I am wondering if Go reading correlates closely with a more widely understood, measurable aspect of intelligence, for which someone can take a test to assess their potential?

There is the classic HM case, where a patient due to a freak accident lost the ability to form new symbolic memories, though he could recall those symbolic memories he had learned before. He could however improve his skills at certain things. Take for example Yi-Changho, his teacher didn't think he would do well, because he couldn't remember the games he played.

I once was required to write an essay on learning styles, and after doing some research on the topic, wrote my essay on how the idea that people that identify with a particular learning style learn better when information is presented in that style is not supported by the current scientific evidence.

Makes one wonder just how seriously one should take some of the research in psychology. Which is too bad, as it looks (at least to an outsider like me) to be a fascinating field.

Who said it does? Please, do not put words in my mouth.

(For the record, I said I was not very familiar with psychology. I did not say I was unfamiliar with science.)


To quote the article:We should have every respect for properly done science. But it looks like many of the studies they reviewed were simply not good science, however good the intentions may have been. We remain in the dark as to whether there are significant differences in learning styles. Again, to quote the article:

I'll give an example I came across recently. They were trying to examine whether videogames could make someone more violent. So they got people to give two written samples before and after playing various types of computer games and analysed the language of them to see if there were differences. They did find a tendency for violent videogames to cause people to use more forceful or violent language (hard in itself to define, but whatever). The thing is, does this actually tell us anything about whether people are more violent after playing violent videogames? If I use more forceful language am I more likely to go out and hit someone over the head with a lump of wood or something? It's not like they can go into someone's head and see the likelihood of violent behaviour increasing so they needed to use a proxy, but I mean what can you use as a proxy for that? It's all very messy.

Modern ethical standards present a real problem for this kind of research. (Not that I am against them.) The most violent thing that the subjects did was to play the video games. It would have been unethical to give them the opportunity to engage in real violence.