Category: Intelligence

People with more of this in their blood did better on intelligence tests.

Eating leafy greens helps preserve intelligence over the lifetime, research finds.

Leafy greens and other foods contain lutein, a plant pigment that protects the brain from aging.

People with more lutein in their blood did better on intelligence tests, the study found.

Lutein collects in the cell membranes of the brain, playing a ‘neuroprotective’ role.

Foods that contain high levels of lutein include leafy green vegetables like kale and spinach as well as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

Dr Marta Zamroziewicz, the study’s first author, said:

“Previous studies have found that a person’s lutein status is linked to cognitive performance across the lifespan.

Research also shows that lutein accumulates in the gray matter of brain regions known to underlie the preservation of cognitive function in healthy brain aging.”

For the study, 122 people aged 65 to 75 took tests of crystallised intelligence.

Crystallised intelligence is akin to general knowledge.

Blood tests revealed that people with higher levels of lutein did better on these tests.

Scans also revealed that lutein helped preserve critical areas of the brain.

Professor Aron Barbey, study co-author, said:

“Our analyses revealed that gray-matter volume of the parahippocampal cortex on the right side of the brain accounts for the relationship between lutein and crystallized intelligence.

This offers the first clue as to which brain regions specifically play a role in the preservation of crystallized intelligence, and how factors such as diet may contribute to that relationship.”

Dr Zamroziewicz said:

“Our findings do not demonstrate causality.

We did find that lutein is linked to crystallized intelligence through the parahippocampal cortex.”

Professor Barbey said:

“We can only hypothesize at this point how lutein in the diet affects brain structure.

It may be that it plays an anti-inflammatory role or aids in cell-to-cell signaling.

But our finding adds to the evidence suggesting that particular nutrients slow age-related declines in cognition by influencing specific features of brain aging.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (Zamroziewicz et al., 2016).

People wearing these clothes thought in broader, more holistic ways.

Wearing formal clothes can make you think abstractly, psychologists have found.

Dressing up makes people feel powerful and encourages the brain to focus on ‘big picture’ thinking.

People feel more competent and rational when they are wearing formal clothing.

Thinking in a more abstract way helps people stick to long-term goals and avoid short-term temptations, research has found.

Abstract thinking also increases certain types of creativity, allowing people to make connections between disparate things.

The study’s authors write:

“Formal clothing (like formal language) signals situations that are not casual and familiar (i.e., situations of increased social distance; Easterling et al.,1992).

Indeed, we found that over and above any sociometric status felt when wearing formal clothing, this enhanced social distance (feelings of power) predicts abstract processing.”

For the study, hundreds of people brought two sets of clothes to the lab, one formal, as though they were going to a job interview, and the other casual.

All were given various cognitive tasks to do while wearing the formal and then the casual clothes.

The authors explain the results:

“…clothing formality is associated with abstract processing, with greater formality associated with enhanced abstract processing.”

People felt more competent and rational when wearing the formal clothes, the authors explain:

“Wearing formal clothing is thus related to psychological formality and social distance, whereas casual clothing is related to intimacy and familiarity.

For example, people who wear formal clothes describe themselves as more competent and rational, whereas people who wear casual clothes describe themselves as more friendly and laid-back.”

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science (Slepian et al., 2015).

Researchers videoed people taking an IQ test to see how they behaved.

Scientists have long argued about what IQ tests are really measuring.

Research finds that people with higher motivation have superior IQs.

At least, people who are motivated to do well on an IQ test tend to try harder and consequently get a better score.

The inference is that what an IQ test is partly measuring is how well a person wants to do on an IQ test.

People who get low scores on IQ tests may just be lacking in motivation.

In fact, research finds that when people with lower motivation are given a larger incentive, they get a higher IQ score.

The scientists argue that it is really motivation that is a strong predictor of success in life — perhaps more so than IQ.

The conclusions come from a study in which adolescents were videoed taking an IQ test.

People then watched those taking the test to assess how hard they were trying.

The results showed that those who appeared to be trying harder got the highest IQ scores.

Professor Angela Duckworth, the study’s first author, said:

“IQ scores are absolutely predictive of long-term outcomes.

But what our study questions is whether that’s entirely because smarter people do better in life than other people or whether part of the predictive power coming from test motivation.

Could it be that part of the reason doing well on this test predicts future success is because the kinds of traits that would result in you doing well –compliance with authority, self-control, attentiveness, competitiveness — are traits that also help you in life?

This means that for people who get high IQ scores, they probably try hard and are intelligent.

But for people who get low scores, it can be an absence of either or both of those traits.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Duckworth et al., 2011).