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Brain Fitness Training - Passing The Mensa IQ Test

April 7th, 2009

The high IQ organization Mensa (a play on the Latin words for table, mind, and month) began with the chance meeting of two men on a train. In 1946, Roland Berrill, a lawyer, and Lance Ware, a scientist and law student, struck up a conversation about their mutual interest in intelligence measurement. They stayed in contact and soon after decided to start a society for those with high intelligence.

First conceived of by Alfred Binet almost 100 years ago, the IQ test was created to measure the intellectual capabilities of French schoolchildren. Although IQ tests have been criticized by some over the years for measuring nothing more than one’s ability to do well on an IQ test, they remain a useful tool in cognitive assessment and are more widely used now than ever for identifying learning dysfunctions, giftedness, academic aptitude and even career aptitude. Oh, yes, and for gaining entry to societies such as Mensa.

We all have a sense that some people figure things out more quickly or more successfully than others. An IQ test aims to measure this ability in a reliable way. To gain entry to Mensa one must score in the top 2% on any one of a number of standardized tests - these include Mensa’s own IQ test, the Cattell III B (scoring above 148), Culture Fair (132), Ravens Advanced Matrices (135), Ravens Standard Matrices (131), Wechsler Scales (132).

Typically IQ tests measure a range of intellectual skills including completion of verbal analogies, and assessments of verbal and mathematical understanding. Others include diagrammatic questions only. Such “culture fair” tests don’t require a broad vocabulary or general knowledge.

Mensa provides an excellent quick assessment of IQ aptitude on its website (www.mensa.org). The Mensa IQ Test, IQ Workout gives you instant feedback. While this and other Internet practice tests can give a sense of your IQ, all tests have some margin of error, and an on-line test will not be as accurate as a recognized, moderated test.

If you’re interested in applying to Mensa, the question quickly becomes “will I get in?” Aiming for the top 2% sounds like quite a hurdle. But if you think that in a room of fifty people, on average one of them will be in that top 2%, it perhaps seems less daunting. And even if you fall somewhat below the top 2% all hope is not lost.

Scientists from the Universities of Michigan and Bern last year hypothesized that we might increase our fluid intelligence by training our working-memory. Since working-memory processing competes for brain power with raw problem-solving ability, increasing one would leave more brain power for the other, they presumed. To test this theory, the scientists devised a novel training method that progressively stretched and strengthened visual and aural working-memory at the same time.

The study concluded that working-memory training had a considerable positive benefit to fluid intelligence. The team employed standard IQ test questions to measure fluid intelligence, and removed the impact of test familiarity with a control group who didn’t undergo working memory training. After just nineteen days of training, half an hour each day, each subject increased their fluid intelligence score by more than forty percent when compared to the control group.

The study so impressed me that my company has released a faithful version of this training method as a commercial software program (Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro). Mind Sparke customers confirm the research findings. Customers have raised their IQ scores, some by more than twenty points.

Societies such as Mensa can provide a wonderful forum for all kinds of interaction. People from all walks of life and all parts of the world come together with just one thing they all have in common - they’ve all scored in the top 2% on an IQ test. If you’re curious about whether you share that ability (before or after training), there’s one way to find out.

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