by Daniel of Diodorus
Less gifted people try to arrive at the solution to a complicated problem instinctively, often wrongly. For difficult tasks the brain activates the slow mode which is more expensive
People with high levels of intelligence are quick to solve simple problems correctly, but when issues get difficult, the smarter you are, the longer it takes to solve them. In fact, a complex brain, faced with a tangled problem, searches for many possible paths, trying to avoid pitfalls and false leads. So there is no simple linear relationship between intelligence level and solving speed. This result, which substantially modifies previous beliefs, came to a research group led by Michael Schirner of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charit, who published an article on the subject in the journal Nature Communications.
I study
The researchers examined data from nearly two thousand participants in the Human Connectome Project, whose goal is to map the functional circuits of the human brain, correlating them to behaviors. The subjects faced a specific intelligence test called the Penn Matrix Reasoning Test, which presents a series of tests with increasing difficulty. In this way it was understood how the different levels of intelligence deal with complexity, which sometimes also requires the ability to break down problems into a series of sub-problems, a mental path that requires more time to arrive at their solution. Less gifted people, when faced with very complex problems, try to jump to more instinctive, quick but easily erroneous conclusions. As a popular saying states: For every complex problem there is a simple solution, too bad it is often wrong.
Intelligence and brain circuits
Researchers have also attempted to correlate higher levels of intelligence with specific brain circuits, such as a synchronous connectivity between the brain’s frontal and parietal lobes. In fact, these are brain areas known for their importance both in attention and decision-making processes (frontal lobes), and in information integration processes (temporal lobes). In the more intellectually gifted people there is likely to be better attentional control, which adequately regulates the processing of information at the level of the parietal lobes.
Fast thinking and slow thinking
The process of slowing down decisions in the face of complex problems also occurs in everyday life, when the mind goes out of that automatic mode with which it faces the daily routine with little effort. what is indicated by the studies of two cognitive psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky who, through experimental psychology research, have demonstrated how intuitive decisions often fail, and that the human mind, when called upon to face a complex problem, passes from an intuitive to another mode of operation, slower, more reflective and demanding. The two modalities have been called fast thinking and slow thinking, also called system 1 and system 2. The first operating when habitual behaviors are followed, such as driving the car to the usual workplace, but also the one that makes one act quickly in case of danger, initiating self-defense or correction actions. If on the way to work the car suddenly skids, one will react instinctively, without developing any precise thought. System 2, on the other hand, comes into action when a higher level of attention is required, and remains at work as long as there is a need. For example, an Italian who rents a car in Great Britain will constantly have to pay attention to remember to drive on the left. System 2 is the only one capable of following rules and making choices among various options, of carrying out tasks that must be programmed in various stages, and it does so by activating the prefrontal area of the brain. But system 2 is tiring and expensive. When at work, the pupils dilate, the heart rate accelerates slightly, attention becomes focused, so it is possible that some aspects of the surrounding world are not perceived. also for this reason that the body tends to use it only when needed, leaving only system 1, with low consumption, active for most of the time.
July 30, 2023 (change July 30, 2023 | 08:13)
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