Brilliant Blog

Professor, trader and author Brett Steenbarger, one of the main experts on Trading psychology and Trader Performance (see our interview with him here), just announced he will speak at a Free Interactive Webinar on Trader Performance "During the Webinar, I will summarize and elaborate basic ideas from my book and also introduce new ideas developed [...]

Here you have a selection of blog posts on these topics: Grand Rounds BloggingBoomers Creative Growth  Uber Tech Positive Thinking Observations on Life. Personal Development Healing blog carnivals, blogging boomers, grand rounds, positive thinking

Good NYT article today on how Chemotherapy Fog Is No Longer Ignored as Illusion. Quotes:   "Virtually all cancer survivors who have had toxic treatments like chemotherapy experience short-term memory loss and difficulty concentrating during and shortly afterward, experts say. But a vast majority improve. About 15 percent, or roughly 360,000 of the nation’s 2.4 million [...]

Here is another mathematical puzzle from puzzle master Wes Carroll ... The Unkindest Cut Of All, Part 1 of 2.Difficulty: HARD.Type: MATH (Spatial).Question:The area of a square is equal to the square of the length of one side.So, for example, a square with side length 3 has area (3^2), or 9. What is the area of a square whose diagonal is length 5?

We are very happy to see how the science-based brain fitness field is emerging, and we have prepared a Hot Topics section to keep you well informed. Our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, has been writing about brain fitness for many years. Here you have a selection of the most popular posts: Hot Topics [...]

The New Yorker April 30th issue includes a superb article on The Way We Age Now: Can medicine serve an aging population?. Atul Gawande provides a great (and a bit depressing) survey on the geriatrics field: more and more need for practitioners, with less and less supply. now, a couple of quotes and data points that are very relevant to our [...]

A couple of quick links DISCOVER Magazine, May 2007 issue, brings a great article titled "The Elastic Brain: Michael Merzenich believes you can tone your mind and stave off memory loss. All it takes is time in his mental gym". The article (which is not available online) provides a great overview of the amazing work of [...]

The Osher Lifelong Learning Intitutes (OLLI) at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley, and SharpBrains offer this three-day workshop for educators and brain fitness practitioners seeking instructional certification in the SharpBrains course, Exercising Our Brains. SharpBrains (www.sharpbrains.com) has introduced the first science-based brain fitness center with information and programs to help people of all ages exercise their brains. They have offered the popular Exercising Our Brains course at SF State's OLLI since October 2005.

Here's a fun puzzle that a friend gave me over dinner a few days ago ... Describe how to cut a cake with only three cuts and yield eight equal pieces.

The Seattle Times has a good brief article today on Posit Science, Happy Neuron Games and us (they mention MindFit Brain Workout to "work on short-term memory, naming, divided attention, planning, hand-eye coordination and other cognitive measures."). Check Is your brain ready for the challenge? --------- For the record (given a reader's comment below I changed [...]

Are there specific brain fitness programs for kids? My kids have problems with math-why should they do these things that may distract them from math?Learning stress management skills can reduce test anxiety and improve learning readiness.If stress levels are too high, concentration and focus are negatively impacted.

That is the goal of Stanford University Media X:  to foster deep collaborations between industry and academia, as highlighted in Business Week's recent article The Virtual Meeting Room.  The 5th Annual Media X Conference on Research, Collaboration, Innovation and Productivity served its purpose well for the last couple of days: very fun and insightful presentations by Stanford researchers (and a [...]

Quick reminder: The organizers of the conference Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning - Learning & The Brain Conference that Caroline, Iwan and I attended in February (our review here) , are now putting together Learning & the Brain: Molding Minds. How to Shape the Developing Brain for Learning and Achievement. Cambridge, MA, April 28-30th 2007. A clarification: [...]

Alzheimer's And Dementia: Brain Structure Changes Years Before Memory Loss Begins Science Daily — "People who develop dementia or Alzheimer's disease experience brain structure changes years before any signs of memory loss begin,..." The good news is that this can lead to better and earlier assessments: "Researchers say these findings may help identify people at risk of [...]

TED Conference, a great annual conference on anything and everything new and meaningful, announces the public launch of their revamped website with great content and social networking tools, all under the banner "Ideas worth spreading". You can exercise your mind by learning about most science and technology subjects through wonderful TEDTalks video clips. Some examples: a [...]

We read a good article on medical salaries recently, and are happy to see an increased emphasis prevention and wellness rather than on sickness. Along these lines, we were fortunate to attend Healthetc yesterday, a day-long health event in San Francisco that had Bill Clinton as keynote speaker. You can read an article on his great [...]

(Blog carnivals are collections of blog articles around specific topics) Jane hosts a great edition of the Brain Fitness blog carnival, titled Mind, Matter, Mind Over Matter with great articles on napping, exercise, multi-tasking, and more. Two other carnivals we enjoyed much were: Tangled Bank and Entrepreneurs. And there are other good ones that selected some of our [...]

Dr. Nasty's Giant Cube. Difficulty: HARDER. Type: HYBRID (Logic/Spatial). The diabolical Dr. Nasty has turned his Growth Ray on a perfect cube that used to measure one foot on a side. The new larger cube has twice the surface area of the original. Find the volume of the larger cube.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which comes first, intelligence or achievement? (By achievement we mean the ability to perform basic skills in reading, arithmetic, writing, and the like.)

Consider Joey, for example, who is in the sixth grade and reads on a fourth-grade level. Is he a slower reader because his IQ is 88? Or is his IQ recorded as 88 because he is a slow reader and this curtails his performance on his IQ test? Which comes first, the chicken of achievement or the egg of intelligence?

Now Joey’s IQ is relatively low at least in part because he does not read as well as the average child of the same age. If he were given remedial reading instruction and his reading level improved as a result, it is very probable that his IQ score would be higher if he were retested.

But Joey’s chances of getting remedial reading instruction on an individual basis are probably slim, for most schools and school systems do not have the funds and facilities required for extensive programs in this area.

Joey’s reading is probably considered satisfactory: that is, he is over a year behind what is considered average for his age, but he is also somewhat below average in intelligence. Given his intelligence, the schools reason, we should expect no more of him; therefore, his reading is satisfactory.

But for Joey, whose reading trouble might very well be the result of factors other than his intelligence, this should not be a satisfactory answer. He might be capable of profiting from an enriched curriculum. He might have abilities which could be developed only when exposed to the curriculum being enjoyed by the brightest class in his age group.

Indeed, he might have the ability to score well above average on an IQ test. If his IQ were higher he would get a better education. It is also true that if his education were better he would have a higher IQ. But Joey, whose below-average I Q traps him in slow classes, has little chance to extricate himself from the vicious circle in which his I Q adversely affects his education which adversely affects his achievement which adversely affects his I Q-and so on.

The school, having classified and grouped the child on the basis of his IQ-and, in some instances, with the aid of such related factors as reading ability and arithmetic level-begins to expect and accept of the child the kind of performance his IQ indicates as most probable.

The parent, usually placing confidence in the school’s superior experience in evaluating the educational progress of children, begins to accept the school’s general picture of the child’s strengths and weaknesses.

And the child, always to some extent unsure of his ability to go beyond a familiar level, and normally preoccupied with the more exciting everyday aspects of growth and life, develops a self-image that is strongly shaped by the attitudes of his parents, his teachers, and his fellow schoolmates.

Even though the school does not identify the average, bright, or slow groups in any way, it does not take long for the children themselves to sense the IQ-based distinctions. The teachers, of course, know of the differences, and this knowledge affects their conscious and unconscious attitudes toward the children of each group.

The parents, whose attitudes toward their children’s abilities are so highly colored by the school’s evaluation, often betray their attitudes to the children. Thus, though in many thousands of instances the school is underrating the potential of individual children, the child will develop and reinforce a self-image that incorporates many unreal limitations. And once these limitations become part of the child’s self-image, they operate just as if they were real.

And so another vicious circle is begun in which the child is directly and indirectly penalized by a conception that originates with the IQ.

About the Author
By Jimmy CoxHow To Improve Your Child’s IQ In Record Time And Give Them The Best Distance Learning Education Possible! Click Here For a Free Online E-book: http://www.distancelearningeducation.org

Technorati Tags: iq test, iq scores, distance learning, intelligence

We often talk about how stress management is as important as cognitive training for brain fitness. We have also seen how traders can improve their performance by learning how to manage emotions of anxiety and fustration. Golf Digest has just published an article on how golfers can see their game improved thanks to stress management programs. [...]