelligence

Fluid intelligence refers to the ability to reason, and to solve new problems independently of previously attained knowledge. A few facts you should know about fluid intelligence:

• It allows us to adapt our thinking to a new cognitive problem

• It is one of the most important factors in learning

• It is closely related to professional and educational success (even more so in complex and demanding environments)

• It does not get influenced by education or socialization

• It has a strong hereditary component

How to improve fluid intelligence?

The question is whether or not fluid intelligence can be improved. Previous research indicates that participants can improve the test results by practicing the tests. However, this doesn’t actually improve the fluid intelligence; the participant is simply getting used to the test. The skills that are being improved there cannot be transferred to other situations. The objective is to identify a task that shares many of the features and processes of fluid intelligence tasks, but that is still different enough to avoid the practice effects.

Theories

Some scientists say that working memory and fluid intelligence have something in common. Some say this ‘something’ is a common capacity constraint, others speak of attentional control processes. There is scientific evidence supporting this relationship between working memory and fluid intelligence.

This research

With a training intervention that strongly relies on binding processes and attentional control, it might be possible to produce transfer effects from a trained task to a reasoning task in which performance relies to a large extent on the same processes.

Discussion

There was a big training-related gain in fluid intelligence. This might be explained by the inherent properties of the training task. The training requires continual engagement of executive processes. At the same time, it tries to prevent the development of automatic processes and task-specific strategies. The transfer of the skills may be explained by the shared attentional control. The ability to control attention arises because the constant updating of memory representations (during the training) requires the engagement of mechanisms to shift attention.

The results indicate that the transfer is not simply an improvement in working memory. The transfer to fluid intelligence was not completely explained by controlling for the specific training effect.