How to Become Smarter (2 page)

All three types of intelligence—academic, emotional, and social—have both crystallized and fluid dimensions. For example, recent studies of social intelligence identified two components: crystallized social intelligence and fluid social intelligence [
28
]. The former deals with acquired social skills and knowledge, whereas the latter deals with the ability to understand and predict social situations and to solve problems related to social situations. Thus there may be six major subtypes of intelligence: crystallized academic, fluid academic, crystallized emotional, fluid emotional, crystallized social, and fluid social intelligence. Some studies suggest that different areas of the brain are responsible for different types of intelligence. One brain region may be primarily responsible for academic intelligence and another area for carrying out mental processes related to emotional intelligence. It is unclear if the same is true for the crystallized and fluid dimensions of each type of intelligence. Further research is needed.

To explain the meaning of techniques proposed in this book, it will be convenient to subdivide the six subtypes of intelligence into “knowledge components” and “biological components.” The knowledge components are crystallized academic, crystallized emotional, and crystallized social intelligence. The biological components are fluid social, fluid academic, and fluid emotional intelligence. The biological components are the main focus of this book because they deal with how well the brain functions and they are largely independent of knowledge and acquired skills. Put another way, this book focuses on improving the functioning of the human brain, and one can assess this improvement by measuring fluid intelligence. Crystallized intelligence (knowledge and skills) will not change, at least in the short term, with approaches aimed at improving brain function.

This book defines the sum of all three biological components (fluid social, fluid academic, and fluid emotional intelligence) as “mental clarity.” This is a measure of how well the brain functions with respect to all kinds of mental tasks: those related to emotions and social situations as well as academic tasks and problems. Scientific validity of the concept of mental clarity is unknown. It is unclear whether this is a single factor that correlates with its three component parts, or whether mental clarity is just a sum of three independent, unrelated factors. Nevertheless, the concept of mental clarity will be useful in this book. This concept attempts to separate the biological components of intelligence from the knowledge components. Measurements of mental clarity will assess how well the brain is functioning in general.

Ideally, to measure mental clarity we should use well-established tests of academic, emotional, and social intelligence [
29
-
31
]. We need to calculate fluid dimensions from each result and add up the three values using some mathematical formula. This approach will be accurate and scientifically valid. Yet the existing tests are expensive, require qualified personnel to administer them, and may not be available in all languages. At present, validated tests of emotional intelligence cannot assess its fluid component. I designed a brief self-rating questionnaire (
Appendix IV
) that attempts to assess fluid components of academic, emotional, and social intelligence. One of the drawbacks of this instrument is that self-rating questionnaires do not represent an accurate assessment of mental abilities [
23
]. This is because self-rating often reflects a person’s perception and doesn’t measure mental abilities as do proctored tests. For this reason, the mental clarity questionnaire is not an accurate measure of intelligence. Nevertheless, it does avoid direct questions about mental abilities and asks only questions that can assess such abilities indirectly, and thus more objectively. For example, many respondents will answer affirmatively the question “Do you think that you are very smart?” even those who don’t have above-average IQ scores. On the other hand, the question “Is your life easy?” will receive a more objective answer and will paint a more accurate picture of the respondent’s intelligence. Highly intelligent people usually have no difficulty solving life’s problems. The “ease of life” is not a perfect measure of intelligence and there are many exceptions; that is why the mental clarity questionnaire contains twenty questions. Another potential problem with self-rating questionnaires is the honesty of responses, especially when the outcome of the testing has real-life consequences, such as a promotion or being hired for a job. For us this problem is a minor one because the purpose of testing is to see whether the self-help approaches described in this book are effective or not. The book’s readers have little or no incentive to be dishonest with themselves. This type of assessment of mental abilities is not perfect, but the advantages are ease of use and low cost. Nevertheless, the most accurate way to assess the usefulness of my advice is to take a proctored IQ test (not an internet IQ test) before and after one of the proposed lifestyle changes. You can then calculate the fluid component of academic intelligence and discover any improvement. If you are a student, you can assess improvement in your mental abilities, if any, by the change in your grade point average after you try some of the proposed techniques.

There is a possibility that your mental clarity score will be low, according to the proposed questionnaire (
Appendix IV
). This does not mean that you must drop everything and do your best to try to improve your score. Your low score can mean that your mental abilities are fine and the questionnaire is imperfect. So far, nobody has validated this questionnaire scientifically and you are under no obligation to do anything to improve your score.

• There are three major types of intelligence: academic intelligence (measured by IQ), emotional intelligence, and social intelligence.
  
• Intelligence depends both on acquired knowledge and on biological properties of the brain, which are unique to each person.
  
• The “knowledge component” of intelligence is often called “crystallized intelligence.”
  
• The “biological component” of intelligence, which depends on how well the brain works (independent of knowledge), is called “fluid intelligence.” It represents the ability to understand and solve novel problems.
  
• This book mostly discusses the ways of improving brain function, or fluid intelligence.
  
• The concept of “mental clarity” is the combination of fluid academic, fluid social, and fluid emotional intelligence. In simple terms, mental clarity is the ability to understand and solve all kinds of complex problems, regardless of knowledge.
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Any discussion of experimental evidence that supports this book’s theories would be difficult without defining some basic terminology and explaining how to determine the strength of evidence produced by scientific experiments. This section explains the meaning of randomization, blinding, statistical significance, clinical change, and some other relevant concepts that researchers use in scientific experiments, such as clinical trials. (Readers can skip the detailed discussion of this topic and jump to the key points: press the skip button or
this link
.) Most often, a clinical trial consists of two groups of patients: an experimental group (who receive active treatment) and a so-called “control group.” The control group receives a placebo, no treatment, or a specially designed “control treatment.” Researchers determine the effectiveness of a drug or another type of treatment by comparing symptoms in the experimental group to those in the control group(s). Studies unrelated to medical treatments that scientists perform on
healthy
human subjects are sometimes called clinical trials, but the more correct term is “a volunteer study.” Both clinical trials and volunteer studies require the informed consent of test subjects. The study protocol must receive approval of an ethics committee at the research institution where the study is taking place.

The word “randomized” in the phrase “randomized controlled trial” means that researchers have assigned the test subjects to either the experimental or control group
randomly
, using a special “randomization procedure.” This is in contrast to a situation where an investigator assigns test subjects to the groups however he or she wants. For example, he may distribute them in a way that will produce a desirable outcome. Random and unbiased distribution of test subjects among the control and experimental groups ensures that there is no influence from irrelevant variables (such as age, sex, or personality traits) on the results. In other words, randomization ensures that the study’s outcome depends
only
on the variables being tested in the experiment. For instance, a study is going to investigate the effect of food additives on attention function. In a non-randomized controlled trial an investigator may inadvertently assign the most inattentive test subjects to the experimental group, who will receive food additives. This causes the test subjects with the best attention function to end up in the control group, who will receive a diet free of food additives. Without a randomization procedure, preexisting differences of attention function between the two groups will influence the results of this study. If this non-randomized study finds that food additives in the diet worsen attention function, the validity of this finding will be questionable. If, however, we assign the test subjects to the groups randomly, then roughly equal numbers of inattentive and attentive subjects will be present in each group (experiment and control). In this case the results of the study will be more dependent on the presence or absence of food additives in the diet (if such a relationship exists) and less dependent on irrelevant variables. Randomized controlled trials provide stronger evidence of the effectiveness of a drug (or other medical treatment) than clinical trials that are not randomized.

Another way of ensuring the integrity of clinical studies is to blind the test subjects to the type of treatment they receive: placebo or active treatment. This is called a blinded clinical trial. A placebo is a treatment that produces no biological effect on the medical condition in question. For example, a sugar pill can serve as a placebo in a clinical trial of an antianxiety drug. Blinding means that the test subjects will not know whether they are in the experimental or in the control group. Often, clinical studies employ an additional level of blinding: blinding the investigators who conduct measurements to the type of treatment test subjects receive. This is a double-blind trial. Blinding
test subjects
allows investigators to assess the placebo effect of a treatment. For example, if 30% of patients in the placebo group show clinical improvement, this means that self-suggestion without any real treatment can improve symptoms of 30% of patients with the disorder in question. Alternatively, this means that 30% of patients with the disorder will improve spontaneously without any intervention, either placebo or treatment, as a result of the natural progression of the disease [
32
,
33
,
904
]. If only 30% of patients who receive the active drug show clinical improvement, then the drug in question is no better than a placebo. The drug has no biological effect on patients. If this study were not blinded, then an investigator could incorrectly interpret the 30% response to the drug as a beneficial effect of the experimental drug. Blinding of
investigators
ensures that investigators’ biases do not influence the results. Suppose an investigator is interested in demonstrating a beneficial effect of an experimental drug (to renew his research grants or get a job promotion). He may inadvertently record results or conduct measurements in such a way as to produce the desired outcome. This is the “observer bias.” On the other hand, if the investigator does not know whether the patients receive a placebo or active treatment, the observer bias will be minimal. At the end of the double-blind trial the investigators will decipher the status of the patients (placebo or active treatment) and will be able to see unbiased results. The results of double-blind randomized controlled trials primarily reflect the effects of the treatment in question. These results are virtually unaffected by biases and irrelevant variables. So this sort of study is much more trustworthy than clinical trials that are not randomized and not double-blinded. Most scientists consider double-blind randomized controlled trials “the golden standard” of clinical trials.

Note that a placebo control can be problematic if the disease in question causes significant suffering to patients. If an effective treatment exists, it is unethical to leave this medical condition untreated. It is also impossible to design a placebo control group for diet studies. A diet change always has some biological effects and therefore cannot serve as a placebo control. A control diet must be either a specially designed diet or no diet, in which case the participants follow their customary nutritional regimen. The former is not a placebo diet because it is different from the customary diet of a test subject and will produce some biological effects from the change of nutrition. The latter (no diet) is not a placebo diet because the test subjects are complying with no particular diet (receive no treatment) and know about it. A placebo is a
treatment
that produces no biological effect on the medical condition under study. Thus, the participants who receive
no treatment
are not a placebo control group: they are a “no-treatment control” group. Despite the absence of a placebo diet, it is still possible to organize a blinded trial of a diet. Scientists can design a control diet and not tell test subjects which of the two diets will produce beneficial effects. These two diets (experimental and control) should be similarly difficult to adhere to. Results of a blinded trial will be more trustworthy than those of an open trial, where participants know whether they are in the experimental or control group. A double-blind trial of a diet is also possible if the investigators who assess clinical change are blinded to the type of diet the patients consume. Researchers can avoid most of the complexities associated with control diets. They can use an
open
trial and compare the experimental diet to a drug known to be better than a placebo.