Building Fluid Intelligence
This week at Assembly I shared thoughts from a 2011 blog post in Scientific American, “You Can Increase Your Intelligence: 5 Ways to Maximize Your Cognitive Potential,” by Andrea Kuszewski. I found her ideas about fluid intelligence relevant to how we approach learning at SCDS.
According to Ms. Kuszewski, fluid intelligence is our capacity to learn new information, retain it, then use that new knowledge as a foundation to solve other problems, or to learn new skills. Clearly, our capacity to build a foundation of knowledge and then apply it are essential intellectual tasks for school, one that students employ every day, but equally as important to us as adults.
Here are some key facts about fluid intelligence according to Ms. Kuszewski:
- Fluid intelligence is trainable.
- The more you train, the more you gain.
- Anyone can increase their cognitive ability, no matter what their starting point.
- The more “real life” an experience, the more growth there is. In other words, studying for and taking tests do not enhance or measure fluid intelligence.
There are five principles to building fluid intelligence.
- Seek Novelty
- Challenge Yourself
- Think Creatively
- Do Things The Hard Way
- Network
Seeking Novelty means being open to new experiences, what we might think of as curiosity. People who seek novelty are constantly hungry for new information, try new activities, and seek new things to learn. We have defined “courageous” in our Community Code very deliberately to denote “being open to possibilities.”
When you seek novelty, Ms. Kuszewski suggests there are several things happening in your brain. You establish synaptic connections with every new activity in which you engage. These connections propagate, increasing your neural activity, creating more connections to build on other connections. Your brain literally develops physically as you learn.
Challenge Yourself is also embedded in our Community Code under “courageous,” but perhaps has a different spin than you might expect. There has been a lot of research recently about the effects of playing games on intelligence, and it is one of the areas Ms. Kuszewski has studied. It turns out that once you master an activity, like a game, your brain power stops expanding its neural activity. In fact, it may even begin to decrease, as your physical and mental actions have become automatic through efficiency.
Efficiency does not cultivate cognitive growth. In order to keep your brain growing, you have to try the next challenging activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery. For adults, as soon as those morning Sudoku puzzles become easy, it’s time to move on to something else.
Think Creatively doesn’t have to involve artistic endeavor, rather, it is the process that is taking place in your brain when you are problem solving. In our guiding principles, we have defined creativity as “learning that prepares us to solve problems and generate original ideas that add value to our lives.”
Idea generation and problem solving also does not mean using the right side of your brain, contrary to popular belief. You may recall a best selling book about creativity a few years ago with the subtitle, Why Right Brained People Will Rule the World. Creative thinking actually requires both hemispheres of your brain. When you think and learn about a wide range of topics, and you are encouraged to make connections between ideas and to consider new ways ways of doing things, you are creating the ideal conditions in your brain for generating original ideas.
To illustrate the point of Do Things the Hard Way, the author used the example of giving up Google Maps. I was reminded of my family’s experience this summer trying to navigate our way through the capital of Costa Rica without the benefit of an iPhone signal. Suffice it to say we built a lot of new neural pathways that day.
The tough thing is that technology is focused on making everything more efficient. As Ms. Kuszewski states, “This is so we can do more things, in a shorter amount of time, expending the least amount of physical and mental energy possible. However, this isn’t doing your brain any favors.”
We talk a great deal about grit, persistence, and determination at school. Ms. Kuszewski’s writing led me to conclude that we also need to be reminding students that it may actually be better for you to be deliberate about taking the more difficult path.
Network is collaborating and working with other people. Being with and working with new people provides opportunities to see problems from a new perspective or offer insight into novel ways of doing things. In our guiding principles, we state that “Engagement … stems from our connection to ideas, people, our community, and the natural world.” We also believe that “relationships are at the heart of our learning.”
In closing Assembly, I asked students to think about where they see these principles at work in their learning this week - seeking novelty, challenging yourself, thinking creatively, doing things the hard way, and networking. I invite you to discuss these ideas at your dinner table this week as well.
Brad Weaver, Ed.D
Head of School
Sonoma Country Day School
We are…
The premier, fully accredited, independent TK-8 college preparatory school in Sonoma County. Located in northern Santa Rosa and proud home of The Jackson Theater, SCDS offers a challenging academic program rich in fine and performing arts, music, world languages, and social and emotional learning. For more than thirty years SCDS has been the school that brings learning to life.
