Executive functions
There is a new exercise on lumosity that is the best I have ever seen on any of these sites. It invloves finding the rule in sorting cards and is the only real "problem solving" kind these sites have. That type of exercise definitely exercises executive function.
? | 3 years ago
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Yes, I got to it by registering for a free 7 day membership. The exercise is the 1st listed under "games." I think it is called "follow the rules" or something like that."Bells of Notre Dame" is also a true executive function game/exercise but it involves more specifically planning as a more isolated cognitive construct.
It would be excellent if you could develops a game that involves some planning or problem solving. Thanks for at least mentioning that you are looking into it.
It would be excellent if you could develops a game that involves some planning or problem solving. Thanks for at least mentioning that you are looking into it.
? | 3 years ago
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Sounds interesting. I can't see it though -- does it require registration? I don't know my way around their site; if it's easy, could you describe it?
There was also an executive function task on Scientific American recently called "The Bells of Notre Dame" or something. The complexity level is a little lower than the Towers of Hanoi.
We will have a new executive task here soon as well. I hope it isn't the same as lumosity's (although most likely it won't be).
There was also an executive function task on Scientific American recently called "The Bells of Notre Dame" or something. The complexity level is a little lower than the Towers of Hanoi.
We will have a new executive task here soon as well. I hope it isn't the same as lumosity's (although most likely it won't be).
cognitivefun | 3 years ago
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Executive functions
Does anyone know of other tests for strengthening your ability to follow through on projects--i.e., executive functions--other than what's on this website. From what I hear, working memory training helps since it strengthens the prefrontal cortex in general, but beyond this, is there anything else?
psong | 3 years ago
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"ability to follow through on projects--i.e., executive functions"
Not sure what this means. But you can break down any cognitive task into different parts. Most of them involve components of working memory, executive processing, and long term memory. You can get a pretty holistic view of the relevant concepts by reading about Atkinson-Shiffrin, Baddeley-Hitch, and the Levels of Processing models (Wikipedia suffices).
Once you view a "project" in this perspective you'd be able to figure out how to improve your performance for it (this is without regards to domain specificity, i.e. if you'd be training a narrow skill like memorizing baseball stats).
In terms of "going beyond," in the realm of expert performance, you rely very heavily on long term memory. And how to train this? Simple: practice, practice, practice. The rule of thumb is: 10 years makes an expert. There are some shortcuts, but continual and effortful practice is the only fail-proof way I know of.
Once you view a "project" in this perspective you'd be able to figure out how to improve your performance for it (this is without regards to domain specificity, i.e. if you'd be training a narrow skill like memorizing baseball stats).
In terms of "going beyond," in the realm of expert performance, you rely very heavily on long term memory. And how to train this? Simple: practice, practice, practice. The rule of thumb is: 10 years makes an expert. There are some shortcuts, but continual and effortful practice is the only fail-proof way I know of.
cognitivefun | 3 years ago
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I know of nothing definitive -- save for the Jaeggi/Michigan dual n back study and even that is still a preliminary finding with more research required in the future.
Anecdotally, I find the PASAT a really a good practice task, and, although I know of no study that ever used it as a training device, it seems to train working memory as well as the dual n back. Doing the two together over time is probably optimal.
Here is one technique I culled off of the internet, that had been extracted from an ebook that purports to show one can raise their IQ to genius levels. The exercise is boring and I did it for a while but I found it redundant to n-back training and other forms of concentrative tasks that aim to provide a similar benefit. Still, the cogntive gains that are promoted by this technique seem farily
reasonable and perhaps even conservative -- as opposed to other techniques in the ebook (yes, I did buy it) that have 'LawnMower man' claims of 4 and 5+ standard deviation improvements that no test could even measure. Bear in mind,
bland understatement never sold anything big, which is why we like it here at Cognitivefun.
This one, beyond the margins of science, with no study behind it can be judged only on the
creep of a placebo effect...so take it FWIW.
Below was taken from another poster in another forum, in quotes:
"As mentioned, your IQ will increase by about 5-7 points within 2 weeks use of this method:
1. Obtain a coin and place it in front of you.
2. Make sure you are in a comfortable sitting place and in a location in which you will not be disturbed. Also, make sure you're body and mind are relaxed.
3. Look at the coin from a distance of 30 to 40cm away and concentrate your full attention on the look of the coin. Try and concentrate on its shape more than its particular features. Do not touch the coin.
4. Place your thoughts on the side-edge of the coin and try and force all your thoughts to be concentrated on that edge. By thoughts, i am NOT talking about images or words in your mind. What i mean is that you simply use the force of your concentration on the coin.
5. You should imagine that the thoughts which you are exerting are trying to make the coin move. Mentally push with your thoughts towards the edge of the coin to try to make it move. Do not strain your eyes doing this. Use your mind and not your body.
6. You must maintain as much as possible, your concentration on the shape of the coin by looking directly at it, but also by attempting to force your thoughts onto its edge.
7. If you are performing the technique correctly, you will become unaware of your surroundings. If you become distracted (which you will at first), turn your attention back to the coin and doggedly attempt to maintain it. Also, make sure your body was relaxed in the first place. A relaxed body will lead to a relaxed mind to bring you the focus you need.
8. You can repeat for any object of your choice, but a small metal object is desirable since this attracts the brainwaves towards the focal point you are concentrating on, thus allowing them to become more precise.
Other Effects of This Technique:
1. Increased listening ability
2. Increased mathematical ability
3. Ability to sustain more complex arguments
4. Increased ability to extract relevant information from sources
5. Increased ease of memorisation
In terms of practice, do it for 6 days out of 7 for about 20 minutes at a time."
Anecdotally, I find the PASAT a really a good practice task, and, although I know of no study that ever used it as a training device, it seems to train working memory as well as the dual n back. Doing the two together over time is probably optimal.
Here is one technique I culled off of the internet, that had been extracted from an ebook that purports to show one can raise their IQ to genius levels. The exercise is boring and I did it for a while but I found it redundant to n-back training and other forms of concentrative tasks that aim to provide a similar benefit. Still, the cogntive gains that are promoted by this technique seem farily
reasonable and perhaps even conservative -- as opposed to other techniques in the ebook (yes, I did buy it) that have 'LawnMower man' claims of 4 and 5+ standard deviation improvements that no test could even measure. Bear in mind,
bland understatement never sold anything big, which is why we like it here at Cognitivefun.
This one, beyond the margins of science, with no study behind it can be judged only on the
creep of a placebo effect...so take it FWIW.
Below was taken from another poster in another forum, in quotes:
"As mentioned, your IQ will increase by about 5-7 points within 2 weeks use of this method:
1. Obtain a coin and place it in front of you.
2. Make sure you are in a comfortable sitting place and in a location in which you will not be disturbed. Also, make sure you're body and mind are relaxed.
3. Look at the coin from a distance of 30 to 40cm away and concentrate your full attention on the look of the coin. Try and concentrate on its shape more than its particular features. Do not touch the coin.
4. Place your thoughts on the side-edge of the coin and try and force all your thoughts to be concentrated on that edge. By thoughts, i am NOT talking about images or words in your mind. What i mean is that you simply use the force of your concentration on the coin.
5. You should imagine that the thoughts which you are exerting are trying to make the coin move. Mentally push with your thoughts towards the edge of the coin to try to make it move. Do not strain your eyes doing this. Use your mind and not your body.
6. You must maintain as much as possible, your concentration on the shape of the coin by looking directly at it, but also by attempting to force your thoughts onto its edge.
7. If you are performing the technique correctly, you will become unaware of your surroundings. If you become distracted (which you will at first), turn your attention back to the coin and doggedly attempt to maintain it. Also, make sure your body was relaxed in the first place. A relaxed body will lead to a relaxed mind to bring you the focus you need.
8. You can repeat for any object of your choice, but a small metal object is desirable since this attracts the brainwaves towards the focal point you are concentrating on, thus allowing them to become more precise.
Other Effects of This Technique:
1. Increased listening ability
2. Increased mathematical ability
3. Ability to sustain more complex arguments
4. Increased ability to extract relevant information from sources
5. Increased ease of memorisation
In terms of practice, do it for 6 days out of 7 for about 20 minutes at a time."
milestones | 3 years ago
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Another free website worth looking at with various executive function tasks on it is -- www.cognitivelabs.com, all of which capture either stroop effect, reaction time, working memory...
The problem with that site is there's no real way to gauge performance against other users. I'm not clear on what a good, average, or poor score is, since (unlike here), there's no site average or explanation of scores.
The problem with that site is there's no real way to gauge performance against other users. I'm not clear on what a good, average, or poor score is, since (unlike here), there's no site average or explanation of scores.
milestones | 3 years ago
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Well, that seems similar to any meditative technique that asks for directed focus. Besides focusing on breath, some of them involve concentrating on a sigil painted on the wall, or a candle flame. I do think that focus meditation has some good body of study done on it in re: cognitive benefit.
gorelando | 3 years ago
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I agree. This is purely representative of focused meditative efforts. Ignoring the metaphysical mumbojumbo, I myself use this from time to time. To put it in concrete terms, it is quite simple, so long as you understand the action that is required: engage an intense amount of focus, even on nothing in particular. Immediately you should be able to hear and to feel an increase of blood going to your head with an associated increase in heat. This focus should be directed toward the center of your head, more rostral than not. A feeling of pressure and heaviness should result. On a performance level, this exercise to me increases the ability to sustain focus on difficult tasks and provides greater fluidity in dealing with them. Of course, I know what I'm talking about -- but who's to say anyone else really knows that to which I am referring? -- so I'm inclined to think this is an analogue of the technique given above.
My I.Q. has been shown to be at genius levels but there's no telling whether this was the case before or after. In fact, it may be that those with 'genius' (an absurdly fanatical cult term) abilities already use this technique. Anecdotally, I find the aforementioned effects come about. Take it with a stone of sea-salt.
Incidentally, I feel those stated sensations when going through dual n-back tasks.
My I.Q. has been shown to be at genius levels but there's no telling whether this was the case before or after. In fact, it may be that those with 'genius' (an absurdly fanatical cult term) abilities already use this technique. Anecdotally, I find the aforementioned effects come about. Take it with a stone of sea-salt.
Incidentally, I feel those stated sensations when going through dual n-back tasks.
? | 3 years ago
Reply
I have not heard of any research or educated speculation proposing increased "follow through on projects" or strengthening of the prefrontal cortex. I remember however reading once that backwards digit span is correlated with planning ability.
The difference however between correlation and the relationship you've implied is that improving one measure of performance does not necessarily mean improving another.
A discerning example of the absence of generalized improvement between even similar tasks is the lack of improvement in letter span after digit span training. With tasks so similar as letter and digit span, if training improved core functions or actually strengthened the brain, we would see near parallel improvements.
On the other hand, to explain the lack of parallel improvement, we can guess that improvement in one span task is likely the result of more efficient storage techniques. The most apparent example of increased efficiency in memory is language learning.
To a toddler or someone not familiar with a language, each letter is simply the collection of lines in some form. When the reader has mastered the alphabet, each letter is one individual object to be remembered. Thus, efficiency has already improved substantially. When the reader can associate some non-verbal meaning (point currently in debate among linguists) with the word, the word itself is a single object.
(Some of my own speculation) If I was to give you a series of random words, it is likely that your memory would fill up fairly quickly. If, however, I gave you a complete sentence, your memory already would show a substantial improvement. To continue to show more efficient chunking, if the span task was to repeat the pledge of allegiance, you could measure it as either one chunk, for most American citizens, as probably less than 30 chunks (connecting words may work differently) for an English speaker, or about 140 letters for someone comfortable with the Latin alphabet.
As you can see by this example, encoding this information is the important part and possibly the only practicable part. So, if you want to better follow through on projects, practice by doing projects or practice the vital elements of academics: writing, memorizing relevant information, speaking and presentation. Once you conquer these, the large tasks will seem less daunting. If however, you want to be able to repeat an obscenely long string of digits backwards and forwards, practice those tasks.
What these tasks are valued for is there predictive abilities. Digit span is correlated with other measures of intelligence; reaction times are correlated. But, accepting the hypothesis that there are underlying functions that manifest themselves in the tasks, research does not prove that improving the displays of ability improve the general ability.
If I can suggest some reading, “Expert Performance” or most anything else by Ericsson would give a more qualified explanation.
The difference however between correlation and the relationship you've implied is that improving one measure of performance does not necessarily mean improving another.
A discerning example of the absence of generalized improvement between even similar tasks is the lack of improvement in letter span after digit span training. With tasks so similar as letter and digit span, if training improved core functions or actually strengthened the brain, we would see near parallel improvements.
On the other hand, to explain the lack of parallel improvement, we can guess that improvement in one span task is likely the result of more efficient storage techniques. The most apparent example of increased efficiency in memory is language learning.
To a toddler or someone not familiar with a language, each letter is simply the collection of lines in some form. When the reader has mastered the alphabet, each letter is one individual object to be remembered. Thus, efficiency has already improved substantially. When the reader can associate some non-verbal meaning (point currently in debate among linguists) with the word, the word itself is a single object.
(Some of my own speculation) If I was to give you a series of random words, it is likely that your memory would fill up fairly quickly. If, however, I gave you a complete sentence, your memory already would show a substantial improvement. To continue to show more efficient chunking, if the span task was to repeat the pledge of allegiance, you could measure it as either one chunk, for most American citizens, as probably less than 30 chunks (connecting words may work differently) for an English speaker, or about 140 letters for someone comfortable with the Latin alphabet.
As you can see by this example, encoding this information is the important part and possibly the only practicable part. So, if you want to better follow through on projects, practice by doing projects or practice the vital elements of academics: writing, memorizing relevant information, speaking and presentation. Once you conquer these, the large tasks will seem less daunting. If however, you want to be able to repeat an obscenely long string of digits backwards and forwards, practice those tasks.
What these tasks are valued for is there predictive abilities. Digit span is correlated with other measures of intelligence; reaction times are correlated. But, accepting the hypothesis that there are underlying functions that manifest themselves in the tasks, research does not prove that improving the displays of ability improve the general ability.
If I can suggest some reading, “Expert Performance” or most anything else by Ericsson would give a more qualified explanation.
Whoopska | 3 years ago
Reply
Chase I believe is also a good author on this subject.
Suggestions:
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.mem.exp.html
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html
Suggestions:
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.mem.exp.html
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html
Whoopska | 3 years ago
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psong, what you state in your post is kind of antithetical to th purpose of this website. The premise is that practicing these excercises impoves he underlying abilities,brain functions, and physiology involved. This is supported by several studies, including one where working memory training on tasks similar to this site(even less challenging) were shown to improve performance on raven's matrices and increase blood flow to the prefrontal and parietal cortices. Working memory underlies reasoning, and it is certainly trainable with associated brain changes, so I don't think your post is accurate, though I may have misunderstood it.
Mercoli | 3 years ago
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