self improvement

Brain Fitness And The Mensa IQ Test

Through the coincidental interests of two men on a train ride in England, the idea for a society of those with high IQ emerged. Lawyer Roland Berrill and scientist Lance Ware discovered a shared interest in intelligence tests. Later that year, just after the end of the Second World War that they founded Mensa (named for the Latin words for table, mind, and month).

First conceived of by Alfred Binet almost 100 years ago, the IQ test was created to measure the intellectual capabilities of French schoolchildren. Although IQ tests have been criticized by some over the years for measuring nothing more than one’s ability to do well on an IQ test, they remain a useful tool in cognitive assessment and are more widely used now than ever for identifying learning dysfunctions, giftedness, academic aptitude and even career aptitude. Oh, yes, and for gaining entry to societies such as Mensa.

We all have a sense that some people figure things out more quickly or more successfully than others. An IQ test aims to measure this ability in a reliable way. To gain entry to Mensa one must score in the top 2% on any one of a number of standardized tests – these include Mensa’s own IQ test, the Cattell III B (scoring above 148), Culture Fair (132), Ravens Advanced Matrices (135), Ravens Standard Matrices (131), Wechsler Scales (132).

Some IQ tests (such as the Ravens matrices) test one’s spatial and analytical abilities using non-verbal questions only. Psychologists sometimes deem these tests “culture fair” because they don’t require an extensive vocabulary or acquired learning. Other IQ tests include questions that present verbal analogies or puzzles that test comprehension and mathematical ability.

There are some reasonably good practice tests on the Internet which can give you a general idea of your IQ. (At www.mensa.org, there’s a Mensa IQ Test IQ Workout, for instance.) It’s important to remember that all tests have some margin of error, and an on-line test will not be as accurate as a moderated test.

If you’re curious about joining Mensa, you’ll probably be wondering whether you have what it takes. Scoring in the 98th percentile seems daunting until you recall that in a group of 50 people, on average one of them will be smart enough for Mensa. And with the publication of a groundbreaking study last year, we now know that IQ scores aren’t fixed and can be increased.

Intrigued by the theory that fluid intelligence and working memory might compete for brain power, a team of scientists from the Universities of Michigan and Bern wondered whether they could increase fluid intelligence by training working-memory: More working-memory capacity, more processing cycles for problem solving. To this end, they constructed a particularly demanding training method to increase visual and aural working-memory.

Testing participants’ fluid intelligence before and after training using standard IQ test questions, they eliminated any skew from familiarity with the test by comparing results to those of a group who hadn’t received any training. The study not only showed that fluid intelligence can increase with working-memory training, the degree of increase was dramatic. With 19 days of training, the fluid intelligence scores for each person in the trained group increased by at least 40% more than those in the non-trained group.

I was so inspired by these results that my company right away made the training available as a software program (Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro). Our customers’ experiences fully support and extend the research findings. Customers who have taken a before and after IQ test have found that the training does indeed increase IQ scores, in some cases by more than 20 points.

Societies such as Mensa can provide a wonderful forum for all kinds of interaction. People from all walks of life and all parts of the world come together with just one thing they all have in common – they’ve all scored in the top 2% on an IQ test. If you’re curious about whether you share that ability (before or after training), there’s one way to find out.