Can IQ be increased in an adult?

[William White]

London cabbies hippocampi grow when doing the knowledge (a herculean task of remembering nearly 30,000 street names, their locations the quickest route between any two locations, and the approximate cost of traveling that route. It takes several years, riding around the city on a moped, ticking off streets to gain the knowledge).

Anybody who has had the privilege to ride a real london cab with a real cabbie with the knowledge will know just how on the ball those guys are - especially when you go abroad and are subjected to cabbies that have NOT done the knowledge. In the congested streets at rush hour they'll beat a sat nav route every time

 

[rootone]

I've heard that about London cabbies, but don't know if it's just one of those urban myths.
It's a while since I drove a car in London, but when I last did it alI I wanted to do was get out of town (heading towards Norfolk).
It was pure gridlock around 5pm, no matter what route I tried, This experience did my brain no good at all.

 

[William White]

there have been a lot of studies, and it does look like it is a fact rather than a myth.

 

[Drakkith]

there have been a lot of studies, and it does look like it is a fact rather than a myth.

I've seen multiple studies claim an increase in certain areas, but then I've seen other studies that claim that those increases are solely in the activity being tested and are not transferable. In other words, if you practice memorizing long strings of numbers, you'll be better at memorizing numbers, but your memory elsewhere will remain the same.

From here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22612437

Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review.

Meta-analyses indicated that the programs produced reliable short-term improvements in working memory skills. For verbal working memory, these near-transfer effects were not sustained at follow-up, whereas for visuospatial working memory, limited evidence suggested that such effects might be maintained. More importantly, there was no convincing evidence of the generalization of working memory training to other skills (nonverbal and verbal ability, inhibitory processes in attention, word decoding, and arithmetic). The authors conclude that memory training programs appear to produce short-term, specific training effects that do not generalize.

From here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23587747

The impact of human-computer interaction-based comprehensive training on the cognitive functions of cognitive impairment elderly individuals in a nursing home.

After 24 weeks, neither group showed a significant change compared with baseline cognitive examinations. However, there was a tendency for greater improvement in memory, language, and visuospatial abilities for the intervention group as compared with controls. Patients with mild cognitive impairment showed improvements in language and visuospatial capacity, while patients with dementia showed improvements in attention/orientation, memory, language, and fluency. However, none of these findings were statistically significant. The results for the intervention subgroups showed that visuospatial ability improvement was significantly greater among those with a global cortical atrophy score of ≤15 (p < 0.05).

Those are the quickest references I could find. I don't know how many more are out there.

 

[Evo]

I think the issue here is can you temporarily raise your IQ *score* a bit, and can you actually change your IQ. I think the answer is yes to the first, but don't know if the score is even noticeable, the latter no. And who would care about changing their IQ score temporarily by some insignificant amount? Has anyone in this thread aside from Drakkith and I actually been administered IQ tests by a trained psychologist? If yes, why? I was originally tested because my new school teacher didn't think that the local public school could provide teaching at the level I needed, they had no gifted classes. Unfortunately the schools that catered to children with my IQ were across the state and I'd have to leave my family and attend a boarding school for the "Academically able" as their brochures stated, children that needed a minimum IQ of 140 to even be considered, 140 was not high enough to be guaranteed acceptance. I said HELL NO. I'm not going to a boarding school. I was only 11. I don't get some people's obsession with a test score. Motivation and perseverance are more important than an IQ score in succeeding.

 

[micromass]

More to the point: why would anybody care about IQ at all. It's just an arbitrary number which means nothing. I am tested to have an IQ of 97, and it didn't stop me of being a mathematician.

 

[Stephanus]

More to the point: why would anybody care about IQ at all. It's just an arbitrary number which means nothing. I am tested to have an IQ of 97, and it didn't stop me of being a mathematician.

Good!
Yep I didn't care about IQ. But I read again the first post. What the OP wants to know is that, "can brain develop synaptic".

 

[Evo]

More to the point: why would anybody care about IQ at all. It's just an arbitrary number which means nothing. I am tested to have an IQ of 97, and it didn't stop me of being a mathematician.

i think there's a 1 missing in front of the 97, but if you were truly got a score of 97, that just goes to show how meaningless IQ scores are. You're a math genius, I'm nothing. Well, I'm a dog abuser.

 

[PWiz]

I don't get some people's obsession with a test score. Motivation and perseverance are more important than an IQ score in succeeding.

This should be engraved outside EVERY school.

 

[rootone]

This should be engraved outside EVERY school.

and it would be most impressive if the engraving was done by people with a high 'Artistic Quotient')

 

[Stephanus]

Motivation and perseverance are more important than an IQ score in succeeding.

Yeah, I heard that you "I Will" is more important than you "IQ". And don't tell me that you're dog abuser. I love dogs.

All gone, now. Three were asked by my daughter's friend. One the brown/white, Chiku died. Bitten by other dogs while strolling around without my attendance.
But, what the OP wants to know is that "Can brain develop something like connection". It's the actual discussion, not about IQ.

 

[Evo]

Yeah, I heard that you "I Will" is more important than you "IQ". And don't tell me that you're dog abuser. I love dogs.

View attachment 86483 All gone, now. Three were asked by my daughter's friend. One the brown/white, Chiku died. Bitten by other dogs while strolling around without my attendance.
But, what the OP wants to know is that "Can brain develop something like connection". It's the actual discussion, not about IQ.

I'm not a dog abuser, that's a joke between micro and I due to accidents i had with my senior adopted chihuahua.

Those puppies are adorable, so sad one died.

Have I seen anything that says that true intelligence can be increased by any significant amount permanently, no. You can become more educated, and that's really all that matters, what you know is all that counts, what you could have known if you weren't a failure doesn't matter, does it? You can't go into a job interview saying "I don't know how to do this, but I have a high IQ score" it won't get you a job, it won't even get you considered. A high IQ score won't get you anything because it doesn't mean anything, it's not a reflection of what you actually know. Just the opposite, if you have a high IQ and you're not that the top of some field, you are just a bigger loser than someone with a lower IQ that is at your level.

I love what Stephen Hawking said when asked what his IQ was.

"I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers."

 

[billy_joule]

Has anyone in this thread aside from Drakkith and I actually been administered IQ tests by a trained psychologist? If yes, why?

I failed calc 101 and questioned whether I was cut out for university so did some online IQ tests and found them to be worthless. I then took the Mensa entry test and scored in the top 1%, which I think is around 135-145 depending on the scale used. I do think the online tests prepared me for the psychologist administered test and probably increased my score.

Motivation and perseverance are more important than an IQ score in succeeding.

Couldn't agree more.

This sums up my experience with mensa:

They also use comic sans in their letter head...

 

[Stephanus]

I'm not a dog abuser, that's a joke between micro and I due to accidents i had with my senior adopted chihuahua.

Those puppies are adorable, so sad one died.

No, of course not. I know that that's a joke.

I love what Stephen Hawking said when asked what his IQ was.

"I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers."

Is that his exact world? So it's true. I wrote that at Post 35

 

[Evo]

Is that his exact world? So it's true. I wrote that at Post 35

Yes, it's true.

 

[Stephanus]

Math and word puzzle

 

[Evo]

Just look at all of the geniuses on this forum, I'll bet the majority never had their IQ tested and they know it doesn't matter.

I lived most of my life near NASA and was told never to join groups like Mensa or Mega (Mega has higher IQ requirements than Mensa). Well, I never wanted to be around intellectual snobs, which is why I refused to go to those special schools. Truth was, aside from not wanting to leave home and my freedom, I preferred to be a big fish in a small pond, I had no desire to be up against other children on my level. Just call me "bored slacker".

Founded in 1982 by Ronald K. Hoeflin to facilitate psychometric research,[1]the Mega Society is a high IQ society open to people who have scored at the one-in-a-million level on a test of general intelligence claimed to be able to discriminate at that level.[2] The Guinness Book of World Records once stated that the most elite ultra High IQ Society is the Mega Society with percentiles of 99.9999 or 1 in a million required for admission.[3][verification needed]

The public profile of the Mega Society increased with the publication of the Mega Test in 1985 by Hoeflin.[4] In his article, Omni reporter Scot Morris noted the claim that Mega Society is the most selective high-IQ society:

Mensa, the most famous [IQ] group, is open to one person in 50 ... TheTriple Nine Society has a 1-in-1,000 cutoff (the 99.9th percentile, hence the name). And the Prometheus Society shoots for 1 in 30,000. But the most restrictive group is the Mega Society, which is theoretically limited to one person in a million (the 99.9999th percentile).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Society

 

[jack476]

It depends on what you mean.

You can easily make your score on an administered IQ test higher, even one given by a trained professional. If you know which test you're going to be given, you can prepare yourself to make any number come out of it that you like. Case in point, when I was in high school I had to have testing done every semester as part of my IEP. They used the same test protocol every time, so I looked it up online and read about it, and decided that as a joke I would try to make a test come out as an obnoxiously high number. In the end, I was able to practice and prepare for the test without too much effort in order to "game" it, and I was able to get a score of 196. I like to think of myself as clever, but that's not even remotely realistic (there may be a dozen or so people in the world with IQ that high).

So yes, even as an adult it is possible to increase your on-paper IQ score (or strategically decrease it, if you're looking for a prescription to whatever the hot new study drug is these days) quite dramatically and without great difficulty. It should be pointed out that 1.) people who brag about their IQ are losers, so you don't really have much to gain from doing this, 2.) skills in the tasks measured by IQ tests aren't known conclusively to generalize (while mental visualization ability is a general skill that will lead to better performance on a shape rotation task, practicing shape rotation isn't on its own known to improve general ability to mentally visualize) so "practicing" for one probably won't actually lead to any significant gains in ability and 3.) you may be cheating yourself out of a diagnosis of an underlying learning or cognitive problem, if one exists (I already knew more or less exactly what was wrong with me anyway).

But if you actually want to make yourself smarter, that's a trickier beast. It's certainly possible. Like every other organ and structure in your body, SAID (selective adaptation to imposed demands) applies to your brain, and neuroplasticity is a well-documented phenomenon. Practicing of skills can lead to changes in the structure of the brain and gains in ability that cannot be attributed to mastery of those skills alone. Improving on one's physical health for better prevention of fatigue or better energy leads to better motivation, which enhances one's ability to solve problems. Better cognitive and learning skills will effectively make one more intelligent while not altering the brain's raw processing power. And obviously all the processing power in the world can't beat out experience and rote memory when it comes to solving problems. So yes, you can become more intelligent. But what isn't known is where the line between mastery of skill and change in processing power lies. If you become really good at mental arithmetic, for instance, is that merely the result of mastery of mental arithmetic or has there been a change in the structure of your brain to facilitate mental arithmetic? It seems likely that the correct answer is "both", to a varying extent.

Intelligence is not strictly "fixed" as a personality trait when you enter adulthood, but in general it is a safe assumption that people do not change frequently over the course of a lifetime. For instance, if you know someone who is consistently crabby and temperamental now, how much reason do you have to expect that his personality will be significantly different 6 months in the future? And to return to the analogy to improving one's physical strength, if you meet a person who is of average build tomorrow and has been his entire life, how likely is it that he'll develop an athletic level of tone within the next year? It's not that it's impossible by any stretch or even especially difficult to increase your intelligence, just that it's rare since most people will not be interested in making directed efforts towards doing so anyway.

 

[Stephanus]

Just look at all of the geniuses on this forum, I'll bet the majority never had their IQ tested and they know it doesn't matter.

I lived most of my life near NASA and was told never to join groups like Mensa or Mega (Mega has higher IQ requirements than Mensa). Well, I never wanted to be around intellectual snobs, which is why I refused to go to those special schools. Truth was, aside from not wanting to leave home and my freedom, I preferred to be a big fish in a small pond, I had no desire to be up against other children on my level. Just call me "bored slacker".



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Society

I tought you lived in England. You work at NASA?

 

[Evo]

I tought you lived in England. You work at NASA?

No, I grew up next to NASA.

 

[Stephanus]

No, I grew up next to NASA.

Ok. Today I learned the difference between MEGA, MENSA and NASA. All are high IQ!

 

[jack476]

Ok. Today I learned the difference between MEGA, MENSA and NASA. All are high IQ!

But only NASA actually does anything useful :P

 

[Stephanus]

But only NASA actually does anything useful :P

Anything useful, Yes!. Only NASA, perhaps no. Some member in Mensa/Mega could have contributed something. Perhaps we just don't know. And I'm also a member of PULSA.
But it's a cellphone magazine.

 

[Evo]

Ok. Today I learned the difference between MEGA, MENSA and NASA. All are high IQ!

Mensa is rather normal IQ, 1 in only 50 people qualify, not special at all. And I have been told by former members to avoid it, it's nonsense. Both my first husband and his father worked for NASA, his dad has a plaque from the president of the US for being one of the engineers responsible for saving the Apollo 13 mission. They were of average intelligence, I dated mostly people from NASA and they were all of average intelligence, if I had to guess, not one of them had ever taken an IQ test. But they did valuable work. I have a genius IQ and I have done diddly squat.

 

[Stephanus]

Mensa is rather normal IQ, 1 in only 50 people qualify, not special at all. And I have been told by former members to avoid it, it's nonsense. Both my first husband and his father worked for NASA, his dad has a plaque from the president of the US for being one of the engineers responsible for saving the Apollo 13 mission. They were of average intelligence, I dated mostly people from NASA and they were all of average intelligence, if I had to guess, not one of them had ever taken an IQ test. But they did valuable work. I have a genius IQ and I have done diddly squat.

Apollo 13?? Jim Lovell, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton? And your father in law? Is he the character portrayed by Ed Harris?

 

[Evo]

Apollo 13?? Jim Lovell, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton? And your father in law? Is he the character portrayed by Ed Harris?

There was a team that solved the problem, he was one, he really didn't talk about it, I asked him about the plaque and he said "yeah". That's all. I got the impression that there wasn't anyone that did anything special, they were doing their job.

 

[Stephanus]

Wow, I really like to talk about Apollo 13! At least the movie, the accident, (or incident?). The intrigue behind it. How they used, "something" made by Grumman, to come back to earth. "I don't care what it is designed for! Can it take them back!"
But it's beside the topic. And even IQ is not the topic here.
The OP wants to know whether brain can create more synaptic.

When a person thinks about something complex, do new synaptic connections form? Do the new connections remain after the person stops thinking about the complex issue?

That's interesting. Our muscles are somewhat loosed after long absent of excercise. Is our brain loosed also?

 

[Nidum]

There are several medical conditions which cause premature reduction of brain activity and effectively a lowering of intelligence . Dementia is one of the most common .In recent times there have been developments in medical treatment which can sometimes slow the advancement of these conditions and partially reduce the harmful effects .

Could medication ever be developed which went further and actually enhanced brain activity in a healthy person and raised their intelligence level ?

 

[William White]

Has anyone in this thread aside from Drakkith and I actually been administered IQ tests by a trained psychologist? If yes, why?

Trained psychologist - no
(are they the same camp as toothiticians?)

But I did the Mensa test (150); just to know that I could pass it - to satisfy myself that IQ is a load of balls.

The more highly qualified "intelligent" people I meet, the more I know that our definitions of intelligence are flawed.

 

[Stephanus]

Trained psychologist - no
(are they the same camp as toothiticians?)

But I did the Mensa test (150); just to know that I could pass it - to satisfy myself that IQ is a load of balls.

The more highly qualified "intelligent" people I meet, the more I know that our definitions of intelligence are flawed.

And from what I learned in Relativity theory. Light travels faster than sound.
That's why someone looks brighter until you hear him/her speaking.

 

[symbolipoint]

One cannot increase his I.Q.
One CAN increase in wisdom.

 

[William White]

Well, the point is, that the opposite is observed.

it is well known that scores in IQ can change (quite dramatically), due to environmental and societal factors (Flynn Effect).

It was observed that blacks living under Jim Crow had much lower IQ scores than whites.

IQs increased as environmental and societal factors improved.

What these IQ tests were testing was society, NOT intellgence.Wisdom is just the good application of experience gained as one ages, so saying that wisdom can increase is almost a pleonasm - in many cultures age=wisdom.

 

[Dr_Zinj]

"A higher IQ is not the result of what has been learned. It's more the capacity to learn."
That's not a bad observation. I'd be more inclined to say it's more the level of capability to learn. That's still too limited a definition as intelligence also encompasses the ability to "connect the dots"; to take knowledge and observations and arrive at a correct conclusion. Part of the problem is that the older you get, the more dots and correct conclusions you know, so the more answers you know (or can easily infer) on an IQ test.
Knowing how to learn is a set of techniques. Some people seem to be born using those techniques automatically, but there is some evidence that those techniques are learned at an early age, not inherited. There's also been a few studies that indicate a correlation between those who succeed in law school and an increase in measured IQ; supporting a theory that law schools somehow cause students to learn how to learn better.

 

[William White]

If high IQ is the capacity (or level of capability) to learn

then a low IQ is the lack of a capacity to learnThen how to explain the low IQ of black people living under Jim Crow in the USA?). These people did not have a lower capability or a lower capacity; they had a lower opportunity. The dramatic increase of measured IQ since Jim Crow can ONLY be explained by an increase in opportunity, and NOT an increase in the capability to learn.
Simply - IQ tests tell you NOTHING about intelligence, either innate, or the future capability.

 

[JOSH19]

Hello guys, this is my first ever reply to any post on this blog. I joined 3 days ago, My name is Josh. I don't know much about how IQ is calculated and what is its scientific bast but i want to tell me real life story. I scored between 55% to 58% in school exams for first 10 years of my schooling... in 10th Std i failed the prelim exams (exams conducted by the school itself just like real final exams that are conducted by the educational board whch awards diploma of 10 years of schooling) then I studied for 15 days 10 hrs a day and scored 65% but the IQ test my school conducted (which was compulsory for choosing the future educational field, I failed in it with 33% out of 100 marks...my parents were called and informed about it with a warning letter) (Frankly speaking I never give a damn to exams and studies in my entire life, I always was interested in the concept more and as i used to grasp the essence I used to stop right there..whereas rest of the students used to be in the competitive mode with each other so they used to study-and study and practice 100 times till they become perfect).
I wanted to become an engineer so with 65% marks I went to Engineering... I couldn't cope up in the first semester as i didnt have practice to sustain study load (not because my study concepts were unclear)and failed in all subjects of that semester... we had annual pattern so I continued schooling for the rest of the year, i studied well and scored good 88% when I finished my first year I was 16 years old... continued that pace for next 5 years become a Mechanical Engineer with 80% Now you may be wondering why i am telling you all this! Well, I never took studies seriously...i am a lazy person... and hate solving questions in an competitive manner like a mad race...so i procrastinate... read on! My real test of IQ was done only 2-3 times in my entire academic life...when I took TOEFL, GRE and GMAT... I scored 90% in all three exams... in GRE i was close to 100%! I also took 2 step entrance exam called IIT-JEE in India which is famous for its toughest tough exam in the world with huge syllabus and extremely tough questions...I could clear first test called screen test in IIT-JEE... anyway... what I want to cay is, IQ testing might be the most stupid thing on earth... it may only tell whether a student will fail or not in finishing his course intellectually or faulter...nothing else! for me EQ is more important than IQ... my IQ when I was 15 was much lower than the IQ i had at the age of 18 and lower than when I was 25-27! you might surprise, after the age 27 I read first science book in my life! and in last 5 years I have read some 4000 science books that's how I joined this forum as a self assumed physicist! So i can say, it can be increased later on! some efforts are really necessary to advance the IQ microscopically, its not an easy task I admit, because I took hell of efforts to improve myself ! i thing your existing IQ is related to your lifestyle... if you improve lifestyle(the way you utilize intellectual energy, it too improves! And hey, even Einstein was not a smart fella in his school days! ;)