IQ Tests Can't Measure It, but 'Cognitive Flexibility' Is Key to Learning and Creativity

[Carlitos Brigante]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/iq-tests-can-t-measure-it-but-cognitive-flexibility-is-key-to-learning-and-creativity?utm_source=pocket-newtab

IQ is often hailed as a crucial driver of success, particularly in fields such as science, innovation and technology. In fact, many people have an endless fascination with the IQ scores of famous people. But the truth is that some of the greatest achievements by our species have primarily relied on qualities such as creativity, imagination, curiosity and empathy.

Many of these traits are embedded in what scientists call “cognitive flexibility” – a skill that enables us to switch between different concepts, or to adapt behaviour to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment. It is essentially about learning to learn and being able to be flexible about the way you learn. This includes changing strategies for optimal decision-making. In our ongoing research, we are trying to work out how people can best boost their cognitive flexibility.

Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is not leading to success and to make the appropriate changes to achieve it. If you normally take the same route to work, but there are now roadworks on your usual route, what do you do? Some people remain rigid and stick to the original plan, despite the delay. More flexible people adapt to the unexpected event and problem-solve to find a solution.

Cognitive flexibility may have affected how people coped with the pandemic lockdowns, which produced new challenges around work and schooling. Some of us found it easier than others to adapt our routines to do many activities from home. Such flexible people may also have changed these routines from time to time, trying to find better and more varied ways of going about their day. Others, however, struggled and ultimately became more rigid in their thinking. They stuck to the same routine activities, with little flexibility or change.


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This article reminded me of my mother in law. Who seems to have abandoned all critical thinking and is pretty much spouting that Q-Morone shit. Without calling it that. The pandemic made it 50 times worse.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. IMO, the trouble with public education is the emphasis on teaching rote learning,

Last edited Sat Dec 4, 2021, 01:50 PM - Edit history (1)

namely memorization, rather than problem-solving, creativity, imagination, conceptualization, left-brain expansion.

Example: teaching to read via phonics but less time spent on reading comprehension. There's a big difference between deciphering and knowing the meaning of a sentence, a passage, a paragraph, a book.

[Carlitos Brigante]

2. I was IMO extremely fortunate that my mom pushed back on my self

sabotage. I was slacking and behaving like an asshole to get out of the Jesuit school she enrolled me in. Not to mention hormones taking over and wanting to attend co-ed schools, like everyone else in my neighborhood.

The school was big on "teaching us how to think" rather than just memorizing and regurgitating back.

[Backseat Driver]

3. I've been ridiculed for getting lost in the mall.

Truth or dare: I'm quite directionally challenged as a driver - I do maps very well though, so I'm usually in the navigator's seat while begging someone else to drive to unfamiliar places.

One night many years ago before cell phones and navigation programs, my straight shot home from work was closed for a serious accident, so I made a right turn, a left turn and a few streets up, made another left, but crossed the main road home and never recognized it from the alternate direction so I missed the last right turn to get back on track - got frightfully lost and panicky as I ended up eventually coming back at a more recognizable intersection with that straight shot road home many blocks from where I took the first detour 45 minutes later.

[Carlitos Brigante]

4. We have that in common. My siblings are like human GPSs, yet I can

get lost in my own neighborhood.

[Quakerfriend]

16. I, too, have this problem. And, I tend to misinterpret road signs😆. However,

I can give impeccable directions via the phone- even providing notes about e.g.,
spots where there may be no sign giving the name of the road or names of businesses along the way…. It’s as if I turn on my own mental map and take you there.

But, put me behind the wheel and forget about it!

[BeckyDem]

5. K&R

How this relates to teaching children with autism is also significant.

[leftstreet]

6. DURec

That was very interesting!

Thanks for posting it.

And I've bookmarked it in case I can't find my way back to it.

[crickets]

7. Interesting article. K&R

[Snarkoleptic]

8. Back in the day, I experimented with LSD.

I remain convinced that it broke down barriers in my thought process and expanded my consciousness.

[Carlitos Brigante]

9. Only worked my way up to 'shrooms (only once I think). But I was scared

of LSD. In subsequent years I've read more and more from folks like you and their experiences. Now I'm not intimidated by it as much as curious.

[Snarkoleptic]

10. OK, weird story...

Following an acid-fueled Moody Blues concert, I was walking along a tree line to my home.
In the lower branches, I saw skeletal faces sticking out with cobwebs streaming back into the trees.
I'd never hallucinated before, so I backed up several paces and noted that, while all the faces were different, they remained the same images in the same juxtaposition.
To me, this hinted that these were not random visions. Of course I was high AF, so who know what reality I was onto at the time.

[modrepub]

11. IQ/SAT and the Like

Just show you are able to take a test.

Read books, explore and take the path less taken once in awhile. Everything in moderation. Life's a journey. Remember, we all wind up 6' under in the end.

[niyad]

12. Umm, some of us get cremated and our ashes scattered.

But life does have a 100% mortality rate.

[niyad]

13. A very interesting article. I think about Toffler's

"Future Shock", and "The Thurd Wave", talking about how some people can adapt, even tobrapid, huge changes, while others cannot, or will not. Are these the same kind of thing, the same basic idea?

[erronis]

14. Thanks for the article. The original in The Conversation is posted below:

https://theconversation.com/the-iq-test-wars-why-screening-for-intelligence-is-still-so-controversial-81428

[Carlitos Brigante]

15. Sweet! TY!! nt

[Rocknation]

17. It's taken more than sixty years

but I've finally been diagnosed correctly...


rocktivity

[I_UndergroundPanther]

18. Chaos

Magick can be very useful to build cognitive flexability.

Part of the practice is deliberatly changing routines and and to not become fixed regarding beliefs. Among other techiques.