Intelligence Quotient en-us Wed, 18 Jan 2017 16:11:37 -0500 Wed, 18 Jan 2017 16:11:37 -0500 The latest news on Intelligence Quotient from Business Insider Business Insider People with more 'education genes' are becoming rarer, suggests study of 129,000 Icelanders Wed, 18 Jan 2017 10:46:00 -0500 Bec Crew <p><img src=" library college student alone shutterstock52252810.jpg" alt="empty library college student alone education shutterstock_52252810" data-mce-source="Shutterstock" data-mce-caption="A woman sits alone in a university library." /></p><p></p> <p>The genes that predispose people to attain higher levels of education have been in decline over the past 80 years, and researchers are suggesting that they're now under <a href="">negative selection</a>, which could have a big impact on our species in the coming centuries.</p> <p>A study involving more than 100,000 people in Iceland found that those who carry the genes for longer education time were less likely to have a big family, which means the smartest people in the room were actually contributing less to the Icelandic gene pool.</p> <p>"As a species, we are defined by the power of our brains. Education is the training and refining of our mental capacities," <a href="">said Kari Stefansson</a>, CEO of Icelandic genetics firm deCODE, which ran the study.</p> <p>"Thus, it is fascinating to find that genetic factors linked to more time spent in education are becoming rarer in the gene pool."</p> <p>To be clear, this does not necessarily mean that humans are getting dumber - we're going to need a whole lot more evidence to get anywhere near a conclusion like that.</p> <p>There's also the fact that more people are getting access to education than ever before, so even if less educated people are having more offspring, non-genetic factors like more schools could counteract <a href="">and even eclipse</a> the effect.</p> <p>But if we look at the trend over the course of several centuries into the future - well beyond the proliferation of schools and training access - the researchers say it could have a significant effect on our species in the long run.</p> <p>"It is remarkable to report changes ... that are measurable across the several decades covered by this study," <a href="">the study concludes.</a></p> <p>"In evolutionary time, this is a blink of an eye. However, if this trend persists over many centuries, the impact could be profound."</p> <p>The researchers analyzed the birth rate of 129,808 individuals born in Iceland between 1910 and 1990 who had their genomes sequenced, and compared this to their education levels.</p> <p>They found that there was a genetic factor related to a person's likelihood of attending school for longer, and came up with a '<a href="">polygenic score</a>' based on 620,000 sequence variations - or markers - in the human genome to determine an individual's genetic propensity for education.</p> <p><a href="">As the team points out,</a> no one knows the exact mix between genetic and environmental factors that leads to someone's education level, but previous studies have estimated that the genetic component of educational attainment can account for as much as 40 percent of the difference between individuals.</p> <p>Once that polygenetic score was correlated with factors like educational attainment, fertility, and birth years, the researchers found that those with a higher genetic propensity towards more education tended to have fewer children.</p> <p>They also found that the average polygenetic score has been declining at a small, but significant rate on an evolutionary timescale.</p> <p><a href="">As Ian Sample reports for <em>The Guardian,</em></a> the team found a drop in IQ of about 0.04 points per decade, but if all the genetic factors that could be linked to education were taken into account, that figure would increase to 0.3 points per decade.</p> <p>Interestingly, the link between a higher propensity towards more education and having fewer children wasn't because going to university is hard, and eats into your family-raising time - the team suggests that the genes involved in education can also affect human fertility on a biological level.</p> <p>Because even those who carried the genes for longer education time, but who did not actually get more education, <a href="">still had fewer offspring on average</a> than those without the genetic factor.</p> <p>"Those who carried more 'education genes' tended to have fewer children than others," <a href="">Sample explains.</a></p> <p>"This led the scientists to propose that the genes had become rarer in the population because, for all their qualifications, better educated people had contributed less than others to the Icelandic gene pool."</p> <p>Again, this is all speculation is only based on one country, and it's incredibly difficult to predict what's going to happen to humans in the distant future.</p> <p>But it's certainly something to keep an eye on, the researchers say, and if anything, highlights the importance of a continued effort towards ensuring that every human has access to education, because that can override the negative selection that appears to be in play.</p> <p>"In spite of the negative selection against these sequence variations, education levels have been increasing for decades. Indeed, we control the environment in which these genetic factors play out: the education system," <a href="">Stefansson said in a press statement.</a></p> <p>"If we continue to improve the availability and quality of educational opportunities, we will presumably continue to improve the educational level of society as a whole. Time will tell whether the decline of the genetic propensity for education will have a notable impact on human society."</p> <p>The study has been published in <a href=""><em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</em></a></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >These are the 10 smartest countries in the world when it comes to science</a></strong></p> <p><strong>DON'T MISS:&nbsp;<a href="" >Babies make some parents high like a drug — and scientists aren't sure why</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="">Scientists discovered how working out could make you smarter</a></p> The 40 smartest people of all time Fri, 27 Feb 2015 10:50:18 -0500 Natasha Bertrand <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="Albert Einstein"></p><p><span>American electrochemical engineer&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_self">Libb Thims</a><span>&nbsp;took an unorthodox approach when he set out to rank the smartest people of all time.</span></p> <p><span>Thims first compiled a list of people with IQ scores over 200 as a matter of curiosity. Anything over 130 is extremely high, though it should be noted that IQ tests are a highly imprecise and controversial measure.</span></p> <p><span>Later, Thims ranked everybody who had</span><span>&nbsp;a strong aptitude, marked capacity, or heightened inclination in some area that coupled with their IQ would make them worthy of the title genius.</span></p> <p><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Not wanting to exclude any geniuses who existed before IQ tests were invented, Thims referred to IQ ratings&nbsp;<a href="">based on the Cox methodology</a>, which predicts IQ based on how much people accomplished every 10 years of their lives.&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Thims then adjusted the IQ scores he thought were inaccurate by reading through many of the individuals' works to check for errors.</span></p> <p><span style="background-color: #00ffff;"><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Thims evaluated both IQ and accomplishments to rank <a href="">the smartest people in history</a>.</span></span></p> <p><span style="background-color: #00ffff;"><span style="background-color: #ffffff;"><span>Of course, this list is highly subjective and at times seemingly random. Still, we found it thoughtful enough&nbsp;</span></span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">to warrant a second look.</span></p><h3>40. Richard "Rick" Rosner</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p><span style="color: #000000; line-height: 1.5em;">Television personality and former stripper Rick Rosner is one of the smartest living men in the world </span><span style="color: #000000; line-height: 1.5em;">with IQ scores ranging from 140 to 250 by different measures.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="color: #000000;">He has taken more than 30 IQ tests and received the highest score ever on more than 20 of them, he <a href="">told Business Insider</a>&nbsp;back in November. He considers himself particularly&nbsp;good at math, physics, and "<a href="">stringing words together</a>."</span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="color: #000000;">He takes around 50 pills every day, including Omega 3 fish oil capsules and Metmorfin, "for health, longevity, and to make my brain work better," he said.</span></span></p></p> <br/><br/><h3>39. Marilyn vos Savant</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p><span style="color: #000000; line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span>Born in 1946,&nbsp;</span>Vos Savant has earned IQ scores ranging from 157 to 228.</span></span></p> <p><span>Vos Savant dropped out of Washington University after two years to&nbsp;</span><a href="">dabble in stocks and real estate</a><span>, according to Jezebel.&nbsp;She later&nbsp;</span><a href="">became a writer</a><span>&nbsp;and married&nbsp;</span><span>Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart.</span></p> <p><span></span><span style="color: #000000; line-height: 1.5em;">She achieved fame when her extrapolated score of 228 (based on a childhood test) was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1985.</span></p> <p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Since 1986, she has written an "Ask Marilyn" column in Parade magazine, where she was famous for solving the&nbsp;</span><a href="">Monty Hall problem</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p></p> <br/><br/><h3>38. Christopher Langan</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With an IQ reported between 174 and 210, Christopher Langan was dubbed the </span><a href="">smartest man in America</a>&nbsp;by Esquire Magazine.<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br /></span></p> <p>Langan is an autodidact, meaning he is largely self-taught. He has spent much of his adult life developing a&nbsp;<a href="">Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe</a>, a kind of theory of everything which he calls the CTMU.</p> <p><span><span>At 6'1" and 275 pounds, Langan is an avid weightlifter and<span>&nbsp;recovering agoraphobic</span>&nbsp;who pays the bills&nbsp;<span>doing temp work as a bartender, night-club bouncer, and personal trainer.</span></span></span></p></p> <br/><br/><a href="">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> Humans Genetically Engineered To Be Super Intelligent Could Have An IQ Of 1000 Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:59:00 -0400 Ajai Raj <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="Albert Einstein" width="600"></p><p>Genetically engineered human beings could have IQs of 1000 or higher. At least that's the theory from scientist Stephen Hsu.</p> <p>Hsu is something of a scientific polymath, who has done work pertaining to quantum physics, dark energy, finance, and information security, as well as genomics and bioinformatics, or the application of computer science and statistics to biological data. He officially holds the title of Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies at Michigan State, where he is also a professor of Theoretical Physics.</p> <p>He thinks that by tweaking our genomes we could make humans drastically smarter. Hsu makes his case <a href="" target="_blank">in Nautilus</a> — and the implications are as tantalizing as they are terrifying. He's also <a href="">published the theory in more detail at ArXiv</a>, though it wasn't peer-reviewed.</p> <h2>How to make a smarter human</h2> <p>"The possibility of super-intelligence follows directly from the genetic basis of intelligence. Characteristics like height and cognitive ability are controlled by thousands of genes, each of small effect," Hsu writes.</p> <p>From previous studies of the genome, Hsu says we can estimates that there are probably about 10,000 of these gene variants associated with intelligence. If we can tweak each of these to their "smart" version, so that they contribute a tiny bit to higher intelligence, we could engineer human beings who "exhibit cognitive ability which is roughly 100 standard deviations above average.<strong> This corresponds to more than 1,000 IQ points."</strong></p> <p>Hsu is also a scientific advisor to BGI, formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute, and one of the founders of its Cognitive Genomics Lab. <a href="">According to rumors that surfaced last year</a>, BGI is currently in the process of sequencing the genomes of 2,000 of the world's smartest people in hopes of carrying out a program like Hsu describes and engineering super-smart babies.</p> <p>Hsu and BGI aren't the only ones predicting superintelligence through genetic improvements. In his recently published book Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom, founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, agrees that genetics is the key to creating superintelligent humans. By using genetic screening of embryos before implantation, parents could find and select the embryos that possess these "turned-on" alleles for high intelligence.</p> <p>And with "further advances in genetic technology," Bostrom adds, "it may be possible to synthesize genomes to specification, obviating the need for large pools of embryos."</p> <p>Bostrom predicts that, "once this technology has matured, an embryo could be designed with the exact preferred combination of genetic inputs from each parent," and "[g]enes that are present in neither of the parents could also be spliced in, including alleles that are present with low frequency in the population but which may have significant positive effects on cognition.</p> <p><img class="full" src="" border="0" alt="Spock_by_MoonSprocket"></p> <h2>It's not all fun and genome games</h2> <p>What would that mean, exactly? It's almost impossible to fathom. As Hsu points out, the IQ scale devised by our puny human minds might not even mean anything at that level of intelligence. He speculates about the cognitive abilities such superhumans would possess:</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">[W]e can be confident that, whatever it means, ability of this kind would far exceed the maximum ability among the approximately 100 billion total individuals who have ever lived. We can imagine savant-like capabilities that, in a maximal type, might be present all at once: nearly perfect recall of images and language; super-fast thinking and calculation; powerful geometric visualization, even in higher dimensions; the ability to execute multiple analyses or trains of thought in parallel at the same time; the list goes on.</p> <p>The prospect of such superhumans roaming the same planet as us normals is, frankly, terrifying. As Hsu writes, "[t]he corresponding ethical issues are complex and deserve serious attention in what may be a relatively short interval before these capabilities become a reality."</p> <p>He speculates that some countries will make genetic engineering legal before others, and, perhaps obviously, that elites will be the first ones who can avail themselves of the benefits of superintelligence for themselves and their children. But he believes — and we should hope — that access to this kind of technology will become democratized so that everyone can benefit.</p> <p>As Hsu soberly warns at the end of <a href="" target="_blank">his article</a>: "The alternative would be inequality of a kind never before experienced in human history."</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >The Real Allure Of Superintelligent Machines Isn't Scientific — It's Erotic</a></strong></p> <p><strong>READ MORE:&nbsp;<a href="" >Soon, It Will Cost Less To Sequence A Genome Than To Flush A Toilet — And That Will Change Medicine Forever</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> People Can Predict A Man's Intelligence Just By Looking At His Face Tue, 01 Apr 2014 09:56:30 -0400 Tom Jacobs <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="matt damon good will hunting" /></p><p>Can you tell whether someone is smart just be looking at them? It sounds preposterous, but new research from the Czech Republic suggests you can&mdash;if the subject in question is a man.</p> <p>The results of a&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">just-published study</a>&nbsp;&ldquo;suggest that a perceiver can accurately gauge the real intelligence of men, but not women, by viewing their faces in photographs,&rdquo; writes a research team led by&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Karel Kleisner</a>of Charles University in Prague.</p> <p>The study, in the journal&nbsp;<em>PLoS One</em>, reports people tend to associate certain facial traits with high intelligence. The researchers report these notions &ldquo;represent nothing but a cultural stereotype,&rdquo; but some still-unidentified visual cues apparently point them in the right direction.</p> <p>The study featured 160 participants who looked at photographs of 80 Czech university students (40 men and 40 women). The images were close-ups of the students&rsquo; faces, which featured a neutral, non-smiling expression, and were devoid of jewelry and cosmetics.</p> <p>Each of the pictured students completed a Czech version of the Intelligence Structure Test, which utilizes a variety of tools to measure different types of intelligence (including IQ).</p> <p>Using as much time as needed, each participant rated all 80 faces for either intelligence or attractiveness, using a one-to-seven (highest to lowest) scale. The researchers then averaged the intelligence and attractiveness scores each student received.</p> <p>&ldquo;Our raters (men and women alike) were able to estimate intelligence with an accuracy higher than chance from static facial photographs of men, but not from photos of women,&rdquo; the researchers report.</p> <p>Specifically, they write, &ldquo;two factors of general intelligence were significantly associated with perceived intelligence from men&rsquo;s faces: fluid intelligence and figural intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the capacity to logically solve problems independent of acquired knowledge. Figurative intelligence describes the ability to handle objects such as images, patterns and shapes.&rdquo;</p> <p>Clearly, the research (if successfully replicated) leaves us with two big questions: What presumably unconscious mental process allows people to spot intelligence? And whatever this technique turns out to be, why doesn&rsquo;t it work when we&rsquo;re judging women?</p> <p>The researchers rule out &ldquo;shape variability&rdquo; as the signal, but don&rsquo;t have a good alternative answer. &ldquo;We can speculate about attributions of intelligence based on particular configurations of eyes or gaze, color of eyes, hair and skin, or skin texture,&rdquo; they write.</p> <p>On the inability to accurately judge women&rsquo;s intelligence, the researchers point to several possibilities. Perhaps, they write, cues of higher intelligence are apparent only in men&rsquo;s faces &ldquo;due to some genetic and developmental association to sex-steroid hormonal agents during puberty.&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;Another option is that women are pervasively judged according to their attractiveness,&rdquo; they add. &ldquo;The strong halo effect of attractiveness may thus prevent an accurate assessment of the intelligence of women.&rdquo;</p> <p>Determining the truth will require a lot of hard work by very intelligent people. Have you seen any?</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >Here’s What You Really Get When You Pay To Play Brain Training Games</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> It May Be Possible To Give Little Kids Hormones To Make Them Smarter Fri, 28 Mar 2014 17:15:00 -0400 Julian Savulescu <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="chalk" width="480" /></p><p>There could be a way of predicting &mdash; and preventing &mdash; which children will go on to have low intelligence, according to the findings of a study researchers at Cardiff University presented on Monday.</p> <p>They discovered that children with two copies of a common gene (Thr92Ala), together with low levels of thyroid hormone are four times more likely to have a low IQ. This combination occurs in about 4% of the UK population.</p> <p>Importantly, if you had just one of these factors, but not both, there did not appear to be an increased risk of low intelligence. These are early results, but suggest that it might be possible to treat children early with thyroid hormone supplementation to enhance their intelligence. This raises many ethical issues.</p> <h2>IQ and quality of life</h2> <p>A common objection is that being smarter does not make your life better. In this study, researchers were concerned with those with an IQ betweem 70-85. Below 70 is classified as intellectual disability but an IQ of 70 to 75 is similar to mild intellectual disability.</p> <p>Even for individuals with an IQ between 75 and 90 there are still significant disadvantages. Job opportunities tend to be the least desirable and least financially rewarding, requiring significant oversight. More than half the people with this IQ level <a href="">fail to reach the minimum recruitment standards for the US military</a>. Individuals with this lower level of intelligence are at <a href="">significant risk of</a> living in poverty (16%), being a chronic welfare dependent (17%) and are much more likely to drop out of school (35%) compared to individuals with average intelligence. Studies show that there is also an <a href="">increased risk of</a> incarceration and being murdered.</p> <p>Linda Gottfredson, who&rsquo;s undertaken much of this research, <a href="">concludes</a> that at the very least, &ldquo;an IQ of 75 is perhaps the most important threshold in modern life&rdquo;. So it is clear that the low-normal intelligence, although not classified as disabled, are significantly disadvantaged.</p> <p>If we could enhance their intelligence, say with thyroid hormone supplementation, we should.</p> <h2>Ethical decisions</h2> <p>It is important to recognise that the threshold of &ldquo;normality&rdquo; here has no moral significance. The dividing line between the IQ classifications of normal intelligence and intellectual disability at 70 is made statistically. It is statistical point, that around 2% of the population will fall below that level. But disease could have been defined slightly differently, changing the bar of where candidates qualify for medical therapy.</p> <p>But what matters is not where you fall on a statistical curve for something like cognitive function, but how bad it is to be at that point &mdash; how does it influence how well your life goes or your well-being? It is pretty clear that low-normal levels of cognitive function tend to reduce well-being and so should be candidates for enhancement.</p> <p>Another common objection to enhancement is that it would create inequality, allowing the rich to get smarter and pass on these benefits to their children. In this case, however, the interventions would only benefit those with an IQ of 70-85 &mdash; so it would in fact reduce inequality. This is a strong argument in their favour.</p> <h2>Nature and nurture</h2> <p>While medical treatments are important, how bad any condition turns out being depends on many other factors as well. For example, if those at risk of having a low-normal IQ were identified early, enhanced education or diet or other non-medical environmental modifications could be employed.</p> <p>And there is another way this information could be used. Embryos are now routinely tested during IVF using genetic diagnosis for major diseases. But soon, whole genome analysis will be so cheap that it can be used to test the genomes of embryos in IVF. Should tests be done for gene variations that could contribute to causing low intelligence? Many genes will be like this one &mdash; alone they may not confer risk but in combination with certain environments (in this case low thyroid hormone) they have disadvantageous effects.</p> <p>In my view, we ought to test embryos for such gene variants. Imagine you are having IVF and produce ten embryos. They are all clear of major diseases, but one of them has two copies of the Thr92Ala gene. Given that there are 9 others that don&rsquo;t have this potentially disadvantageous trait, why not select one of them? Of course this does not guarantee that the embryo you do choose will have normal intelligence, but based on the information you have, it reduces the chances.</p> <p>Given that the outcomes are so much worse than their alternatives, we should reduce the chances even by a small account, provided the costs aren&rsquo;t great. But given that whole genome analysis is likely to be used in the future, why not use the information that is available to try to at least start off with a higher chance of a better life? Responsibility requires that we use predictive genetic information, including weakly predictive or context-specific genetic information.</p> <p>A common objection is that we should concentrate not on genetic selection, but environmental improvement. You might say: &ldquo;If my child is genetically disposed to having low intelligence, I will make sure we correct the thyroid hormone levels.&rdquo;</p> <p>But life isn&rsquo;t this certain or controllable &mdash; we can&rsquo;t guarantee that our attempts to control the environment will be successful. All we can do in life is try to reduce the chances of bad things happening, and increase the chances of good things happening. That includes using genetic information.</p> <hr /> <p><em>This article was written with the help of Mikael Dunlop, who was formerly at the University of Oxford&rsquo;s Uehiro Centre for Practical Bioethics.</em><img src="" border="0" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;" /></p> <p><em>Julian Savulescu does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.</em></p> <p>This article was originally published on <a href="">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="">original article</a>.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >48 Psychological Facts You Should Know About Yourself</a></strong></p> <p><strong>Find Us On Facebook:&nbsp;<a href="" >Business Insider Partners</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Here's The Truth About Those Brain Games That Are Supposed To Make You Smarter Mon, 27 Jan 2014 10:06:00 -0500 Jordan Gaines Lewis <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="video game" /></p><p>I&rsquo;m not old by any means, but I&rsquo;ve become a little more forgetful lately. This morning I poured myself a thermos of coffee and left for lab, abandoning it on the kitchen counter. I nearly forgot about the paper I had to review this week until I saw the deadline looming on my desk calendar. And I didn&rsquo;t remember my friend&rsquo;s birthday until logging into Facebook &ndash; and I&rsquo;m always the one people rely on to remember birthdays.</p> <p>I sure could use a little memory boost. Unfortunately, despite the growing popularity of brain-training apps and programmes like&nbsp;<a href="">Lumosity</a>,&nbsp;<a href="">CogniFit</a>,&nbsp;<a href="">CogMed</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="">Jungle Memory</a>, I&rsquo;m not going to find any help here; studies raise doubt about whether these programmes and apps have any tangible effect on improving cognition.</p> <h2>Thriving business</h2> <p>Lumosity co-founder Michael Scanlon means well, though. He started up the company in 2005 with Kunal Sarkar and David Drescher,&nbsp;<a href="">after dropping out</a>&nbsp;of his neuroscience PhD at Stanford. Since then the company has reached more than 35m people and this time last year the company&rsquo;s mobile app was&nbsp;<a href="">being downloaded</a>&nbsp;nearly 50,000 times a day.</p> <p>&ldquo;Lumosity is based on the science of neuroplasticity,&rdquo; the commercials tout, and&nbsp;<a href="">Lumosity&rsquo;s website</a>&nbsp;advertises its ability to &ldquo;train memory and attention&rdquo; through a &ldquo;personalised training program.&rdquo; This plan includes more than 40 games designed to boost memory, flexibility, attention, processing speed, and general problem-solving ability.</p> <p>Lumosity has even put out a&nbsp;<a href="">fancy PDF</a>&nbsp;describing the science behind their games and changes in individuals&rsquo; BPT (brain performance test) scores before and after training.</p> <p>A year after Lumosity&rsquo;s official launch in 2007, Susanne Jaeggi and colleagues at Columbia University&nbsp;<a href="">published a study</a>&nbsp;suggesting that memory training not only enhanced short-term memory ability, but actually boosted one&rsquo;s IQ an entire point per hour of training. Wow!</p> <h2>Too good to be true?</h2> <p>But Thomas Redick and colleagues at Georgia Tech thought it sounded too good to be true. With a sceptical eye, they attempted to replicate Jaeggi&rsquo;s findings. This time, unlike Jaeggi&rsquo;s study, they tested 17 different cognitive tasks, including tasks for fluid intelligence, multitasking, working memory, and perceptual speed. They also had two control groups: one that underwent placebo training, and one that did no testing whatsoever.</p> <p>After 20 sessions, Redick found that while participants improved performance on the tasks at hand, their newfound abilities never actually transferred to any global measure of intelligence or cognition.&nbsp;<a href="">Their study</a>&nbsp;was published last May.</p> <p><a href="">Another investigation</a>, published in December by a group at Case Western Reserve University, employed a similar placebo-controlled design. Focusing on working memory and abstract problem-solving, they found that even training for up to 20 days resulted in no significant improvement in mental capacity. Again, though, the researchers did note that performance on the specific tasks improved.</p> <p>When Adrian Owen and colleagues of Cambridge University&nbsp;<a href="">reported similar results</a>&nbsp;after a six-week online cognitive training regime using 11,400 participants, he attributed these task improvements to familiarity &ndash; not a true change in cognitive ability.</p> <p>And a&nbsp;<a href="">recent meta-analysis</a>&nbsp;of 23 studies confirmed these and others&rsquo; findings. Monica Melby-Lerv&aring;g and Charles Hulme of University of Oslo concluded that brain-training programmes did indeed produce short-term, highly specific improvements in the task at hand, but with no generalised improvements to overall intelligence, memory, attention, or other cognitive ability.</p> <h2>Squaring up to your shopping list</h2> <p>In other words, according to these studies, it seems that remembering which shape came before the circle in the sequence will not help you remember that one last item on your grocery list as you&rsquo;re out shopping. And it certainly won&rsquo;t raise your IQ by any significant amount.</p> <p>In this age of tablets and mobile devices, it&rsquo;s unfortunate that something so readily available cannot help us exercise our minds in ways that may benefit us beyond the screen.</p> <p>And these revelations may be especially bad news for many who&nbsp;<a href="">put reliance</a>&nbsp;on apps like Lumosity everyday &ndash; the elderly attempting to ward off dementia, for example. Or those suffering from brain trauma and individuals with learning disabilities.</p> <p>The takeaway message from these studies? If you enjoy the games, by all means continue. But don&rsquo;t necessarily believe the hype nor continue wasting your money if you&rsquo;re using these apps to truly improve your memory, reaction time, or intelligence in the longer term.</p> <p>If the idea of using mental exercise to stave off the effects of age on memory and other functions still appeals, then continue to expose yourself&nbsp;<a href="">to a variety</a>&nbsp;of problem-solving skills throughout the day &ndash; and not necessarily on the computer.</p> <p>Or, if you&rsquo;re anything like me, just try to remember where you actually placed your morning coffee before you leave the house. The shot of caffeine probably does more for my workday brainpower than any brain-training app will.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >Brain Games Are Starting To Function Like IQ Tests</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Sex Might Actually Make You Smarter Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:45:39 -0500 Dan Hurley <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="kiss, kissing, passion, passionate, pda, public affection, gov ball, Governors Ball 2012, Randall's Island, NYC, New York City, Festivals, Music, Live Performance, BI, DNG" width="480" /></p><p>Forget mindfulness meditation, computerized working-memory training, and learning a musical instrument; all methods recently shown by scientists to increase intelligence. There could be an easier answer. It turns out that sex might actually make you smarter.</p> <p>Researchers in Maryland and South Korea recently found that sexual activity in mice and rats improves mental performance and increases neurogenesis (the production of new neurons) in the hippocampus, where long-term memories are formed.</p> <p>In April, a team from the University of Maryland <a href="">reported</a> that middle-aged rats permitted to engage in sex showed signs of improved cognitive function and hippocampal function. In November, a group from Konkuk University in Seoul <a href="">concluded</a> that sexual activity counteracts the memory-robbing effects of chronic stress in mice. &ldquo;Sexual interaction could be helpful,&rdquo; they wrote, &ldquo;for buffering adult hippocampal neurogenesis and recognition memory function against the suppressive actions of chronic stress.&rdquo;</p> <p>So growing brain cells through sex does appear to have some basis in scientific fact. But there&rsquo;s some debate over whether fake sex &mdash; pornography &mdash; could be harmful. Neuroscientists from the University of Texas recently <a href="">argued</a> that excessive porn viewing, like other addictions, can result in permanent &ldquo;anatomical and pathological&rdquo; changes to the brain. That view, however, was quickly challenged in a <a href="">rebuttal</a> from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who said that the Texans "offered little, if any, convincing evidence to support their perspectives. Instead, excessive liberties and misleading interpretations of neuroscience research are used to assert that excessive pornography consumption causes brain damage."</p> <p>Whether or not porn "addiction" literally damages the brain, even brief viewing of pornographic images does interfere with people&rsquo;s &ldquo;working memory&rdquo; &mdash; the ability to mentally juggle and pay attention to multiple items. A <a href="">study</a>&nbsp;published last October in the <em>Journal of Sex Research</em> tested the working memory of 28 healthy individuals when they were asked to keep track of neutral, negative, positive, or pornographic stimuli. &ldquo;Results revealed worse working memory performance in the pornographic picture condition,&rdquo; concluded Matthias Brand, head of the cognitive psychology department at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.</p> <p>One myth about sex &mdash; or perhaps it&rsquo;s just a joke? &mdash; is that &ldquo;testosterone poisoning&rdquo; makes young men stupid. Actually, a <a href="">2007 study</a> in the journal Neuropsychologia measured the level of testosterone in the saliva of prepubertal boys, including some who were intellectually gifted, with an IQ above 130, some who were average, and some who were mentally challenged, with an IQ less than 70. They concluded that &ldquo;boys of average intelligence had significantly higher testosterone levels than both mentally challenged and intellectually gifted boys, with the latter two groups showing no significant difference between each other.&rdquo;</p> <p>But if having sex can make people smarter, the converse is not true: being smarter does not mean you&rsquo;ll have more sex. Smarter teens, in fact, tend to delay their initiation of coital activities. A 2012 <a href="">study</a> by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that high working memory decreases the likelihood of early adolescent sexual debut. <a href="">Some researchers</a> have attributed the delay to greater overall &ldquo;competence&rdquo; among smarter teens. But a <a href="">2010 study</a> found that adolescents at both the upper and lower ends of the intelligence distribution were less likely to have sex. Most recently, <a href="">a study of 536 same-sex twin pairs</a> concluded that intelligence may be a red herring: the association is really between school achievement, not IQ per se, and age at first sexual experience.</p> <p>In old age, too, cognitive abilities affect one&rsquo;s chances of getting lucky. A <a href="">study</a> published just last month found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), often a forerunner of Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease, were only about half as likely to have engaged recently in sexual activity as were their cognitively healthy peers. Of those with MCI, just 32.5 percent had recently engaged in sex, compared to 62.3 percent of those without MCI.</p> <p>Perhaps, however, the dream of getting smarter through sex is just an alluring fantasy. Tracey J. Shors, a psychologist at the Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University, has <a href="">reported</a> that while many activities can increase the rate at which new brain cells are born, only effortful, successful learning increases their survival. As she said at a meeting on &ldquo;Cognitive Enhancers&rdquo; at the Society for Neuroscience in 2012: &ldquo;You can make new cells with exercise, Prozac and sex. If you do mental training, you&rsquo;ll keep alive more cells that you produced. And if you do both, now you have the best of both worlds &mdash; you&rsquo;re making more cells and keeping more alive.&rdquo;</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >The Biggest Things We Learned About Sex In 2013</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 'My 4-Year-Old Is A Genius — I'm Scared For Her' Thu, 19 Sep 2013 11:44:00 -0400 Emily Yoffe <div class="text parbase section"> <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="child" width="480" /><em><strong></strong></em></p> <p class="p1"><em>"Dear Prudence" is an advice column on manners and morals.</em></p> <p><em><strong>Dear Prudence,</strong></em></p> </div> <div class="text parbase section"> <p>As a first-grader I was given an IQ test, scored more than 160 and was declared a &ldquo;genius.&rdquo; This led to years of heightened expectations, profound failures, disappointed teachers and family, and ostracism (I was skipped two grades and did not fit in socially.)</p> <p>I eventually dropped out of high school during my freshman year. I later managed to successfully continue my education and got a graduate degree.&nbsp;</p> <p>I&rsquo;m basically happy, but not a highly successful person. My family was abusive, and I have a weird personality, but the &ldquo;genius&rdquo; treatment didn&rsquo;t help. I&rsquo;m now married and have a 4-year old daughter. Because she was somewhat shy and anti-social, we were advised to have her evaluated for autism spectrum disorder. They said she doesn&rsquo;t have that, but she was given an IQ test. The psychologist literally came out to the waiting area shouting that she was &ldquo;a genius!&rdquo;&nbsp;</p> <p>I had a PTSD reaction to this, bundled her up and fled. I have not mentioned any of this to my husband. He was also labeled a genius at a young age, failed miserably in school, and has had a largely unsuccessful career. But he&rsquo;s proud of his genius label and does not see it as part of his later problems. I fear that he would be boastful to his large and very competitive family and impose some of the heightened expectations on her that we both suffered from.</p> <p>Next year my daughter will begin kindergarten and I just learned that our district has a nearby magnet for students with exceptionally high IQs. My instinct is to keep my daughter far away from the school psychologist and the tiger mommies and daddies around that pressure cooker. I am not in the habit of keeping secrets from my husband or denying my child opportunities, so I&rsquo;m feeling guilty. I also feel that once the cat is out of the bag, there&rsquo;s little hope of normalcy for my daughter&rsquo;s childhood. She's a happy little kid right now. Advice?</p> </div> <div class="text parbase section"> <p>&mdash;Just Wanting the Best</p> <div class="text parbase section"> <p>Dear Best,</p> <p>It would be best for your girl if the adults in her life were able to not project their fears and fantasies on her little shoulders and just allow her to explore the wonders of being young. You raise a wise and absolutely legitimate point about your own early labeling and its destructive powers. In&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank"><em>Mindset</em></a>, Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck explores the damage done by imposing on people a&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">fixed mindset</a>&nbsp;rather than a growth mindset.</p> <p>She writes that people who believe intelligence or talent are given and immutable end up expecting these qualities alone to lead to success (you&rsquo;ve seen they don&rsquo;t), and can spend more time documenting their gifts than developing them (as may have been the case with your husband). With the growth mindset, people understand their given qualities are just a starting point, and accomplishment requires effort and dedication. Understanding and applying these principles to the raising of your daughter will help buffer her against the adults in her family and at school who want to harp on an IQ number as an end in itself.</p> </div> <div class="text parbase section"> <p>Don&rsquo;t let anxiety and secrecy motivate your decisions about her education. You know you have to tell your husband about the test result and magnet school. But you don&rsquo;t have to do it like the school psychologist and go bellowing her IQ and declaring her a genius. You just need to tell your husband that one of the tests shows that your kid&mdash;like the two of you&mdash;is very bright, and say this raises the question of what the best school would be for her next fall.</p> <p>Then you two should look at your choices with open minds. Your husband needs to listen to your concern that the magnet school will be a demanding hothouse fueled by insanely competitive parents. You need to listen to his worry that your child will eventually be bored by the curriculum at your neighborhood school. Then you should both read&nbsp;<em>Mindset</em>&nbsp;and get on the same page about the fact that your daughter&rsquo;s intelligence test is but one data point, and that what&rsquo;s important is nurturing a love of learning, an ability to take risks (and fail), and resilience.</p> <p>Since you and your husband both have had issues with fulfilling your expected promise in life&mdash;and you want to avoid visiting the same problems on your child&mdash;you might benefit from discussing this together with a psychologist. Just not one who believes in slapping useless labels on people.</p> </div> <div class="text parbase section"> <p>&mdash;Prudie</p> <p><em>Got a burning question for Prudie? She'll be online at to chat with readers each Monday at noon.&nbsp;</em><a href="" target="_blank"><em>Submit your questions and comments here</em></a><em>&nbsp;before or during the live discussion.</em>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 11-Year-Old British Girl Has A Higher IQ Than Einstein Thu, 08 Aug 2013 15:21:00 -0400 Kristin Deasy <p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="Cerys Cooksammy-Parnell IQ" width="480" />Einstein has been outdone by an 11-year-old British girl by the name of&nbsp;Cerys Cooksammy-Parnell, whose IQ score outstrips the famous scientist and makes her one of the brightest in the nation,&nbsp;</span><a href="" target="_blank">according to Britain's Express</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>Cerys, who is from Northampton, got a score of 162 on the Cattell B scale of the Mensa IQ test. Mensa is an&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">elite high-IQ institution</a>, and 162 is the top score in Britain, making her smarter than people like Stephen Hawking and Einstein,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">according to ITN News</a>.</p> <p>At the moment, though, she thinks her IQ score is (sorry, Einstein) relatively inconsequential.</p> <p>&ldquo;At 11, I do not have many intellectual discussions with my friends and to be honest there is more to a person than their IQ,&rdquo; she&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">told the Express</a>.&nbsp;&ldquo;Perhaps when I am really old and past 20 years of age I will have more intellectual conversations where my IQ will assist,&rdquo; but until then, &ldquo;my focus will be on fashion, fun and getting good grades.&rdquo;</p> <p>After all, she only took the test to try and beat her Dad's 142 score but &ldquo;didn&rsquo;t expect to beat him by such a huge margin,&rdquo; she&nbsp;<a href="http://%28also%2C%20the%20earliest%20age%20you%20can%20even%20take%20the%20test%20is%2010%20and%20a%20half%29/" target="_blank">told the Express</a>.&nbsp;<span>(Ouch, Dad.)</span></p> <p>&ldquo;I am not sure if this score is a good thing or a bad thing, as I know she will be questioning everything I tell her to do,&rdquo; her father said,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">according to the Daily Star</a>, adding: &ldquo;We are a bit blown away.&rdquo;</p> <p>Cerys said one of her big dreams is to become the governor of the Bank of England,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">telling the Express</a>: &ldquo;I like working with numbers.&rdquo;</p> <p>Cerys will start secondary school in September. The earliest age one can reportedly take the Mensa in Britain is 10-and-a-half. The society has invited her to join its youth program,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">according to the Daily Star</a>.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Kids Who Do Well On This Spatial Intelligence Test May Have Potential That's Going Completely Unrealized Tue, 16 Jul 2013 17:58:00 -0400 Max Nisen <p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="kids working in science lab at Thomas Jefferson high school" width="480" />It's no surprise that high verbal and math SAT scores at a young age might predict future success, but when you add a test for spatial reasoning ability to the mix, you get an even better predictor of someone's future accomplishments, creativity, and innovative potential, <a href="">a recent study found.&nbsp;</a></span></p> <p>The study, from Vanderbilt professors <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Harrison J. Kell, David Lubinski, Camilla P. Benbow, and James H. Steiger, found a particularly strong effect for math, science, and related fields.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The data comes from a group of 13-year-olds who already tested in the top 0.5% of their age group in cognitive ability. All were given the SAT and a subset the&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Differential Aptitude Test, which measures spatial reasoning ability.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>Spatial reasoning is basically the ability to manipulate 2D and 3D objects in your head. The authors <a href="">and others argue</a> that this sort of intelligence is badly neglected in our current education and testing systems, and that by giving it earlier and better emphasis, we can help unleash more high potential individuals.&nbsp;</p> <p>Wondering if you or your child has this particular ability? &nbsp;</p> <p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="">An earlier paper</a> by two of the authors along with Duke professor and Business Insider contributor Jonathan Wai gives some example questions. Think you could do well on a set of 20 of each of these?</span></p> <p><img class="float_left" src=" shot 2013-07-16 at 4.18.51 pm.png" border="0" alt="Spatial reasoining" style="color: #000000; font-size: 15px;" /></p> <h3>&nbsp;</h3> <h3><strong>Only one of the 5 figures shown can be made from the pattern on the left. Which is it?</strong><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"></span></h3> <h3><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><br /></span></h3> <h3><strong>Just one of the drawings on the right exactly matches the drawing at the left if you turn it around. The rest are backwards.<span></span></strong></h3> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <h3>This question is pretty self explanatory, and would be part of a series testing understanding of mechanical ideas.</h3> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h3><strong>Which of the five choices is next in the given pattern?</strong></h3> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <p><strong><br /><a href=""></a></strong></p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <h2><strong><br /></strong></h2> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Answers &ndash; A, A, C, D</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Student Test Scores Show That 'Grit' Is More Important Than IQ Tue, 28 May 2013 19:14:00 -0400 Aimee Groth <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="Angela Lee Duckworth" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>What's the best predictor of success? IQ, talent, luck?</p> <p>Nope. It's '<em>grit</em>,' more than anything else.</p> <p>Through her research at the University of Pennsylvania &mdash; and firsthand experience teaching in New York City's public schools &mdash;psychologist <a href="">Angela Duckworth</a> has found that the ability to withstand stress and move past failures to achieve a goal is the best indicator of future success.</p> <p>"What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students," she shared in her <a href="">recent TED talk</a>. "Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well."</p> <p>After teaching in New York City, Duckworth went to graduate school to become a psychologist, where she studied what types of people were successful at West Point Military Academy, the National Spelling Bee, in classrooms, and beyond. Again, she said, "it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was <em>grit</em>."<span class="transcriptLink"></span></p> <p><span class="transcriptLink">She began by studying grit</span> <span class="transcriptLink">in the Chicago public schools. "</span><span class="transcriptLink">I asked thousands of high school juniors</span> <span class="transcriptLink">to take grit questionnaires,</span> <span class="transcriptLink">and then waited around more than a year</span> <span class="transcriptLink">to see who would graduate," she said. "</span><span class="transcriptLink">Turns out that grittier kids</span> <span class="transcriptLink">were significantly more likely to graduate,</span> <span class="transcriptLink">even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure,</span> <span class="transcriptLink">things like family income,</span> <span class="transcriptLink">standardized achievement test scores,</span> <span class="transcriptLink">even how safe kids felt when they were at school.</span>"</p> <p>In a paper, "<a href="">Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ In Predicting Academic Performance Of Adolescents</a>," Duckworth and colleague <a href="">Martin Seligman</a> tested 164 eighth graders "recruited from a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse magnet public school" in the Northeast for self-discipline and IQ. They measured the students in the fall and spring through self-assessment, a behavioral delay-of-gratification task, and a survey of study and lifestyle habits, along with a group IQ test. They found that "self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not."</p> <p style="padding-left: 60px;"><strong>This chart shows their findings about self-discipline vs IQ:</strong></p> <p class="center"><img style="float:right;" src=" measurement.jpg" border="0" alt="IQ measurement" width="344" height="497" /></p> <p>But why do some people have grit and others don't? That's where science needs to fill in the gaps.<br /><br />"What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty," Duckworth said in her TED talk. "Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent."</p> <p>One way to instill it, she says, it to help people understand that learning and ability isn't fixed. And that there's life after failure.<br /><br /></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >19 Reasons It's Horrible To Grow Up Gifted</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> This Video Test Will Give You An Idea Of How Intelligent You Are Sat, 25 May 2013 12:10:00 -0400 Vivian Giang <p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="chess, genius, smart, intelligence" width="400" height="300" /></span></p> <p><span>Superachievers </span><a href="">have an incredible way of focusing on their goal</a><span> and avoiding distractions.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>But does that mean there's a connection between IQ and a superhuman ability to stay focused?&nbsp;</p> <p>Yes, according to <a href="">researchers from the University of Rochester</a>, who in a recent experiment&nbsp;asked&nbsp;<span>53 participants to watch short video clips&nbsp;</span><span>of black and white bars, with the sole task of&nbsp;</span><span>identifying whether the bars were pointing toward the left or right. The bars included in the videos were either large and&nbsp;</span><span>take up the entire screen or smaller and only take up the center of the screen.</span></p> <p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The participants were also asked to take a standardized IQ test. The findings,&nbsp;</span><a href="">published this month in the journal Biology</a>,&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">show that&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">people with higher IQs had difficulty perceiving movement in larger images, but were quicker to notice movement in the smaller bars.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Why do researchers think that the inability to notice the larger bars might play a role in intelligence? The larger bars represent background distractions, which in real-life scenarios are less important than smaller objects moving directly in front of you. In other words, smart people can more easily filter out "background noise" to focus on a task directly in front of them, such as</span>&nbsp;listening to a conversation versus watching people walk by.&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Those who have the ability to ignore&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">distracting sensory signals can concentrate better than those who can't,&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">because our brains "o</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">perate on overwhelming amounts of information</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, and thus their efficiency is fundamentally constrained by an ability to suppress irrelevant information," <a href="">according to the study.</a></span></p> <p>Although the study closely links IQ with an ability to focus, the University of Rochester&nbsp;<span>researchers also point out that this isn't the only indicator of intelligence, because "</span><a href="">you can't really track it back to one part of the brain</a>.<span>" Either way, it does offer some&nbsp;</span><span>"</span><span>clues about what makes a brain more efficient, and, consequently, more intelligent."</span></p> <p>Below, you can watch the same video that the participants watched:</p> <p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src=""></iframe></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Why You Feel Smart Around Some People But Dumb Around Others Tue, 21 May 2013 10:09:00 -0400 Annie Murphy Paul <p>We&rsquo;ve all been there: you feel especially smart and funny when talking to a particular person, only to feel hopelessly unintelligent and inarticulate in the presence of another.</p> <p>You&rsquo;re not imagining things. Experiments show that when people report feeling comfortable with a conversational partner, they are judged by those partners and by observers as actually <em>being</em> more witty.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s just one example of the powerful influence that social factors can have on intelligence. Research in this area should prompt us to think about intelligence not as a &ldquo;lump of something that&rsquo;s in our heads,&rdquo; as the psychologist Joshua Aronson puts it, but as &ldquo;a transaction among people.&rdquo;</p> <p>Mr. Aronson, an associate professor at <a class="hidden_link" href="">New York University</a>, has been a leader in investigating the effects of social forces on academic achievement. Along with the psychologist Claude Steele, he identified the phenomenon known as &ldquo;stereotype threat.&rdquo; Members of groups believed to be academically inferior &mdash; African-American and Latino students enrolled in college, or female students in math and science courses &mdash; score much lower on tests when reminded beforehand of their race or gender.</p> <p>The pair&rsquo;s experiments in the 1990s, and the dozens of studies by other researchers that followed, concluded that the performance of these students suffered because they were worried about confirming negative stereotypes about their group.</p> <p>In a 1995 article in <em>The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</em>, Professors Steele and Aronson found that black students performed comparably with white students when told that the test they were taking was &ldquo;a laboratory problem-solving task.&rdquo; Black students scored much lower, however, when they were instructed that the test was meant to measure their intellectual ability. In effect, the prospect of social evaluation suppressed these students&rsquo; intelligence.</p> <p>Minorities aren&rsquo;t the only ones vulnerable to stereotype threat. We all are. A group of people notably confident about their mathematical abilities &mdash; white male math and engineering majors who received high scores on the math portion of the SAT &mdash; did worse on a math test when told that the experiment was intended to investigate &ldquo;why Asians appear to outperform other students on tests of math ability.&rdquo;</p> <p>And in a study published last year in the journal <em>Learning and Individual Differences</em>, high school students did worse on a test of spatial skills when told that males are better at solving spatial problems because of genetic differences between males and females. The girls were anxious about confirming assumptions about their gender, while the boys were anxious about living up to them.</p> <p>The evolving literature on stereotype threat shows that performance is always social in nature. Even alone in an exam room, we hear a chorus of voices appraising, evaluating, passing judgment. And as social creatures, humans are strongly affected by what these voices say.</p> <p>In a 2002 study led by Roy F. Baumeister, a psychologist now at Florida State University, participants were given an I.Q. test and then a personality inventory. Some of the participants were randomly selected to receive false feedback from the personality inventory, informing them that they were &ldquo;the sort of people who would end up alone in life.&rdquo;</p> <p>The participants then took another test. Those who had been told they would be loveless and friendless in the future answered significantly fewer questions correctly than on the earlier test.</p> <p>If the threat of social exclusion can decrease the expression of intelligence, so can a perceived threat to physical safety. It&rsquo;s common to blame disadvantaged children&rsquo;s poor academic performance on their &ldquo;environment.&rdquo; By this we usually mean longstanding characteristics of their homes and neighborhoods. But research on the social aspects of intelligence suggests that much more immediate aspects of kids&rsquo; surroundings can also affect their I.Q.&rsquo;s.</p> <p>In a study conducted on the troubled South Side of Chicago, for example, students whose neighborhoods had been the site of a homicide within the previous two weeks scored half a standard deviation lower on a test of intelligence.</p> <p>This research has important implications for the way we educate children and the way we manage employees. For one thing, we should replace high-stakes, one-shot tests with the kind of unobtrusive and ongoing assessments that give teachers and managers a more accurate sense of people&rsquo;s true abilities. We should also put in place techniques for reducing anxiety and building self-confidence that take advantage of our social natures. And we should ensure that the social climate in schools and workplaces is one of warmth and trust, not competition and exclusion.</p> <p>Professor Aronson calls the doltishness induced by an uncomfortable social situation &ldquo;conditional stupidity.&rdquo; We should use that insight to create the conditions for brilliance.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Your Boss Probably Wouldn't Pass Yale's Emotional Intelligence Assessment Fri, 10 May 2013 09:28:00 -0400 Vivian Giang <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="doctor women thinking working" width="400" height="300" /></p><p><span><a href="" class="hidden_link">Yale</a> School of Management is testing its current&nbsp;<span>incoming class for emotional intelligence to&nbsp;<span>determine&nbsp;</span><a href="">whether traits like empathy and the ability to read people</a><span>&nbsp;can predict future success.</span></span></span></p> <p><span>Do the tests work?</span></p> <p><span>We may not know for a few years, but, according to the researchers of t<span>he Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (</span><span>MSCEIT), your boss may not pass the test.<a href="">David Caruso</a>, special assistant to the Dean at Yale College and co-creator of the online assessment test, tells us that managers and leaders who take the test typically don't score very well and are actually surprised that they don't have it all.</span></span></p> <p><span>Yale School of Management is part of a&nbsp;<a href="">trend catching on in business schools</a>&nbsp;&mdash; Notre Dame and Dartmouth are also administering their own tests &mdash; to test prospective students for emotional intelligence, but Yale's 141-item test was created by its own researchers. The MSCEIT is<span>&nbsp;offered on a voluntary basis and won't be a factor in the school's highly selective application process right now, but it's uncertain what the school will do with the results in the future.</span></span></p> <p><span>Before Yale can determine whether the test can help them enhance the admissions process, the results first have to prove that it can predict certain outcomes. For now, Yale's School of Management and School of Medicine are allowing applicants the option to take the test, then they will study the results in a few years to determine whether using the applicant's emotional intelligence quotient would have "led to different results, predicted problems, or predicted unusual achievement."</span></p> <p><span>The idea is that successful leaders and managers should be able to understand how others around them are feeling and make changes to their leadership style to efficiently achieve the end goal. This requires an ability to read people, accurately understand and manage emotions, communicate effectively, and adapt quickly to other cultures. And inevitably, <a href=""><span class="s1">schools are ranked</span></a> based on how well their students perform after graduation, therefore, a deeper understanding on whether certain emotional traits have an effect on future success may play a bigger role in the application process in the near future.</span></p> <p>There are three ways to measure emotional intelligence: Self-Report, which is where you ask a person questions about how they view themselves;&nbsp;Other-report (360), which is where you ask observers to evaluate what they think of a target person, such as their boss; and ability, which is where you ask a person to solve emotional problems to test their actual level of skill.</p> <p><span>The&nbsp;</span><span>MSCEIT is an ability test. Below are some sample questions:</span></p> <p><strong>Example 1: What emotions are expressed in this face?</strong>&nbsp; (This counts as two items because even though there is one face, two different questions are asked about it).</p> <p><img src="" border="0" alt="MSCEIT" /></p> <p><strong>Example 2:</strong><img src="" border="0" alt="MSCEIT" /><span>So what happens if an applicant has exceptional test scores and impressive work experience, yet scores low&nbsp;</span>on an&nbsp;EQ assessment?</p> <p>Caruso doesn't recommend that schools use the assessment for "high stakes admissions testing," but rather,<span>&nbsp;incorporate the measure within the education the school offers.</span></p> <p><span>"We strongly believe that business schools should teach these skills, help students acquire emotion regulation strategies and teach them how to better read people," the researcher tells us. "These are becoming increasingly more important skills and traditional curricula still ignores them."</span></p> <p><span>Researchers say understanding your own emotional intelligence skills can reveal new information about yourself, so that you can effectively develop these much-needed skills before entering the business and work world.</span></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Billionaires Really Are Smarter Than The Rest Of Us, Researcher Finds Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:33:00 -0400 Julie Bort <p>I<img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="zuckerberg gates" />t's common knowledge that success is two-parts hard work and one-part luck. But what about smarts? Are the world's richest people really the most intelligent people around?</p> <p>Pretty much, yes, according to new research by Duke University's Jonathan Wai, sent to <a class="hidden_link" href="">Business Insider</a> and first reported by <a href="">CNBC's Robert Frank</a>.</p> <p>Wai found that within the top one percent of smart people, the smarter you are, the richer you are.</p> <p>Overall, billionaires tended to be the smartest people. Some 45% of them are part of the top 1% of smart people. That compares to 39% of not-billionaire Fortune 500 CEOs; 41% of Senators, and 40% of federal judges.</p> <p>Tech billionaires and those who made their money from investments seem to be the smartest of all. Wai found that 63% in tech and 69% in finance were among the brainpower elite.</p> <p>Billionaires who made their money in fashion and retail, food and beverage weren't as brilliant. About one-quarter of them were brainiacs.</p> <p>Wai came to these conclusions by looking at the colleges these people attended. If they went to one of 29 "elite colleges," there were considered to be among the top 1% of smart people. These schools require high test scores for admittance and that indicates very high intelligence, he reasoned.</p> <p>You can argue that this is a pretty flawed way to measure intelligence. It automatically filters out smart people who didn't attend elite colleges and automatically assigns a high IQ to those were accepted because their parents were alumni, or they got an athletic scholarship. Wai acknowledges that flaw but says those two exceptions balance each other out.</p> <p>Interestingly, this research runs counter to a study done in 2007 by Jay Zagorsky, at Ohio State University.</p> <p>Zagorsky's study found no correlation between wealth and IQ. It looked at people who did well on the Armed Forces Qualification Test and how their wealth grew over time. While smarter people did earned bigger salaries, they were no more likely to become super rich over time than those with an average IQ.</p> <p>So maybe the answer to the question of wealth and smarts is this: It won't automatically make you a billionaire but it certainly helps.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >The Most Controversial And Entertaining Things Larry Ellison Has Ever Said</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Harvard Cognitive Scientist Shares Fascinating Insights About The Human Mind Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:42:00 -0400 Aimee Groth <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="Steve Pinker" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>The more we learn about the human mind, the more fascinating it becomes, according to Harvard cognitive scientist <a href="">Steve Pinker</a>. He's known for his research in evolutionary psychology, or the idea that human nature has adapted over time to improve chances of survival.</p> <p>He's written some bestselling books "<a href="">How The Mind Works</a>," and "<a href="">The Blank Slate</a>," and last night answered readers' questions during a fascinating Reddit <a href="">"Ask Me Anything".</a> We've included some of the highlights below:</p> <p><strong>On how language is the most fascinating thing about the human mind:</strong></p> <p>Here we all are, banging at keyboards and reading squiggles on screens, and somehow we're exchanging ideas about consciousness, hunter-gatherer societies, rape, the meaning of life, and hair-care products (I'll get to that). Of course we're using written language, not to mention computer technology and the Internet, but we could be having the same conversation at a bar, dinner table or seminar room, so it's language itself that is the astounding phenomenon.</p> <p><strong>On how understanding the mind affects happiness:<br /></strong></p> <p>I find a naturalistic understanding of human nature to be indispensable to leading a wise and mature life, and it is often exhilarating. Wisdom consists in appreciating the preciousness and finiteness of our own existence, and therefore not squandering it; of being cognizant of what makes people everywhere tick, and therefore enhancing happiness and minimizing suffering; of being alert to limitations and flaws in our own judgments and decisions and passions, and thereby doing our best to circumvent them.</p> <p><strong>On if society will ever develop a better theory for consciousness:</strong></p> <p>As for the strange problem of consciousness &mdash; whether the red that I see is the same as the red that you see; whether there could be a "zombie" that is indistinguishable from you and me but not conscious of anything; whether an upload of the state of my brain to the cloud would feel anything &mdash; I suspect the answer is "never," since these conundra may be artifacts of human intuition. Our best science tells us that subjectivity arises from certain kinds of information-processing in the brain, but why, intuitively, that should be the case is as puzzling to us as the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, relativity, and other problems that are far from everyday intuition.</p> <p><strong>On why AI will never match human intelligence:<br /></strong></p> <p>We do have a decent understanding of consciousness in the sense of why an intelligent system might make available a pool of information to a variety of its modules while keeping other information encapsulated within those modules. The only sense of consciousness we don't understand is whether the artificially intelligent computer or robot we build would subjectively feel anything &mdash; but that has nothing to do with how we built it. That's why the problem is "strange."</p> <p><strong>On atheism and why religion is a "puzzle in psychology": <br /></strong></p> <p>Atheism is simply the denial of one set of beliefs, and it has never been a priority to stipulate one among the many things I <em>don't</em> believe in. The atheist/humanist/freethinker/secularist/bright movement found me (and I'm happy to support it) because I presented a thoroughly naturalistic, ghost-free account of the mind in <a href="">How the Mind Works</a>, including an analysis of religious belief as an interesting puzzle in psychology.</p> <p><strong>On the hypothesis that depression is an adaptation:</strong></p> <p>I don't know the literature well enough to say, but it's not implausible that occasional, mild, temporary depression in response to an identifiable setback is an adaptation &mdash; the main reason being the phenomenon of depressive realism, namely the more accurate assessment of outcomes and probabilities among the (mildly, temporarily) depressed than among happy people. Clinical depression is another story.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >More Proof That IQ Levels Are Rising</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Everyone Is Above Average Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:00:00 -0500 Tia Ghose <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="happy girl" width="400" /></p><p>On a scale of one to 10, you probably think you're a seven. And you wouldn't be alone.</p> <p>While it's impossible for most people to be above average for a specific quality, people think they are better than most people in many arenas, from charitable behavior to work performance.</p> <p>The phenomenon, known as <a href="">illusory superiority</a>, is so stubbornly persistent that psychologists would be surprised if it didn't show up in their studies, said David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell who has studied the effect for decades.</p> <p>It happens for many reasons: Others are too polite to say what they really think, incompetent people lack the skills to assess their abilities accurately, and such self-delusions can actually protect people's <a href="">mental health</a>, Dunning told LiveScience.</p> <p><strong>Widespread phenomenon</strong></p> <p>Since psychological studies first began, people have given themselves top marks for most positive traits. While most people do well at assessing others, they are wildly positive about their own abilities, Dunning said.</p> <p>That's because we realize the external traits and circumstances that guide other people's actions, "but when it comes to us, we think it's all about our intention, our effort, our desire, our agency &mdash; we think we sort of float above all these kinds of constraints," he said. [<a href="">10 Things You Didn't Know About You</a>]</p> <p>In studies, most people overestimate their IQ. For instance, in a classic 1977 study, 94 percent of professors rated themselves above <a href="">average relative to their peers</a>. In another study, 32 percent of the employees of a software company said they performed better than 19 out of 20 of their colleagues. And Dunning has found that people overestimate how charitable they'll be in future donation drives, but accurately guess their peers' donations.</p> <p><a href="">Drivers</a> consistently rate themselves as better than average &mdash; even when a test of their hazard perception reveals them to be below par, said Mark Horswill, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia.</p> <p>"You find it across all ages, you find it among novice drivers, and you find it among drivers over age 65," Horswill told LiveScience.</p> <p>Because even the worst driver may by chance avoid an accident, people are more likely to overestimate skills like that than <a href="">concrete skills like chess</a> or tennis, where the incompetent are trounced quickly, Horswill said.</p> <p><strong>Room for delusion</strong></p> <p>In part, most positive traits &mdash; like being a good driver &mdash; are so vaguely defined that there's plenty of wiggle room to make them fit, Dunning said.&nbsp; People also don't usually get honest feedback from others.</p> <p>"People don't say to your face what they might <a href="">say behind your back</a>," Dunning said.</p> <p>But in a strange twist, the most incompetent are also the most likely to overestimate their skills, while the ace performers are more likely to underrate themselves, because if they find a skill easy they assume other people do too, he said.</p> <p><strong>Self-protection?</strong></p> <p>One group seems to be immune to such self-aggrandizement: People who are depressed or have anxiety don't overrate themselves, Horswill said. The more severe the <a href="">depression</a>, the more likely they are to underrate themselves. That suggests the illusion of superiority may actually be a protective mechanism that shields our self-esteem, he added.</p> <p>"You think you're better than everyone else and that's actually good for mental health," Horswill said.</p> <p>And the trend varies considerably with <a href="">culture</a>.</p> <p><strong>"</strong>North Americans seem to be the kings and queens of overestimation. If you go to places like Japan, Korea or China, this whole phenomenon evaporates," Dunning said.</p> <p>That is possibly because Eastern cultures value self-improvement, while Western culture tends to <a href="">value self-esteem</a>, he said.</p> <p><strong>Finding the truth</strong></p> <p>While it's not possible to get a completely clear-eyed view of oneself, people can bring their <a href="">self-perception</a> more in line with reality, Dunning said.</p> <p>For one, people should look to others whose lives inspire admiration, figure out what they're doing right, and try to emulate them, he said.</p> <p>And since people are generally pretty accurate in assessing other people (just not themselves), people should be aggressive about getting &mdash; and taking to heart &mdash; constructive criticism from others, he said.</p> <p>"The road to self-insight runs through other people," he said.</p> <p><em>Follow LiveScience on <a class="hidden_link" href="">Twitter</a> </em><a href=""><em>@livescience</em></a><em>. We're also on </em><a href=""><em>Facebook</em></a><em>&nbsp;&amp; </em><a href=""><em>Google+</em></a><em>.&nbsp;</em></p> <ul> <li><a href="">Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind</a></li> <li><a href="">Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors</a></li> <li><a href="">10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain</a></li> </ul><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> New Analysis Suggests Pot Doesn't Lower Teens' IQ Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:31:00 -0500 Jennifer Welsh <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="marijuana" /></p><p>In October, researchers released a study linking <a href="">cannabis use in teens and lowered IQ</a>.</p> <p>A second study, released today, provides a different interpretation of the data: The IQ changes in the different populations could be due to their socioeconomic status, not their pot use.</p> <p>The study used data from the Dundin cohort, a group of more than 1,000 children born between April 1, 1972 and March 31, 1973 in Dundin, New Zealand. They are now 38, and still being studied.</p> <p>There are two problems, according to Ole Rogeberg, who authored the new analysis. He writes: "First, these estimates are based on small numbers. Second, as noted by the researchers, reduced schooling could be part of the causal path by which cannabis use lowers IQ."</p> <p>Other studies of this group of kids have found "that early-onset cannabis use is more common for those with poor self-control, prior conduct problems, and high scores on risk factors correlated with a low family SES," he says.</p> <p>So, Rogeberg simulated how these factors could have caused the IQ drop that the original researchers saw. His analysis was published today, Jan 14, in the <a href="">journal Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences</a>. He found that most, if not all, of the effect seen in the original study could be accounted for by the low SES factor.</p> <p>These kids with lower socioeconomic status are less likely to be put into intellectually challenging environments, which are part-and-parcel of an increasing IQ score throughout life. Though the original study, by <span class="name"><span class="name-search">Madeline Meier</span></span>, et. al, claims to have controlled for socioeconomic standard, Rogenberg says his new analysis indicates that this could have created the link they found between IQ and weed use.</p> <p>Rogeberg writes:</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">Although it would be too strong to say that the results have been discredited, <strong>the methodology is flawed</strong> and the causal inference drawn from the results premature.<span class="vcard"><span class="fn"></span></span></p> <p class="fn"><span class="vcard"><span class="fn">Arran Frood, writing for Nature, talked to Meier. She says that</span></span> Rogeberg's analysis is interesting, but suggest that their analysis could still be right. <a href="">He writes</a>:</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">In their original analysis, Meier says, she and her colleagues controlled for socioeconomic status and found that in all socioeconomic categories, the IQs of children who were not heavy users remained unchanged from adolescence to adulthood. Therefore, she says, socioeconomic status does not influence IQ decline.</p> <p>All in all, it sounds like the link between teen pot use and IQ is still very questionable, so don't take the word of just one researcher.</p> <p>Other recent studies on pot-using teens indicated that, compared to teens that use alcohol, <a href="">their brains are less physically impacted by the drug</a>. (To be fair, this study didn't test the teen's IQ, only the physical changes to the brain.)</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >Is Marijuana Bad For You?</a></strong></p> <p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >What Marijuana Does To Your Body And Mind</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> IQ Tests Are Nothing More Than A Myth Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:42:00 -0500 Annie Murphy Paul <p><strong><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="einstein" />For more than a century, intelligence quotient has been used to measure how smart people are, notes Nick Collins, science correspondent for the London&nbsp;<em>Telegraph</em>. He continues:</strong></p> <p>&ldquo;But now the scale has been dismissed as a &lsquo;myth&rsquo; by scientists who found that our intelligence can only be predicted by combining results from at least three tests of our mental agility.</p> <p>Different circuits within the brain are used for different thought processes, the researchers showed, meaning separate tests of short-term memory, reasoning and verbal skills are needed to measure someone&rsquo;s overall intelligence.</p> <p>Their landmark study was based on the results of an online intelligence test which was launched by the&nbsp;<em>Daily Telegraph</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>New Scientist</em>&nbsp;two years ago, and attracted more than 110,000 responses.</p> <p>Dr Roger Highfield, the&nbsp;<em>Telegraph</em>&nbsp;columnist and one of the authors of the paper, said: &lsquo;When you come to the most complex known object, the human brain, the idea that there is only one measure of intelligence had to be wrong.&rsquo;</p> <p>&lsquo;We can all think of people that have poor reasoning and brilliant memories, or fantastic language skills but aren&rsquo;t so hot at reasoning, and so on. Now once and for all we can say there is not a single measure such as IQ which captures all the intelligence that you see in people.&rsquo;</p> <p>The online test, which took about 30 minutes to complete, featured 12 cognitive tests of volunteers&rsquo; memory, reasoning, attention and planning as well as recording details about their lifestyle and background.</p> <p>Taking into account the full range of cognitive abilities tested, they found that people&rsquo;s varying success rates could only be explained by combining at least three types of intelligence, and not by any single measure such as IQ.</p> <p>&lsquo;When you look at cognitive ability you can&rsquo;t boil it down to fewer than three components&mdash;short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component,&rsquo; Dr Highfield explained. &lsquo;There isn&rsquo;t one component that explains all the variations we saw in all the tests.&rsquo;&rdquo; (Read more&nbsp;<a href="">here</a>.)</p> <p><strong>Skeptical as I am of tests that claim to measure intelligence, I&rsquo;m not so sure that this new, three-part test is any more valid or reliable than traditional IQ tests. But if it helps call into question the authority of a single &ldquo;number&rdquo; that can characterize someone&rsquo;s mental ability, I&rsquo;m all for it.</strong></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >16 Ways To Find Out If You're A Genius</a></strong></p> <p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >15 Famous Child Geniuses</a></strong></p> <p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="" >The 16 Smartest People On Earth</a></strong></p> <p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> 15 Famous Child Geniuses Mon, 24 Dec 2012 18:25:00 -0500 Vivian Giang <p><img style="float:right;" src="" border="0" alt="Colin Carlson" /></p><p>In the <a href="">debate over IQ vs. hard work</a>, there's an ongoing discussion about how much perceived talent can be traced back to genetics. For most of the population, the line is blurry. But in some cases, it's very clear that a child is a prodigy.</p> <p>We've compiled a list of 15 of the most famous child geniuses, some in recent history, and others who influenced our culture centuries ago.</p><h3>Akrit Jaswal—The seven-year-old surgeon </h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>At <a href=""><strong>seven years old</strong>, </a><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"></span>Akrit Jaswal added &ldquo;surgeon&rdquo; to his resume.</p> <p>Born in 1993, the child surgeon became India&rsquo;s youngest physician and university student.</p> <p>The only downfall is that the young intellect knows just how gifted he is, reportedly saying, &ldquo;People saw my potential and wanted to help me excel in life&hellip;I think they're of above average intelligence, but not as clever as me."</p> <p>Jaswal has an estimated <a href="">IQ of 146.</a></p></p> <br/><br/><h3>Jacob Barnett—The next Nobel Peace Prize winner</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>At the <a href=""><strong>age of eight</strong></a>, Jacob Barnett began attending Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).</p> <p>With an IQ of 170 &ndash; higher than Albert Einstein&rsquo;s &ndash; Barnett could be in line for a future <a href="">Nobel Peace Prize</a>, according to one of the world's leading scientists and the 13-year-old's professor at college.</p> <p>His mother told the Indianapolis Star that her son tested out of algebra 1 and 2, geometry, trigonometry and calculus after two-weeks of studying on the front porch.</p> <p>Barnett has not let Aspergers Syndrome, a mild form of autism, slow him down.</p> <p>Since enrollment, Barnett has been taking advanced astrophysics classes and is working on expanding Einstein&rsquo;s theory of relativity. He is also working on challenging the Big Bang theory. He delivered a TEDxTeen talk in 2012, "<a href="">Forget What You Know</a>."</p></p> <br/><br/><h3>Shakuntala Devi—The “Hindu Mathematical Wizardess”</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>Born in 1939 in Bangalore, India to a lion tamer father, Shakuntala Devi started her relationship with numbers through card tricks she played with her father at the <a href=""><strong>age of three</strong></a>.</p> <p>Nicknamed the &ldquo;Human Computer,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Hindu Mathematical Wizardess&rdquo; Devi demonstrated her mathematics abilities at the University of Mysore and Annamalai University as a child.</p> <p>Her talent has been mentioned in the <a href="">Guinness Book of World Records</a> several times, such as when she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally and when she found the cube root of 332,812,557 in seconds.</p> <p>In 2006, she published <a href="">&ldquo;In the Wonderland of Numbers</a>,&rdquo; a story about a girl fascinated with digits.</p></p> <br/><br/><a href="">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a>