IQ has long been considered to be a fixed attribute, stable across our lifetimes. But in recent years, this assumption has come under fire, with evidence of the positive and negative effects education and experiences can have on people’s performance. Now a new (small) study provides a more direct challenge.
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Data from parents and teachers of 2000 randomly selected children has revealed that only 29% of children with attention problems finished high school compared to 89% of children without such problems. When it came to hyperactivity, the difference was smaller: 40% versus 77%. After taking account of factors such as socioeconomic status and health issues that are correlated with ADHD, inattention was still a highly significant contributor, but hyperactivity was not.
In the study, 18 children (aged 7-8), 20 adolescents (13-14), and 20 young adults (20-29) were shown pictures and asked to decide whether it was a new picture or one they had seen earlier. Some of the pictures were of known objects and others were fanciful figures (this was in order to measure the effects of novelty in general). After a 10-minute break, they resumed the task — with the twist that any pictures that had appeared in the first session should be judged “new” if that was the first appearance in the second session.
The very large and long-running Women's Health Initiative study surprised everyone when it produced its finding that hormone therapy generally increased rather than decreased stroke risk as well as other health problems. But one explanation for that finding might be that many of the women only received hormone replacement therapy years after menopause. There are indications that timing is crucial.
In the study, two rhesus monkeys were given a standard human test of working memory capacity: an array of colored squares, varying from two to five squares, was shown for 800 msec on a screen. After a delay, varying from 800 to 1000 msec, a second array was presented. This array was identical to the first except for a change in color of one item. The monkey was rewarded if its eyes went directly to this changed square (an infra-red eye-tracking system was used to determine this).
A telephone survey of around 17,000 older women (average age 74), which included questions about memory lapses plus standard cognitive tests, found that getting lost in familiar neighborhoods was highly associated with cognitive impairment that might indicate Alzheimer’s. Having trouble keeping up with a group conversation and difficulty following instructions were also significantly associated with cognitive impairment. But, as most of us will be relieved to know, forgetting things from one moment to the next was not associated with impairment!
Following a 1994 study that found that errorless learning was better than trial-and-error learning for amnesic patients and older adults, errorless learning has been widely adopted in the rehabilitation industry. Errorless learning involves being told the answer without repeatedly trying to answer the question and perhaps making mistakes.
I always like studies about embodied cognition — that is, about how what we do physically affects how we think. Here are a couple of new ones.
In a study involving 115 seniors (average age 81), those who participated in a six-week, 12-session memory training program significantly improved their verbal memory. 15-20 seniors participated in each hour-long class, which included explanations of how memory works, quick strategies for remembering names, faces and numbers, basic memory strategies such as linking ideas and creating visual images, and information on a healthy lifestyle for protecting and maintaining memory.
A ten-year study involving 7,239 older adults (65+) has found that each common health complaint increased dementia risk by an average of about 3%, and that these individual risks compounded. Thus, while a healthy older adult had about an 18% chance of developing dementia after 10 years, those with a dozen of these health complaints had, on average, closer to a 40% chance.