Can reciting a book increase general intelligence and/or concentration?

[JW]

Hi,

 

I was wondering whether reciting a book word for word will increase intelligence and/or concentration.

 

In the past 10 years also, there is a popular education method in China, and that is to get children to memorize the whole series of book by Confucius and some other ancient texts like The Book of Tao (Tao Te Ching).

 

The method is to read a chapter for one hour a day with a finger pointing to each word and moving along on the page. It's said that after each piece is read 100 times, the piece will go into the long term memory and be remembered forever. Parents believe this will activate the memory cells and increase the capacity of a child’s memory and activate the right brain because the Chinese characters are pictographic and before age 12 if a child is trained to open the right brain his general intelligence and the ability to concentrate increase.

 

I see a few problems with this method. These are just what my intuition tells me, I don't much about the neuroscience on memory and intelligence.

 

1. The content of the books are not understandable. These books were written in ancient Chinese grammar and the meaning of the sentences is very hard to understand. Parents believe after reciting the same piece many many times the kids will gradually pick up the meaning of it.

2. I can't believe reciting a book will have transferring effect on general intelligence. This forum is for discussing what ways increase general intelligence. Is reciting a book one of them? Is by far dual-n-back the only way found that increases the general intelligence?

3. I don't think memorizing something from chanting it 100 times is a real memory workout. Isn't memorizing from association a better way?

 

 

I know Muslim people have been reciting the Qur’an for decades and when I researched on the web there are some articles talking about how reciting Qur’an changes the brain for the better.

 

Here is what I found:

 

1. Many many internet articles say that rote memorization is good for the brain. But I haven't read any research particularly supports this.

2. Some articles say that right brain left brain way of describing the brain function has been out-of-date for 30 years, it is now believe each activity involves many areas of the brain from both left and right side. Hence the Glenn Doman and Shichida right brain education is a scam with no scientific backup.

3. Two researches said rote memorization actually weakens the memory in fidelity.

    http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/21/7/342.short

    http://www.donnajobridge.com/pdf/bridge12.pdf

 

My questions are:

 

What do you people in this forum think about reciting or rote memorizing a book?

What effect does this type of activity have on the brain?

Does it really increase general intelligence so that child will learn everything easier sometime down the track and does it make kids concentrate better?

What do you think about the "right brain education"?

Has there been any neuro research done on people reciting the Qur’an?

 

Thank you,

JW

 

 

[Ron Williams]

Reciting anything, and particularly the reciting the koran is clearly not going to help with increasing intelligence, at least for me, since my idea of 'intelligence' is the ability to relate to new patterns. Recitation is by definition not associated with new patterns, but reinforcing the old.

If reciting this most questionable book increased intelligence then there would be evidence of increased production of useful ideas from countries where this is enforced. On the contrary, the most 'religious' of these countries are also among the poorest (when not propped up with petro-dollars) with the fewest examples of other achievement, such as Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals, or idea-based (not accidental or corrupt) billionaires.

I think there was indeed a study that showed such rote memorization only helped in memorizing the rote-memorized text (i.e. no transference). I may look for it if I have time.

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[jotaro]

loled at bringing muslims into the dicussion.

what the heck man?

[Mercel]

"Reciting anything, and particularly the reciting the koran is clearly not going to help with increasing intelligence, at least for me, since my idea of 'intelligence' is the ability to relate to new patterns. Recitation is by definition not associated with new patterns, but reinforcing the old."

Allah made man out of clay and woman from the rib of man. 

[Brandon Woodson]

Totally off subject, but supposedly that's a mistranslation. "Tsela", which was translated into "rib", actually means "side" or "half". As in, Adam was created androgynous, then split into male by some interpretations.

That could be wrong though. I'm by no means an erudite religious scholar, I just happened to come across an article on that very subject by accident earlier this past week.

--Brandon

"Reciting anything, and particularly the reciting the koran is clearly not going to help with increasing intelligence, at least for me, since my idea of 'intelligence' is the ability to relate to new patterns. Recitation is by definition not associated with new patterns, but reinforcing the old."

Allah made man out of clay and woman from the rib of man. 

[Brandon Woodson]

I feel obligated to respond now to the topic, thanks to my digression.

I think Ron's post sums up my thoughts on the topic as well.

It seems highly unlikely that rote memorization would do much that isn't very domain specific. I think people have been experimenting enough with that for long enough to make that clear.

--Brandon

--

[Shoh]

I agree with RonW and Brandon that intelligence is all about understanding and building relationships among and within patterns, but should this ability not work/rely on memory capabilities of person serving as basis to intelligence? I fully understand if person has for instance weaker working memory but strong relational ability, should successfully deal with complex problem, though arriving in right solution requires longer time in comparison to person who has better/longer working memory span. However,  better working memory should not give owner more comfort and efficiency saving much of his/her time?      

And, more importantly, JW asked the question with serious intention, and despite it is clear to all, some people still preferred to engage in trolling, and they would be better off trolling somewhere else as the internet is not only limited to this forum.

[Shoh]

Brandon, I remember that you were going to develop and implement training with phonemes to improve working memory. If you realized your idea, I am very excited to know about regimen and details of training, and I am sure that I would not be only person who would gain benefits from its application. 

Some relevant and fundamental links:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_awareness

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_awareness

[Colin Dickerman]

If you did this kind of work in terms of your textbooks and memorizing your homework for tests, you'd be a straight A student--like all the Chinese are that account for half of the students at some top universities. They're doing something right.

On Friday, July 24, 2015 at 4:48:09 PM UTC-7, JW wrote:

[Brandon Woodson]

Shoh,

Coincidentally, that idea randomly came to mind just yesterday. I haven't implemented it yet. I would first have to carve out a regular time slot for training. I would, however, be perfectly willing to experiment with it.

One idea for phonemic awareness training that I consider interesting is randomly selecting a handful of phonemes and identifying them in normal speech with the eventually possibility of identifying randomly selected phonemes in highly speeded speech (e.g. an audio book at 400% speed).

For some, high phonemic awareness seems natural; but for some like me, who lean toward listening to the more musical qualities of speech, sometimes at the expense of phonemic/phonological detail, focus on articulation might help. I reportedly had a bunch of ear infections in early life, which might contribute to this tendency. Also, some with ADHD, dyslexia, and other auditory processing disorders might tremendously benefit as well, probably the same populations that seem to genuinely benefit from n-back.

I am skeptical this would translate into genuine intelligence improvements, rather only enable better use of intelligence for those with related cognitive bottlenecks.

--Brandon

[Shoh]

Thanks a lot for the response. I have few problems mentioned and tend to skip/miss some details during the speech too, so I would be one of who would benefit a lot from phonological awareness training. 

By phonological awareness, I agree with you that intelligence would not improve, but one would start using intelligence in much more efficient way. I think improvement in phonological processing would enable faster speech understanding and as well as better mathematical calculation ability and improved reading comprehension (As we process a lot of conscious information using our auditory faculties).   

Another interesting point, I can think of is before learning to speak any language in near native accent, one must master all phonemes one by one, up to the point, any phoneme can be thought/spoken without no effort. Maybe that is why many people fail to acquire native-like speaking accent, as most people learning new language, would not necessarily focus on phonemes.

[Mercel]

To spell it out clearly: I'm not sure whether RonW has realized the massive potential of seemingly simple words such as 'new' or 'novel'. They are ambiguous philosophically speaking, yet they are used in intelligence research and psychology abundantly as if they are obvious. Is the product of synthesis not an example of something which could qualify as being "new"? It is speculated that Von Neumann's success as a mathematician might partly be explained as being due to a phenomenal ability to memorize information, information which could then be retrieved instantly on command and then manipulated, or synthesized, in essence constituting the vehicle for the formation of "new" patterns.