Debunking the IQ Myth

MedicalXpress discusses the research, which backs up something many people have suspected and said before: there’s no simple measure for intelligence. Instead, at least three components are necessary: short-term memory, reasoning and verbal measures. But there were some interesting findings about those…

[Researcher Adam] Hampshire adds, “Intriguingly, people who regularly played computer games did perform significantly better in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory. And smokers performed poorly on the short-term memory and the verbal factors, while people who frequently suffer from anxiety performed badly on the short-term memory factor in particular”.

The study included more than 100,000 people from around the world, who took a dozen tests of memory, reasoning, attention and planning ability. You can try a new version yourself here.