A response to people who say this is snake oil
A response to people who say this is snake oil
It seems that all too often, I see skeptics saying any improvements in that dual n-back study and similar studies are bogus, brain training in general is bogus, that it's hardwired and we can't change it. Any improvements are only temporary so any products or articles saying otherwise are associated to snake oil.
Frankly, I EXPECT the changes to be only temporary just as I expect my other muscles to be temporary if I do not continue to exercise them. I believe people should work their mental muscles just as much as their other muscles if they expect to be fit.
Why people say that any mental improvement products or otherwise to be snake oil, I will never know. They should be consistent and say that any exercise products or programs is snake oil because the benefits are only temporary there as well.
I don't believe there is a one size fits all exercise, though dual n-back is one of the best ones I am aware of. People should have a training program for their minds exercising various aspects of it just as people exercise their legs, arms, stomach and so on.
What do you guys think about that?
Frankly, I EXPECT the changes to be only temporary just as I expect my other muscles to be temporary if I do not continue to exercise them. I believe people should work their mental muscles just as much as their other muscles if they expect to be fit.
Why people say that any mental improvement products or otherwise to be snake oil, I will never know. They should be consistent and say that any exercise products or programs is snake oil because the benefits are only temporary there as well.
I don't believe there is a one size fits all exercise, though dual n-back is one of the best ones I am aware of. People should have a training program for their minds exercising various aspects of it just as people exercise their legs, arms, stomach and so on.
What do you guys think about that?
Rivelli | 3 years ago
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My inclinations are with the camp claiming that the results in the Jaeggi-Buschkuehl paper are correct, but not surprising because education has already been found to increase IQ. It's a long argument, though, re: IQ's plasticity, that I might not want to get into again. :)
Guess what improves performance on IQ tests -- taking lots of IQ tests.
I also think at the same time that some exercise's benefits may not extend much beyond the scope of the exercise itself.
Guess what improves performance on IQ tests -- taking lots of IQ tests.
I also think at the same time that some exercise's benefits may not extend much beyond the scope of the exercise itself.
gorelando | 3 years ago
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I think the results are surprising even given the known effects of education. The subjects of the experiment were all well educated people (students at university). So it's comparing people who have had thousands of hours of recent education with people who have had thousands of hours of recent education plus a few hours playing dual n-back. People wouldn't normally expect a few extra hours of education to raise the IQ of an already well educated person, so the findings suggesting that the dual n-back task has this effect is surprising.
TimM | 3 years ago
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I think there is a difference between being skeptical and calling something snake oil. You should, at all times, be skeptical, of all things, unless/until you see, for yourself, that there are good reasons to accept whatever you are presented with. By calling something snake oil, you should also have good reasons to say that a claim is exaggerated.
That said, there are definitely plenty of snake oil products out there. It is one thing to say that something constitutes a mental exercise; it is another to say "GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU SMARTER!" Whenever some product guarantees something about intelligence, something immediately seems wrong. It's like calling Adderall a genius drug or Prozac a happiness drug.
It is generally accepted that mental functions, like physical exercise, as you brought up, improve with practice and deteriorate without: "use it or lose it." But I wouldn't take the analogy too far. If you do a lot of jump ropes, for example, not only would you jump higher, you would also run farther, swim faster, etc. If you decide to start playing soccer, your stronger legs immediately become an asset. It's easy to analyze and predict the functions of the legs. However, if you get really good at playing sudoku, it's hard to say that you've gotten better at something else -- maybe reading numbers, but if you decide to become a human calculator, your sudoku skills have little bearing on your ability. It's still quite mysterious up there. If we actually figure out exactly what activity does what to the brain, then the exercise analogy would work better. But as of now we are looking more at correlation than causation.
It's also hard to say exactly what constitutes "mental exercise." If it's just about manipulating memory and finding patterns, crossword puzzles already do the trick (and it definitely is a good exercise). If it's simply altering brain wiring though, almost any activity would cause synaptic changes. So if someone sells a book of mazes, and calls it a brain game, fine. If they say things like "become more alert," "solve problems faster," or even "find out your mental age" or "do you have a big brain?"... those are all very suspect.
In any case, one thing is for sure: you can improve at something if you practice. If you practice playing solitaire, you get better at playing solitaire. If you read a lot, you become a better reader. The golden question is how to isolate a task so that you are directly practicing something like pattern recognition, executive processing, analogical thinking, and such -- perhaps even creativity. The dual n-back paradigm shows hints of that, but it is still too early to call the finding conclusive, or even "scientifically proven to increase IQ."
Optimistically though, since the n-back task requires sustained attention, and obviously, attentional control is important in many different tasks, at the very least you can train your focus with it.
That said, there are definitely plenty of snake oil products out there. It is one thing to say that something constitutes a mental exercise; it is another to say "GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU SMARTER!" Whenever some product guarantees something about intelligence, something immediately seems wrong. It's like calling Adderall a genius drug or Prozac a happiness drug.
It is generally accepted that mental functions, like physical exercise, as you brought up, improve with practice and deteriorate without: "use it or lose it." But I wouldn't take the analogy too far. If you do a lot of jump ropes, for example, not only would you jump higher, you would also run farther, swim faster, etc. If you decide to start playing soccer, your stronger legs immediately become an asset. It's easy to analyze and predict the functions of the legs. However, if you get really good at playing sudoku, it's hard to say that you've gotten better at something else -- maybe reading numbers, but if you decide to become a human calculator, your sudoku skills have little bearing on your ability. It's still quite mysterious up there. If we actually figure out exactly what activity does what to the brain, then the exercise analogy would work better. But as of now we are looking more at correlation than causation.
It's also hard to say exactly what constitutes "mental exercise." If it's just about manipulating memory and finding patterns, crossword puzzles already do the trick (and it definitely is a good exercise). If it's simply altering brain wiring though, almost any activity would cause synaptic changes. So if someone sells a book of mazes, and calls it a brain game, fine. If they say things like "become more alert," "solve problems faster," or even "find out your mental age" or "do you have a big brain?"... those are all very suspect.
In any case, one thing is for sure: you can improve at something if you practice. If you practice playing solitaire, you get better at playing solitaire. If you read a lot, you become a better reader. The golden question is how to isolate a task so that you are directly practicing something like pattern recognition, executive processing, analogical thinking, and such -- perhaps even creativity. The dual n-back paradigm shows hints of that, but it is still too early to call the finding conclusive, or even "scientifically proven to increase IQ."
Optimistically though, since the n-back task requires sustained attention, and obviously, attentional control is important in many different tasks, at the very least you can train your focus with it.
cognitivefun | 3 years ago
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Given the association of low latent inhibition with creativity, I wonder if -- supposing that the cognitive exercise's effects transfer beyond the exercise! -- a creative individual might find him or herself "picking up" less information from the environment if they spent a lot of time practicing an "ignore irrelevant stimuli" task!
gorelando | 3 years ago
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In relation to the standard battery of cognitive tasks, differing definitions of Snake Oil determine how skeptical a person is of the claimed general improvements. With products like Brain Age, any of the Posit Science programs, and other exercised-based brain “workouts,” the focus of debate between skeptics and believers is general transfer.
Not including the dual n-back task because the investigations are just beginning, transfer in the commonly used tasks is minimal (digit span with numbers and letters). Skeptics and believers alike are looking for improvements in one measure caused by practice in an unrelated task. The disagreement, I assume, stems from the lack of past and present evidence for generalized effects. Until there is incontrovertible evidence that generalized effects exist, the burden of proof will remain on the believers rather than the skeptics.
The point of view of skeptics is summarized by the Brain Age FAQ: “the longer you play, the sharper you get at the game.” Each individual exercise in the old battery is seen as analogous to a particular weight lift, curling will mostly affect you biceps but will have a minor effect on near by muscle groups, sit-ups—your stomach. As CognitiveFun wrote on the PASAT discussion topic, “As with any other task, practice leads to improvement in performance (to a certain limit that varies for each person). This begs the question of whether such improvement transfers to a "generally useful" skill (far transfer). I am confident to say that nobody knows the magic formula yet, but even in the very worst case, it trains you to add quickly.”
Nobody is sure whether it is snake oil or not, but it’s making the skin where we rub it nice and smooth.
Not including the dual n-back task because the investigations are just beginning, transfer in the commonly used tasks is minimal (digit span with numbers and letters). Skeptics and believers alike are looking for improvements in one measure caused by practice in an unrelated task. The disagreement, I assume, stems from the lack of past and present evidence for generalized effects. Until there is incontrovertible evidence that generalized effects exist, the burden of proof will remain on the believers rather than the skeptics.
The point of view of skeptics is summarized by the Brain Age FAQ: “the longer you play, the sharper you get at the game.” Each individual exercise in the old battery is seen as analogous to a particular weight lift, curling will mostly affect you biceps but will have a minor effect on near by muscle groups, sit-ups—your stomach. As CognitiveFun wrote on the PASAT discussion topic, “As with any other task, practice leads to improvement in performance (to a certain limit that varies for each person). This begs the question of whether such improvement transfers to a "generally useful" skill (far transfer). I am confident to say that nobody knows the magic formula yet, but even in the very worst case, it trains you to add quickly.”
Nobody is sure whether it is snake oil or not, but it’s making the skin where we rub it nice and smooth.
Whoopska | 3 years ago
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cognitivefun | 3 years ago
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