How Can I Get Smarter This Year? Read a Book From This List | Intelligence - Psychology Today

Brain training probably won't cut it. Instead, try reading one of these books, says Jonathan Wai, Ph.D., psychologist, writer, and research scientist at Duke University.

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The idea that you can improve your general cognitive ability or reasoning by “training your brain” is an appealing one. However, that is an idea that is unsupported by evidence. Michael R. Dougherty and Alison Robey note in a recent Current Directions in Psychological Science paper that it is questionable whether brain training really can lead to impactful educational interventions. And a recent synthesis by Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences concludes based on several meta-analytic reviews that cognitive training does not enhance general cognition: “The cognitive-training program of research has showed no appreciable benefits, and other more plausible practices to enhance cognitive performance should be pursued.”

Though to date it is not clear what exactly will make you smarter in the sense of improving general cognitive ability, there are many ways you can learn new things and become “smarter” in the sense of maybe learning to think about things from different perspectives and in new ways.
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Source: Psychology Today