Culture Shock? (Brain Age)

The 'intellectual' difference between various cultures/races has always been a topic of debate in my family ever since I gave the book "The Bell Curve" to my mother 12 years ago. The debate has been successfully re-ignited in my mind ever since I picked up Brain Age for my Nintendo DS this past Tuesday.

Here's a quote from The Bell Curve:




For those who haven't heard of it, Brain Age is a game based on various mental exercises proposed by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. The tests are supposed to activate your prefrontal cortex and in general make you think quicker and use more of your brain. The only issue (other than my brain hurting the first day ;) is that the game seems culturally unbalanced to me.

The Japanese culture is known for being excellent at math. Conversely western cultures like the U.S. are a little better when it comes to language (verbal). At least this was my understanding of The Bell Curve. The game, designed in Japan no less, slaps you in the face with this.

All of the tests designed to test math skills such as calculations ... in my opinion I fly through. However, according to the game I only get 'Car Speed' on them. In contrast on some of the more language and situational awareness oriented tests I am able to achieve 'Jet Speed'. The sad truth is that I feel like I could go faster when it comes to the language and situational awareness tests but I feel that I am just about at my limits with the math tests.

The game is obviously biased toward the Japanese culture and its interpretation of a healthy brain. It's perfectly fair for them to keep the high math/calculation standard. However, when it comes to language the game's expectations should have then been set to the culture with the highest standard.

Here I am sitting in the midst of my U.S. culture which is consistently being slammed for poor math and science skills ... showing less than stellar results as compared to my Japanese counterparts when it comes to math. Yet on the same token I'm made to feel that my language and situational awareness skills are ahead of the game.

The truth of the matter is for a Japanese person I'm not too swift with my calculations and I'm good at language and situational awareness. The problem being I'm not Japanese! Either these sorts of test should be 'culturalized' ... or the highest standards from every culture should be used.

Above I mention language (which was talked about in The Bell Curve) and situational awareness. The latter is a new topic of study, which would not have been mentioned in The Bell Curve, though it is a cultural bias nonetheless.

The situational awareness test has you counting how many people go in and out of a house. There was an article about a year or so ago in the local paper about how FPS game players are very good at keeping a running tally of foes in their head and knowing where they all are. Being that the FPS is very popular here in the U.S. and not in Japan, again the test is culturally biased and Japanese gamers would be made to feel OK with their abilities in this test meanwhile, more than likely, they would not hold a candle to their western counterparts who play FPS games.

Of course this is all speculation! Heck, maybe after all these years of programming and calculating I simply cannot reverse my genetics. After all, as a child language was always easy for me but math was always hard. Part of my makeup always makes me go after what really challenges me. Because I was terrible at math I had to choose a career path based on it.

Thus, perhaps it is not the game, but it sure seems like it.

YOUR FICK

America isn't a homogenous population. It would be more accurate to compare Japan and a European country.

Well, The Bell Curve actually broke it down into just White/Asian/Black etc... So most European nations would be in the same boat. I just used my frame of reference in this particular western culture.

There was a recent study that found that Germans had the highest IQs of all European countries. I think Swedes were second.

As the Japanese are superior game designers obviously the conversion was done by Americans. </sarcasm>

LOL ;)

One thing I began to realize today with the game is I'm starting to at least see room for improvement with the calculations section.

There's one verbal test where you have to count syllables in a sentence ... I can kill that test and it's easy for me (though I can still see room for improvement), my brain doesn't feel different after I do it. On the flip side I can feel my head throbbing a bit after doing the 100 calculations. Kinda cool really.

The interesting thing I'm pulling out of this is that the better you are at something the more room for improvement you can see with it. To a point that is.

One thing is a lot of people get confused with. We all have equal "rights" and should have equal "opportunities" as human beings, but we are not equal in terms of intelligence, skill etc and this is obvious based on genetics and upbringing/culture. Anyone who denies this is living on cloud 9 imho.

It doesn't matter how intelligent you are, if you're a lazy arse you're not gonna be using your brain for much.
And that just happens to be what the Japanese people are not, lazy. Infact they're more like workaholics.

If you saw their school education system and how intense it is, we'd probably be better at maths too.

It's a bit of a shame whe intelligent people are lazy, but I guess they have a "right" to be lazy ;-) It's also a shame when sexy ladies don't come round my house every night, but I guess they have a "right" not to also, but what about my "right" to sexy ladies hey?! Actually I'm just kidding, I've already got one here, but hey, the more the merrier :-D

Is she a Grey Alien by any chance? :)

nah, humanoid all the way. A pinkskin in fact.

O_O

That's not a culture shock! Imagine travelling half way around the world, to another supposedly western and modern country, and discovering that a "decent internet connection" is 64kBps. Also imagine an "always on" connection that apart from wifi and VPN authentication, also requires you to log on and off, on a website, and just incase you forget, it will routinely do it for you, whether you want it to or not.

Imagine a country where they do not sell alcohol to people who appear intoxicated! How the do they expect you to get shitfaced? Get a minor to buy your alcohol for you? Sigh.

Also think of this country as one where having a car is almost a requirement - but the roads are in no condition to handle traffic. Of any kind.

Thats new zealand right? You don't live there unless you can take it.

Sounds like you'll be off then? Go back to bacon world.

you can workout your brian and make it better. In fact, recent research would suggest you can raise your IQ if you work your brain out a lot.

As with many things, the period of most growth is through childhood. If you are constantly stimulated mentally and given things to do that interest you and make you think, you will become better at those aspects of brain power. The younger the better.

I and my brother were both adopted. I when I was a few months old, he when he was 3.

They told us he might never learn to speak, that he was borderline retarded.

Living with the 3 of us, and my parents genius and helpful learning enviroment profoundly effected him.

Today he would test for an average, or maybe even above average IQ, he just graduated business school, and was accepted into graduate school.

It would seem that genetics does play a role, but it is more enviroment, that promotes high intellect. While there is surely a barrier somewhere, it is not known.

It is important to note that my brother was born into a house full of retarded children, and was treated like them for 3 years of his life. It can't be known if they felt he was retarded or not. So either he learned his way out of it, or he was just never taught anything for 3 years of his life.

Regardless, he never full recovered. In the sense that, I, who is also adopted, has an IQ nearer to that of my parents. My father has an IQ over 160 (because they tested him to enter the highschool he attended but they didn't tell him how he scored) and my mother and I both test at 140 regularly.

I didn't come from very good breeding stock, my biological mother was married, but not to my biological father. Apparently I look just like him... But he worked at the crayola factory pressing crayons. I don't know anything else... I'm not sure that the crayon bit is true...

Not sure about that. I didn't 'blossom' until I'd left school - about the same time I got my first computer. Coinkydink? :)

That's not to suggest I consider myself particularly intellectual, coz I don't. Not even sure what it means.

Anyway, my school did seem to pigeon hole me from the start. I got a high enough score in an English test to be put into an 'o' level class, but they still put me into a lower class. Even practically, they screwed me: I scored the highest out of everyone in metal work practical exam. They still put me in a non-exam class. :/

As for IQ: I have no idea what mine is and don't care, frankly. It's just a number for other people to judge you by. People get arbitrarily judged enough in life - I don't see a reason for another way for them to do it.

Some things you can be terrible at. I had trouble with maths at school, but was really good at physics, mostly because I found it interesting and it had something I could aply it to. I actually retook maths when I went to college to do A levels, and decided to do a 2 year GCSE in 1 year. At this time I realised that it was important and couldn't goof around anymore.

That time it just clicked, almost overnight I just got it and the course was actually a breeze. Not that GCSE maths is what you would call advanced in anyway, but I was surprised at how suddenly you could turn around, 3 months summer holiday mostly relaxing and having fun, and a different attitude was all it took.

I didn't do too well in english language but got an A for english literature. I think I'm just more adept at creative problem solving that can be applied to something I'd consider useful, and struggle with things that are too abstract for me to find much interest in.

At the end of the day there are too many kinds of intelligence that you shouldn't really judge anyone too quickly. One of my best mates diud incredibly badly at school, he was in a special class for slow learners, and often attended special classes at lunch time, usualy trying to tech him to read.

A couple of years after leaving school, I decided to lend him some books that I thought would be a nice change from the 4-8 videos he watched a week. Started with Terry Pratchett, which was easy and fun, and before you knew it he was reading tom clancy, dale brown and bernard cornwall (interested in millitary stuff).

Learning to read things that interested him, basicly opened his mind and really changed him. Quite a few of my friends are not academicly inclined but have their own genious that comes out in the things that they are good at and enjoy. A couple of them were labeled underachievers at school and weren't given a chance to blossom, only finding their mark after leaving school at 16and taking the world head on.