[gwern]

Intelligence may be changeable, but this is a truism: I can 'change' my intelligence by eating some paint chips or taking a baseball bat to my head.

What isn't suggested by 'many psychological studies' is that IQ can be reliably, long-term, and over general populations by any particular technique. And that's what everyone wants to exist and will read into a statement like that. So, based on the abstract, this study boils down to a good motivation technique.

(I say reliably because with 0.05 significance there will be many false results; long-term because short-term studies will show anything you want them to; and over general populations because there are small deprived groups in which one can easily boost IQ long-term - eg. children in the Balkans with iodine deficiencies.)

EDIT: Also note that the researchers point to increased grades - not increased IQ scores. If they have enough participation, time, and cooperation from these students to do all this teaching & motivating, then it is inexplicable - if they think they're actually boosting IQ - to have not given the students a quick hour-long IQ test; but this omission is quite understandable if they don't think their intervention is actually increasing anyone's IQ but their motivation.

[tokenadult]

After edit: I would be very glad to see citations to research sources that back up any of the statements made in your comment. I would want to look especially at methodological issues

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

if a study claims that something can't be done (rather than claiming that something hasn't been done).

After further edit: There is recent research showing that learning can actually change brain neural connections,

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09344/1019898-115.stm

so I think this year the burden of proof is on the people who claim lack of malleability, since malleability of human brain function is a replicated research result.

[gwern]

> After further edit: There is recent research showing that learning can actually change brain neural connections

Yes, of course learning changes neural connections. How else would it work? Changing some chemicals won't get a brain very far.

But this is as far away from changing IQ as demonstrating the Casimir effect gets you to a tractor beam sucking in the _Millennium Falcon_. The famous study of the [London taxi](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm) drivers shows they have changed connections, alright, even enlarged hippocampi - but nothing about increased brain mass or volume, because it's a zero-sum gain.

Now, as far as my specific assertions go. The 0.05 point is basic statistics which I feel no need to justify. The short-term point flows out of the former (there's simply more noise when you do all your sampling over a few days or minutes, say), and short-term studies are particularly vulnerable to issues like testing effects; the Balkans thing I alluded to in enough detail that you could easily have googled it if you were genuinely curious: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=balkans%20IQ%20io... And iodine deficiency isn't something that's purely long-term either - you can see effects after 24 weeks in this study: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/83/1/108 (note the high significance).

The burden of proof is not on those who claim lack of malleability - not that there are any such people here - but on those who claim IQ boosts without good long-term IQ testing.

[timwiseman]

You bring up some interesting points. But, (I am not an expert in psychology), my understanding of the article is precisely that intelligence can be reliably increased in the long term.

EDIT: Also note that the researchers point to increased grades - not increased IQ scores.

You are quite correct, however one would hope that grades have at least some correalation with intelligence, but more importantly they are the measurable results in school. Being able to increase those measurable results is the primary goal, even if hypothetically intelligence did not go up.

I have been told that in weightlifting the first several stages do not increase the amount of muscles, but they help you call on that strength better so you can lift more and get tired more slowly. This increases your effective abilities even if you do not develop more actual muscle right away.

Similarly, if the ability to use their intelligence is increased hypotethically without actually increasing the intelligence itself, this is still a major improvement.

[gwern]

> my understanding of the article is precisely that intelligence can be reliably increased in the long term.

And why would you think that? I've already criticized the one explicit statement on that.

> You are quite correct, however one would hope that grades have at least some correalation with intelligence, but more importantly they are the measurable results in school. Being able to increase those measurable results is the primary goal, even if hypothetically intelligence did not go up.

They do have correlation. But correlation is not causation. Giving these students a pep talk and seeing their grades go up, and knowing about the correlation between IQ and grades, gives us as much reason to conclude their IQs went up as we had instead hired drill sergeants to stand in their classroom and yell at them in best FMJ fashion for being "slimy fucking walrus-looking pieces of shit", observed their grades go down, and then concluded their IQs went down.

(Another analogy. My dog crossing the road has high correlation with the road being empty. Does my kicking him into the middle of the street clears it of the oncoming SUV?)

> Similarly, if the ability to use their intelligence is increased hypotethically without actually increasing the intelligence itself, this is still a major improvement.

Sure, and it's quite valuable. Self-control and self-discipline are fantastically valuable traits, and to a degree substitutable for IQ. But boosting people's motivation is not the same thing as boosting their IQ. The latter is the historic breakthrough, not the former, interesting and valuable as it is.

[joeyo]

Increasing IQ is, at best, a side effect of increasing intelligence. That is, IQ is just one way of quantifying intelligence in a single number. Its limitations are well known. Depending on how poor a mapping there is between intelligence and IQ for the specific individual, it is entirely possible that intelligence goes up while IQ stays the same (or conceivably even goes down).