The ability to pay attention to multiple things at once correlates with higher scores on problem solving-based intelligence tests, said John Duncan, a researcher at the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Duncan discussed his research on attention in humans and other primates in Straub Hall Friday night.
The University’s Brain, Biology and Machine Initiative (BBMI) hosted two lectures this weekend about the brain’s processes for attention and reading.
One focus of Duncan’s research is a condition known as goal neglect, which is commonly seen in people with injuries to the frontal lobe region of the brain.
Frontal lobes are involved with planning behavior and problem solving. When asked to perform a simple task, a person with goal neglect might be able to explain what he or she has been asked to do, but would not do it.
Duncan found that goal neglect also exists to some degree in people without brain injuries. To test his hypothesis, he showed study participants computer screens with changing groups of letters, numbers and symbols, and asked them to monitor the changes in all three.
While all participants were aware of what they were supposed to be doing, some were able to complete the task better than others. People who performed well tended to be people who also did well on intelligence tests based on problem solving.
“Almost everyone with an IQ below 100 is failing almost all of the trials,” Duncan said.
This correlation, where people who perform well on one test tend to perform well on other tests, is called Spearman’s g. But Spearman’s g does not explain what intelligence is.
“Our everyday concepts like intelligence don’t have a very definite definition,” Duncan said, although he referred to research conducted by University psychology professor emeritus Michael Posner, which found that children who take attention training perform better on problem-solving-based intelligence tests.
About 60 people, including faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students, primarily from the psychology and computer science departments, attended Duncan’s lecture.
Duncan worked at the University in Posner’s laboratory as a post-doctoral fellow from 1976 to 1978.
Another psychology lecture occurred Saturday morning, and the weekend continued with a live telecast in the Lillis Business Complex from the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland .
Guinevere Eden, director of Georgetown University’s Center for the Study of Learning, spoke about the brain processes associated with dyslexia, a condition where people have difficulty reading and recognizing words.
Eden said that as people become more experienced at reading, their parietal lobes – regions of the brain that are involved in processing touch and taste as well as language – become more involved in the process.
According to functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, which measure brain activity by monitoring blood flow to various parts of the brain, people with dyslexia have less activity in their parietal lobes when they read than other people.
Dyslexia can now be identified early in life, using both behavioral evidence and brain scans, and techniques for helping people with dyslexia improve their reading skills have been developed.
“There’s really no excuse for not identifying these children early on and beginning the intervention,” Eden said. “The cost if you wait is enormous.”
Psychology and neuroscience professor Helen Neville, who is on BBMI’s executive committee, said after the lecture that BBMI offers many public lectures throughout the year, covering topics such as brain imaging, education and the role of genes in brain function.
Some of these lectures are specifically designed for parents and educators to teach them ways to facilitate healthy development of children’s brains.
“BBMI is all about studying the mind and brain from many different perspectives,” Neville said.
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