GET SMART(ER)
You're No Genius? Don't Worry. You Can Still Beef Up Your Brain With a Little Effort.
By Christina Breda Antoniades
Special to The Washington Post
You're struggling with a tricky problem at work. Then you had to do the embarrassing "Um, hiiiiiiiiiii," routine to cover the fact that you forgot the name of the woman you always bump into at the copy machine. And now at happy hour you've clammed up because someone mentioned Pyongyang, and though it dimly rings a bell, you're not sure if it's a table sport or a place or some sort of noodle dish.
If only you were smarter, you think. Not that you're dumb (we'd never call you that, at least not to your face). But wouldn't it be nice to have all the answers, a picture-perfect memory and the ability to astonish your friends or wow your boss with big words and bigger thoughts?
It's a common desire, but just how plausible it is depends on whom you ask. And before you get an answer, you'll almost always get this question: What do you mean by smart?
"It's a real quagmire," says Kurt Fischer, director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Mind, Brain and Education program. "Most people mean what intelligence tests test for, but more probably they really mean learning and problem solving."
Most will agree that being smart is more than merely acing an IQ test, which typically measures a specific set of capabilities and assigns a score (called an intelligence quotient). Not that high scores don't matter: They've been tied to educational achievement and higher income, social status and even longer life. But there's controversy over how well IQ tests capture the entirety of cognitive function and how much they really tell us about someone's smarts.
(Continued here.)
By Christina Breda Antoniades
Special to The Washington Post
You're struggling with a tricky problem at work. Then you had to do the embarrassing "Um, hiiiiiiiiiii," routine to cover the fact that you forgot the name of the woman you always bump into at the copy machine. And now at happy hour you've clammed up because someone mentioned Pyongyang, and though it dimly rings a bell, you're not sure if it's a table sport or a place or some sort of noodle dish.
If only you were smarter, you think. Not that you're dumb (we'd never call you that, at least not to your face). But wouldn't it be nice to have all the answers, a picture-perfect memory and the ability to astonish your friends or wow your boss with big words and bigger thoughts?
It's a common desire, but just how plausible it is depends on whom you ask. And before you get an answer, you'll almost always get this question: What do you mean by smart?
"It's a real quagmire," says Kurt Fischer, director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Mind, Brain and Education program. "Most people mean what intelligence tests test for, but more probably they really mean learning and problem solving."
Most will agree that being smart is more than merely acing an IQ test, which typically measures a specific set of capabilities and assigns a score (called an intelligence quotient). Not that high scores don't matter: They've been tied to educational achievement and higher income, social status and even longer life. But there's controversy over how well IQ tests capture the entirety of cognitive function and how much they really tell us about someone's smarts.
(Continued here.)
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