Intelligence increase by training reaction speed

Articles - Psychology

Thursday, 16 April 2009 14:26

While many scientists still maintain that intelligence cannot really be trained there are scores of studies that prove that various measures impinge on the IQ level, one of them the speed an individual reacts to external stimulus, e.g. when there's a need to act quickly when in danger. Improve your reaction time and you increase your intelligence to some extent! One way to look at intelligence is to take it as a measure of mental efficiency. Most IQ test require not only the set of tasks to be completed correctly but also within a certain time frame. Also it is obvious that when two otherwise quite equally capable people each are given the same task and one of them solves it faster than the other then the faster one would be deemed more intelligent. Many studies point to the fact that people who score higher in an IQ test also have shorter reaction times. The correlation is not 100% but between, it seems, 50% to 70%. This suggests that there other factors involved, and indeed there are: if a participant can concentrate better over the time allowed to solve a problem then he or she might be in the same IQ range as someone who is faster overall yet whose concentration tends to fluctuate. There is a chance that the causal factors need to be broken down further, e.g. to analyse factors like "temporal acuity" although this again seems to have to be put into perspective. Our own research shows that it is always a combination of factors that determine how intelligent a person is perceived (by other as well as per test scores), and that it is better to single out exercises that help address several of these factors and groom them together. Therefore our suite of intelligence enhancement games and techniques aims to tackle all these factors in combination, so we would be able to increase both types of intelligence component. But to achieve this you need to know each component and how to strengthen it. So today we look at reaction times and how they can be increased with little effort and over a relatively short time frame. This will lead to an overall increase in measurable intelligence, albeit with a certain time delay that is needed to integrate the new capabilities with the legacy capacities to form a new set of honed and improved skills. This is also known as the plateau effect in learning which we will discuss in a forthcoming article also. How to train reaction time easily http://www.brianmac.co.uk/reaction.htm gives a very good wrap-up of what reaction time is and how it can be positively influenced. However this article is limited to reaction time in sports and how to improve it. Also, many of the tips, while very good in themselves are not actually improving the raw reaction time but rather help you in concentrating so that the time lag before you react properly is decreased. In sports the overall result is the same: if you fail to notice the starting signal but then catch up after a while or if you hear it earlier but react to it slower then you might both still cross the finishing line at the same time. There are professional tools that cost money to train reaction speed, however, experience shows people buy all kinds of gadgets such as home trainers and then grow tired of them very quickly. We therefore try to suggest some ways to enhance your reaction speed and in a wider sense your intelligence through exercises you fit in with your daily routine so that there is a high probability your or your children will actually practice them long enough to get the desired results. If you persevere you will increase your intelligence from anywhere between 5 to 15 points, the more the lower you start out with. Go here for  Several easy to use methods to shorten reaction time and increase intelligence (registered users only).

Last Updated on Friday, 17 April 2009 23:46