Intelligence IS cognitive flexibility.

[Leonardo]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9397005/

Cognitive flexibility reflects the ability to switch quickly between tasks or stimulus sets, which is an important feature of human intelligence. Researchers have confirmed that this ability is related to the learners’ academic achievement, cognitive ability, and creativity development. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00415/full

It is emerging a lot of evidence showing that the most fundamental trait behind intelligence is cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility allows relational thinking and inductive reasoning, abilities that are key to solve IQ tests. 

Constant change of rules is key to training cognitive flexibility. What can we do to train at this? 

[성문규]

One idea I had was switching up keyboard bindings on typing speed games and quantifying performance based on how fast you can reach, say, 60wpm

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[Leonardo]

Already did. I made myself fluent in Dvorak in an evening. 

[성문규]

Well, you could switch it up many number of times, and you can even apply this to videogames. Idk how effective this type of thing would be in general tho

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/brain-training/2f36f960-684b-4b3e-ae82-ce35a536b875n%40googlegroups.com.

[Leonardo]

I predict that it would be incredibly effective at tanking your ability to write at good pace. 

I must indicate that this evidence makes me doubt about the effectiveness of any n-back training that keeps its rules always the same.

At the very least, I consider that the activation or implementation of variable mode, on which you are asked to recall any step equal or lesser than n; thus, if you are playing at n=5, you would be randomly asked to remember one, two, three, four or five steps before, is completely necessary. Luckily for us, the creator of Brain Workshop included this option on his software. 

[Leonardo]

Training in action video games can increase the speed of perceptual processing. However, it is unknown whether video-game training can lead to broad-based changes in higher-level competencies such as cognitive flexibility, a core and neurally distributed component of cognition. To determine whether video gaming can enhance cognitive flexibility and, if so, why these changes occur, the current study compares two versions of a real-time strategy (RTS) game. Using a meta-analytic Bayes factor approach, we found that the gaming condition that emphasized maintenance and rapid switching between multiple information and action sources led to a large increase in cognitive flexibility as measured by a wide array of non-video gaming tasks. Theoretically, the results suggest that the distributed brain networks supporting cognitive flexibility can be tuned by engrossing video game experience that stresses maintenance and rapid manipulation of multiple information sources. Practically, these results suggest avenues for increasing cognitive function.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3737212/

[Bo T]

Professors from NYU have supposedly created a cognitive flexibility training app with scientific merit. It is called "All you can E.T", and it is freely available on the app store and google play store.

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/january/train-your-brain.html

This is an article which generally describes the three brain training games they have developed for the three different executive functions, namely working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. for the purposes of this post, we will focus on the cognitive flexibility game called "All you can E.T". I have been using it for the past two weeks.

Here is an active controlled study on undergraduate students showing the effectiveness of this game. 

http://62.182.86.140/scimag/65343423/586100A1813E2E2F11C4890BBFE9D135.pdf

[Bo T]

Here is another link for the study, since the first link does not work.

http://library.lol/scimag/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2017.07.002

[Leonardo]

Great contribution, as always. Thank you! 

[Bo T]

Not as great a contribution as yours or Fredo's for this sub, but you're welcome Leo!  

[Nicholas Wild]

Definitely an important part. If flexibility is the gear box then fluidity (i.e. pattern determination, inclusive of higher order abstraction inclusive of analogies and metaphor) is the engine. You can't get to top gear without the flexibility, especially in high stress situations, moreover, most IQ tests are timed.

[Leonardo]

Well, I have installed All You Can ET and I have beaten the first 24 levels with perfect score in a sitting. I hope it gets more interesting later. The first levels are way too easy, but I can see it becoming fun if it gets harder. I wish more games were designed with the purpose of potentiating human cognition. Brain training games are always so cheap and shallow compared with even the most bare bones indie early access releases. 

[Leonardo]

It starts to get interesting at level 37. It would be nice to play a real game with mechanics like this were rules get constantly inverted. 

El sábado, 12 de noviembre de 2022 a las 17:05:43 UTC+1, beforet...@gmail.com escribió:

[Leonardo]

Although researchers have known that flexibility is an important characteristic of human brain function, only recently has the idea emerged that flexibility provides the basis for human intelligence, he said.

"General intelligence requires both the ability to flexibly reach nearby, easy-to-access states -- to support crystallized intelligence -- but also the ability to adapt and reach difficult-to-access states -- to support fluid intelligence," Barbey said. "What my colleagues and I have come to realize is that general intelligence does not originate from a single brain region or network. Emerging neuroscience evidence instead suggests that intelligence reflects the ability to flexibly transition between network states."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171120085456.htm

[Bo T]

Yeah, I'm at level 50 currently and I am finding it tough to master. I usually aim for beating a level twice in a row to ensure that I have truly mastered it and not just lucked out. I play one 25 minute session per day, level 50 just took my whole session's time and I haven't even been able to beat twice in a row yet.

[Leonardo]

Do you also have an issue with lag and non-registered "clicks"? I think that it is going to be a serious hindrance for me soon. 

[Leonardo]

This is hard to believe, but I will share it anyways:

After 20 hours of game play, players of Cut the Rope could switch between tasks 33 per cent faster, were 30 per cent faster in adapting to new situations, and 60 per cent better in blocking out distractions and focusing on the tasks at hand than before training.

All three tests were done one week after the 52 students had finished playing their assigned game, to ensure that these were not temporary gains due to motivation or arousal effects.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140624092528.htm

The game is this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/223280/Cut_the_Rope/

[Bo T]

Yeah it used to lag on my old phone, but it works fine on my new one because it is has better specs. If you have a good enough PC you can use Bluestacks android emulator to install it.

I have seen this cut the rope study before, but didn't pay it enough attention for some reason. Maybe I will alternate between cut the rope and All you can E.T in my training regimen. 

[Bo T]

Dual N Back lost to cut the rope in terms of far transfer , LMAO. 

[Leonardo]

I don't have much faith in regular Dual N Back. 

A 3D variable version with different shapes may be useful, I believe. Fredo's v0 is close to it, but still lacks variety of shapes and variable mode. I have commented extensibility why I think that the 3D training may be useful in some threads here. 

[Leonardo]

I'm at level 50. It is me or sometimes the storm appears when your projectiles are already out?

[Bo T]

The storm appears as soon as a certain alien gets fed. So if you shoot two projectiles too fast in a row, the first one might hit the alien that triggers the storm which might result in a mishit for the second shot. I guess we have to wait for each projectile to land before firing the next one. I think that adds a load on the inhibition executive function. 

[Leonardo]

Yes, that seems to be the case and the reason. But I don't know if I'm satisfied with the implementation. 

[Leonardo]

Level 52 is the first one in which I got fucked in the ass. 

[Leonardo]

The mechanic introduced on 55 is way more fair and better implemented than the damn storm. 

[Leonardo]

After playing 60 leves on All You Can ET, I went from 60 to 72 on Brainlab's double trouble. The exercise in which I do worse; probably because I'm slower at processing English compared to Spanish. 

That's very encouraging. 

[Bo T]

That's good news. I imagine training  the harder levels to mastery would produce an even bigger gain in cognitive flexibility.

[Leonardo]

We will see. I will try again in two weeks or so. My first score was two weeks ago and I retook the test today. I did not train at it between those two dates and I only played it twice. 

[Bo T]

My scores before training: 

Double trouble : 90

Grammatical reasoning : 34

Spatial span: 8

Monkey ladder : 8

I will complete both All you can E.T and Crushstations (Their working memory training game) to the point where the hard levels become easy to me, then I will test again and report my scores.

[Leonardo]

That double trouble score is insane, man. 

I find hard to understand that you score so above me on double trouble, but below me on grammatical reasoning. I thought that both scores would be highly related. 

Do you use a mouse or a touchscreen? 

I use the mouse and I feel that it is really slow. Maybe I should try with a touchscreen. 

[Leonardo]

Well, I tried with my phone to see if there was any difference, and the scores were the following:

So the touchscreen seems to be considerably faster. 

[Leonardo]

Still, my phone is really old, cheap and laggy. I think that the rig you are using plays a huge part on what is your percentile. I would bet that with a new phone I would have better scores. 

[Leonardo]

Apparently, 92% of phones are faster than mine. LOL.

[Bo T]

I use my computer for brainlabs, I haven't tried it on my phone yet. I average 36 on grammatical reasoning, 34 is actually on the lower end for me. I think my scores are unstable because of my poor processing speed ( 137 IQ , only 115 for processing speed). You need to upgrade your phone man lmao. 

[Leonardo]

The issue with my PC is that my monitor is enormous and with high latency, I think that that also makes my performance slower.

Your Double Trouble score is just amazing. 

Is English your first language?  

[Bo T]

Yeah your setup may be hindering your performance. 

English is not my native language , It's Arabic . But for some reason, I tend to score very high on verbal intelligence tests. Verbal is my strongest ability I guess.

[Leonardo]

By the way, the game Cut the Rope is widely available online for free. I have been playing it here:

https://www.minijuegos.com/juego/cut-the-rope

Let's see what two weeks of cut the rope and All You Can ET do to my brain. If anything. 

[Leonardo]

Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that struggling readers displayed limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24959155/

academic performance [is] a function of the interaction of cognitive flexibility and cognitive fluency,:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220671.1971.10884185

Cognitive Flexibility Predicts Social Understanding

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15248372.2014.888350?src=recsys

SF [Spontaneous Flexibility] proved to be a significant predictor of writing and reading comprehension by using a latent-variable structural equation approach (SEM). In S2 (n = 177 8‐ to 13‐year‐old children), hierarchical regressions and SEM models showed consistently that the flexibility component in relation to creativity deals with the ability to generate diverse responses driven by internal stimuli (i.e., spontaneous flexibility). 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09297049.2019.1711034?src=recsys

we found that better performance on the flexibility score was associated with better academic outcomes after controlling for fluid intelligence, attention, inhibitory control, working memory, and planning. [...] Our findings showed that cognitive flexibility is a key component for school achievement, particularly for older students.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09297049.2020.1740188?src=recsys

Working memory, inhibition and fluid intelligence were related to reading speed, indicating that a higher working memory capacity, better inhibitory abilities and higher fluid intelligence were associated with higher reading speed. Moreover, cognitive flexibility and fluid intelligence were related to reading comprehension, suggesting that higher cognitive flexibility and fluid intelligence were associated with better reading comprehension. 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09297049.2019.1649381?src=recsys

We review work showing that cognitive flexibility, operationalised as the number of content categories surveyed, directly relates to idea originality

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10463281003765323?src=recsys

So, by training cognitive flexibility we expect to see an increase in reading and writing performance, academic success, sociability and creativity. 

[Leonardo]

Trait resilience is a stable personality characteristic that involves the self-reported ability to flexibly adapt to emotional events and situations. The present study examined cognitive processes that may explain individual differences in trait resilience. Participants completed self-report measures of trait resilience, cognitive flexibility and working memory capacity tasks, and a novel affective task-switching paradigm that assesses the ability to flexibly switch between processing the affective versus non-affective qualities of affective stimuli (i.e., flexible affective processing). As hypothesised, cognitive flexibility and flexible affective processing were unique predictors of trait resilience. Working memory capacity was not predictive of trait resilience, indicating that trait resilience is tied to specific cognitive processes rather than overall better cognitive functioning.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21432680/

Our multivariate linear regression model demonstrated the specific executive processes of set shifting and working memory, as measured by Trail Making Test (Part B) and Digits Verbal Span Backward Test (p < 0.01) respectively, were independently associated with QALYs [Quality Adjusted Life Years] after accounting for age, comorbidities, general mobility, and global cognition. The final model explained 50% of the variation in QALYs.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20359355/

Increased cognitive flexibility may lead to better emotional resilience and a higher quality of life. 

[Leonardo]

The qualitative improvement showed by the individuals of this research concerning cognitive flexibility and also patterns of restricted behavior, social interaction, and communication abilities suggests that individuals with autism can benefit from the development of strategies for the enhancement of cognitive flexibility.

https://prc.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41155-017-0069-5

Focusing on interventions designed to improve cognitive flexibility in typically developing children, we report evidence for significant training and transfer effects.

Recent training studies provided accumulating evidence for the trainability of cognitive flexibility in early and middle childhood. We illustrated these training effects and also findings on transfer based on studies applying the DCCS and the task-switching paradigm. Training on both tasks has been shown to transfer to other dimensions of EF and to core dimensions of theory of mind, such as false-belief understanding. Importantly, these effects were not only present on the behavioral level but also mirrored by eye-tracking and neuroscientific measures. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01040/full

We found near transfer of task-switching training in all age groups, especially in children and older adults. Near transfer was enhanced in adults and impaired in children when training tasks were variable. We also found substantial far transfer to other executive tasks and fluid intelligence in all age groups, pointing to the transfer of relatively general executive control abilities after training.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19840052/

Cognitive flexibility is trainable and leads to near and far transfer. 

[Leonardo]

 After moderating the pretest scores, cognitive flexibility training showed to have a significant effect (P<0.05) on reduction of cognitive impairment. The effect of cognitive flexibility training on reducing cognitive impairment was 70.2%. Moreover, the training used also had a significant effect (P<0.05) on reduction of motor impairment, language comprehension impairment, language processing, memory impairment, and general knowledge by 33.7%, 10.4%, 14.8%, 28.6%, and 11%, respectively. 

https://ijp.mums.ac.ir/article_16707.html

[Leonardo]

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a cognitive flexibility training program on cognitive functions and activities of daily living (ADLs) in patients with ischemic stroke.

Results: The experiment group had higher cognitive functions and abilities in performing activities of daily living than the control group with statistical significance (p < .05).

https://he02.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/sirirajmedj/article/view/244689

[Bo T]

Thanks for the studies, Leo. It is a bit weird though that prominent researchers such as richard haier say that brain training is bunk (no far transfer). Are they not up to speed or what? I am genuinely asking.

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[Leonardo]

Some studies show little effect. But I think that most of them, if not all, in that case use a flawed design, non adaptive training, poor training conditions: short time, non-controlled adherence, poor training software (Luminosity, which is crap); or a statistical model that tends to underestimate the effect of the intervention. 

For example:

 In 1962, Jacob Cohen reported that the experiments published in a major psychology journal had, on average, only a 50 : 50 chance of detecting a medium-sized effect if there was one. That is, the statistical power was as low as 50%. This result was widely cited, but did it change researchers’ practice? Sedlmeier and Gigerenzer (1989) checked the studies in the same journal, 24 years later, a time period that should allow for change. Yet only 2 out of 64 researchers mentioned power, and it was never estimated. Unnoticed, the average power had decreased (researchers now used alpha adjustment, which shrinks power). Thus, if there had been an effect of a medium size, the researchers would have had a better chance of finding it by throwing a coin rather than conducting their experiments. When we checked the years 2000 to 2002, with some 220 empirical articles, we finally found 9 researchers who computed the power of their tests. Forty years after Cohen, there is a first sign of change.

The Null Ritual What You Always Wanted to Know About Significance Testing but Were Afraid to Ask Gerd Gigerenzer, Stefan Krauss, and Oliver Vitouch1   

Most research won't find an effect even when it is one. This read I quoted is very instructive, and illustrates this issue with examples. To these authors, bars with errors are more interesting that the flawed statistical analyses done to conclude the presence or lack of significant results. If you read the literature where significance is not achieved, you can nonetheless see that there was a trend towards significance when analyzing the data. Given that the concept of significance as it is understood by the authors of these studies is pretty absurd, sometimes is more interesting to just see the trend, which indicates that the effect exists. 

Nonetheless, as I said to Fredo, I believe that any training that not addresses variability and flexibility is bound to fail, for the following reasons:

"If you imagine a human brain as a neural network, you can easily understand that, by extensibility training with a program that shows no variability, and therefore have a very limited set of elements, we are just overfitting. No real learning is done. That is why I'm obsessed with cognitive flexibility and constant changes of rules. This is the only way to avoid overfitting in our training. 

I think we have reach a point in which overfitting is our main issue and the reason why we don't become substantially smarter."

You know that AIs that have overfitted the data are unable to correctly transfer its training into other applications. Given the nature of cognitive flexibility training, this is harder to occur, although not impossible if the adaptability is limited or non-existent; but with WM training you can always become very good at a strategy that has no applications outside of n-back training, because most WM training is linear and monotone. Like in that study where training number memorization didn't transfer to letter memorization.  

I'm convince that introducing flexibility and variability inside every training is the key to make it effective. Sadly, this has been rarely explored. In the book Make it Stick you would find most of the available evidence showing that variability is what makes training successful. 

[Leonardo]

One example. 

Make it stick: the science of successful learning. Chapter 3: Mix Up Your Practice. 

IT MAY NOT BE INTUITIVE that retrieval practice is a more powerful learning strategy than repeated review and rereading, yet most of us take for granted the importance of testing in sports. It’s what we call “practice-practice-practice.” Well, here’s a study that may surprise you.

A group of eight-year-olds practiced tossing beanbags into buckets in gym class. Half of the kids tossed into a bucket three feet away. The other half mixed it up by tossing into buckets two feet and four feet away. After twelve weeks of this they were all tested on tossing into a three-foot bucket. The kids who did the best by far were those who’d practiced on two- and four-foot buckets but never on three-foot buckets.

[Leonardo]

Some pages later it continues:

Okay, what about the beanbag study where the kids who did best had never practiced the three-foot toss that the other kids had only practiced?

The beanbag study focused on mastery of motor skills, but much evidence has shown that the underlying principle applies to cognitive learning as well. The basic idea is that varied practice—like tossing your beanbags into baskets at mixed distances—improves your ability to transfer learning from one situation and apply it successfully to another. You develop a broader understanding of the relationships between different conditions and the movements required to succeed in them; you discern context better and develop a more flexible “movement vocabulary”—different movements for different situations. Whether the scope of variable training (e.g., the two- and four-foot tosses) must encompass the particular task (the three-foot toss) is subject for further study.

The evidence favoring variable training has been supported by recent neuroimaging studies that suggest that different kinds of practice engage different parts of the brain. The learning of motor skills from varied practice, which is more cognitively challenging than massed practice, appears to be consolidated in an area of the brain associated with the more difficult process of learning higher-order motor skills. The learning of motor skills from massed practice, on the other hand, appears to be consolidated in a different area of the brain that is used for learning more cognitively simple and less challenging motor skills. The inference is that learning gained through the less challenging, massed form of practice is encoded in a simpler or comparatively impoverished representation than the learning gained from the varied and more challenging practice which demands more brain power and encodes the learning in a more flexible representation that can be applied more broadly.

[Bo T]

This is very interesting. I haven't seen the beanbag toss study before, but I understand the principle. I want to point out that maybe part of the reason why far transfer was achieved with cognitive flexibility training is that it is an easy executive function to tap into, because you could theoretically train it by doing any activity that emphasizes shifting rules no matter what the stimulus is. The same cannot be said about working memory training because it essentially becomes training a skill of memorizing a certain type of stimulus rather than taxing the executive function itself. For example, training to multiply larger and larger numbers  in your head is significantly more challenging than any current form of working memory training, but it fails to actually increase general WM and does not transfer to dissimilar working memory tasks.  So you're correct that WM training has to have variability in order to train the ability rather than the skill.

[Leonardo]

Exactly. This is, I believe, what explains the relative failures of WM and relational training. Their linearity and predictability. Addressing this issue is, in my opinion, the only way we have to move forward and overcome the plateau we find ourselves in. 

[Leonardo]

Further evidence for this hypothesis. They put people to play StarCraft 2. They use a fixed game option and a variable game option. People in the variable game option keeps improving dramatically aspects of their cognition, whereas people on the fixed game option experience almost no improvement. For example, take a loot a this graph

By splitting the StarCraft II training group into two conditions of “fixed” and “variable” training, we were also able to demonstrate that manipulating the video game environment produces measurable differences in the amount of cognitive improvement.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41465-021-00211-w#Fig3

Training without variability is a waste of time. 

[Bo T]

Level 51 of All you can E.T is clapping my cheeks lol 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/brain-training/27eb54a2-25d7-46fc-ac19-02195fa03eb2n%40googlegroups.com.

[Leonardo]

I'm at 75. From 73 onwards it gets really funny with double negations. 

[Bo T]

For some reason, I feel that All you can E.T also taxes my working memory. Remembering rules and manipulating them quickly seems different and more challenging to me than remembering some other stimulus. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/brain-training/a3e22042-c769-4fe8-9580-0d89221d8334n%40googlegroups.com.

[Leonardo]

I agree. This is particularly evident when you play several levels on a row. I need to stop for a while or my memory starts to confuse the present rules with previous ones.

[Leonardo]

Well, I have beaten all the levels. Still, I have not all the stars, because the storm introduces what I perceive as an element of randomness, and it screws you over on higher levels. In my opinion, the storm is very poorly implemented.  

[Leonardo]

If you hold yourself until the previous ET is feed, you don't have time to feed enough to pass the level. The storm should surround the aliens the same way the halo does, so there is no opportunity of it appearing when missiles are in midair. 

[Leonardo]

GOD DAMN YOU, LEVEL 90! GOD DAMN YOU!

[Bo T]

Hopefully you're enjoying the game Leo. I still urge you to train to mastery though. 

[Leonardo]

I will do my best to achieve all the stars and then see if there is any transference to the tests. 

[Bo T]

I have completed their working memory training game (crushstations) to the point where I'm comfortable at the harder levels. My working memory scores are more or less the same though. I guess this game either doesn't work, or it was made to address deficits for people with low to average working memory. I guess I may have a deficit in cognitive flexibility because I started both games at the same time, and I was able to beat the WM game very quickly, whereas the CF game is giving me trouble already halfway through the game.

[Leonardo]

I tried the WM one, but it was so damn easy, that I couldn't bring myself to keep playing, due to how bored I was. If you have already trained with n-back, you are probably too used to concentrate to memorize things. For the average individual, stopping to concentrate on memorizing things is torture, as far as I have seen. When I trained regularly at n-back and believed in it, I was unable to convince anyone to also train, because it was apparently too hard and taxing to do. 

[Bo T]

Same here. I tried to convince others to train, because I thought it was the reason for my high scores on working memory and other cognitive tests. Turns out it was the other way around, my already relatively high cognition is what made me start and stick to the training. I was only training my focus and optimizing what I already had. 

[Leonardo]

8 stars left to 100%'d. I have discovered that it is much easier if you play with the volume on, which I didn't do until now, because the sound allows you to wait until you hear the bleep to release the next projectile, thus helping you with the storm.

If I play for too long, I get a headache. I hope this is a good sign of cognitive effort. 

I don't think it would be too hard to create a game thought to maximize cognitive flexibility at levels well beyond what this current game is capable to.  

[Bo T]

Nice. I usually play 25 minutes per day with sound on. Would you say you have achieved mastery in the game? 

[Leonardo]

Certainly not mastery... But I think that it is not a good enough game for that. Games on which you can achieve mastery react perfectly well, everything in them is tight and balanced. Here, some times the buttons don't react, or a bug selects other alien instead of the closest one, or the game lags and then accelerates... 

Some years ago I beat SuperHexagon in an attempt to improve my reaction time, something I didn't achieve. That is a game where you enter a state of flow and in which you can achieve total mastery and identification with the game, for example. All you can ET is the opposite of polished.

[Bo T]

All you can ET is a good game, but nowhere near sufficient for people already on the upper level of cognitive ability. On the other hand, Cut the rope really taxes my overall cognition at once. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/brain-training/ecbf87a0-15d2-466a-9063-a1b2870b0f05n%40googlegroups.com.

[Leonardo]

Very marginal improvements after training cognitive flexibility:

[Bo T]

Cool! I didn't expect much of it tbh. But seeing even marginal improvement within such a short training period for a person already in the top 1% of intelligence such as yourself makes me think the developers have done something right with their games. It would probably make quiet the difference for people with average intelligence.

[Leonardo]

I think that the idea is fundamentally right, but the experience needs to be tighter and more difficult. I'm tempted to learn Unity just to make an over-complicated version. 

[Bo T]

That would be cool. Maybe a feature can be implemented within relational training where some premises have a mark which means that the relations should be reversed (for example : if XUC is after JTY is a marked premise, the player should reverse the relationship). This can be extended to the conclusion or even the true/false values too, where the player has to determine whether the reverse of the conclusion is true or where the true/false button functions are reversed themselves (pressing true means false and vice versa). What do you think about this? I think even at lower levels this would be very taxing in terms of cognitive flexibility.

[Granny Norma]

This idea is very interesting, I mentioned it in another thread but I suggested to Fredo that if an idea like this were implemented, it should be optional and the meaning of the marks should change at a random frequency for the purpose of increasing cognitive flexibility. For example, there should sometimes be a pop-up stating a rule change such as, "A mark means 2 negations", "A mark means NO negations", "A mark means 1 negation", etc. 

[Leonardo]

bora, do you know me at all? Of course it will have relational components. 

[Nicolas Gewehr]

Hey im pretty new to this group and tried some N-Back but then stopped after seeing the studies that suggest that its not really working that great and recently starting with Syllogismus and im really liking it a lot.

The studies for cognitive flexibility seem promising tho, but I have the following problem with it and would like to get some throughts from the veterans here on it. 

In my understanding I will lose all mental gains I made, after some time of not training anymore and the app doesent seem to offer a lot of levels long term.

So if im getting to the max level in a month, I would have to play this game theoretical for the rest of my life on the last level to keep the gains but im not making any new ones since the game is not getting harder anymore.

Im already on Level 31 after one 30min session and it seemed you guys almost finished it in 2 weeks. I guess there is the same problem with Cut the Rope too.

Did you find any alternatives that is forever scalable like Syllogismous?

I have some experiencing with Unity and this game doesnt seem that hard to replicate and scale the levels but I dont know if thats really worth the effort.

Maybe it would be more effective to build in some cognitive flexibility in Syllogismous like it was already suggested.

[Leonardo]

I was thinking about learning Unity myself to develop my ideas about a more complete flexibility training. We may work together on a new training. My design has little to do with All You Can ET, because I see the game as very unfair and poorly tuned. 

[Programmer]

Would iq gains from syllogimous be permanent? 

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[Bo T]

They are permanent but you have to train each level to mastery. Once the current level becomes easy for you, move up to the next level and do the same thing. For example: if you have reached level 6 and you've been training properly, level 5 is probably easy for you and level 4 is second nature. You could stop training for extended periods but I think you will always pick it up again at around level 4. 

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[Programmer]

RaiseYourIQ is having a holiday sale (40% off).What do you think, is it worth it, or syllogimous is enough for the same purpose? 

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[Fredo Corleone]

If you buy it, then report to us what it has more than Syllogimous that I'll integrate it :)

[CLJACKSON04]

I can answer that as I actively have a subscription and I'd like to see Fredo's app continue to improve.

1) RYIQ has levels of 16 trials -if you get one wrong you have to begin at 1 all over again-this penalty creates a strong motive to persist up through the 16th trial to "level up"

2) The premises aren't shuffled - I think this is the most important one because with the shuffling on and more than 4 premises, the exercise starts to turn into a task closer to a symbol search then abstract reasoning. I haven't dug into the research much but the shuffle may be causing the processes underlying the IQ gains to collapse. Similar to if you went from multiplying 2 three digit numbers in your head to 2 seven digit numbers in your head. For most people, the use of fluid intelligence/working memory will start to collapse much beyond 3-4 digit number multiplication and thus fluid intelligence won't get the training that could lead to gains. Ideally, you isolate the underlying mental processes to train them. I think the shuffle interferes with reasoning and would like to see that as an option toggle on or off. Just my two cents.

That said-great job Fredo-your work may turn out to be Promethean. 

Cheers!

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[Granny Norma]

I've had two 6-month subscriptions to Raiseyouriq in the past. don't think you should buy a subscription because Raiseyouriq is pretty much Syllogimous but with much less features. The only things Raiseyouriq has over Syllogimous are: 1. Auditory feedback and 2. Levels/Stages. 

[Granny Norma]

Cljac, for your second point, I partly agree and disagree. It's okay if relations like Syllogism and Direction are not shuffled but if distinction, comparison, or temporal are, then the exercise becomes completely trivial. Here's an example, "A is more than B, B is more than C, C is more than D, Is D less than A?". In this case, you immediately know the answer because as you read left-to-right, the values decrease. This is something that Raiseyouriq had and it made it extremely easy. Every time I used that website I almost felt like I was cheating. However, I think it's okay if no-shuffle becomes an optional feature as you said just because having more ways to train probably won't hurt.

[CLJACKSON04]

Granny - you are right. Some arguments become trivial-but with a translation of the objects (negation, inversion) you will get the isolation of reasoning and mental translation...which is one theory of intelligence-the corecruitment of two or more distinct psychological processes underlying g. 

For example --A is not more than B, B is more than -C, C is not more than D, Is -D not more than A? 

Didn't check for soundness on that one-just showing how non-shuffle with translation could be challenging. Notice how you spend little time searching for and unshuffling the relationships but instead are required to think about the nature of the relationship...that is what I think we want.

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[Fredo Corleone]

Nice to know! Once I'm done with my todo for debugging, I can code the setting to remove the enable/disable the shuffle (even though I don't think it's necessary)

[Bo T]

To Granny : What is the maximum level of premises that raiseyouriq goes up to for adults? 

[CLJACKSON04]

It's 4. This is probably the hardest thing you'll see on RYIQ:

 

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[Fredo Corleone]

This is extremely easy.

RYIQ is for kids I guess.

[Roberto]

how many premises does it take to make this game hard for average 100 IQ person ? what about a person with IQ of 140 ? Is there any data on this ? Just curious.

[Leonardo]

I'm +140 and able to do 99 premises shown one by one without much issues. But only with the regular mode and meaningful words. With binary nested mode, meta, negation, 4D and so on... 8 is relatively easy on carousel mode. Around 12 I assume it would start to get somewhat hard. 

[Bo T]

Leo, you're a genius regardless of whether or not you train your brain, Your IQ score and your contributions to Syllogimos prove it. However, I think Carousel mode + non-meaningful words+ 25 secs timer are the best settings for higher intelligence people. I am now training the same/opposite and more/less with negation and analogy at 4 premises with the aforementioned settings, and once I master that, I'm going to start with 2D and syllogisms and do the same thing, and so on.  Which relations do you think matter most when one becomes relatively proficient at all relations, from an RFT perspective? In other words, if I'm proficient at 4 premises at every relation type, some relations become way too easy and it is preferable to focus on the most relevant types for cognition going forward as opposed to including easier ones.