FREEING UP INTELLIGENCE

“A preoccupation with scarcity diminishes IQ and self control. Simple measures can help us counteract this cognitive tax”

By: Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir

Published: Scientific American Mind, January / February 2014

Level of Difficulty: ****
Access this article by copy pasting the following:http://www.nature.com/scientificamericanmind/journal/v25/n1/full/scientificamericanmind0114-58.html 

BEFORE YOU READ

·         How do you imagine scarcity impacts IQ? Can you think of any examples?

·         Do the underprivileged have lower IQ’s? If so why?

·         How do you imagine scarcity diminishes self control?

If you think you have been able to predict the content of the text, think again. You are in for some surprises.

QUESTIONS

1.       After the university entrance exam in Turkey this year, some students complained about the noise from demolition going on next to the school where they took the exam. Will their grades suffer? Why?

2.       Even if you have an ideal work environment, concentration could still be difficult due to…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

3.       You go to work after showering together with your partner and having breakfast together. Would reminiscing about it prove a major distraction? Why? You will need to tweak the text.

4.       Why exactly is scarcity such a great obstacle? Because …………………………………………………………

5.       If a waitress who is doing extra shifts to pay the rent forgets a specific dietary requirement, what component of mental function has failed her?

6.       The writers and their graduate student picked out a hypothetical story for the subjects in the New Jersey Mall experiment. Why was this particular hypothetical story selected?

 What effect did they expect the story to have? To cause……………………………………….to emerge.

7.        After the results of the test were studied, it was found that there was a negative / positive correlation was found to exist between fluid intelligence scores and focus on scarcity.

8.       The surprising conclusion that can be drawn from the comparison of the results of the New Jersey test and the sleep deprivation test is that sleep deprivation ………………………………………

9.       What does “This cognitive penalty” refer to?

10.   What does “this connection” in the sentence “A number of experiments have vividly illustrated this connection” refer to?

11.   Which of the following nibbles will be popular with a teacher grading essays on a final exam at university? You can select as many as necessary.

·         Walnuts and hazelnuts

·         Chocolate chip cookies

·         Apples

·         A Mars bar

12.   What conclusion can be drawn from the experiment with the Australian students?

There is a ……………………correlation between being cognitively loaded and composure.

13.   The second New Jersey experiment proved that ……………………………….is also affected by scarcity.

14.   Why were sugar cane farmers and not regular Indian farmers picked for the study?

15.   The overall conclusion of all the experiments discussed thus far is that…………………………..

16.   Many would say that it is hunger that negatively impacts performance when dieting. Are they right or not? Why?

17.   On reading the paragraph beginning “The size” it becomes obvious that measures are necessary to ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

18.   It is implied in the text that problems related to scarcity are…………………………………………………..

WRITING TASK

Having made notes on the text write an essay in which introduce scarcity and discuss ways in which its effects may be counteracted. Use the plan below:

In your introduction, discuss the pace of modern life, daily hassles, the continual need to multitask and concerns for the future. Introduce the concept of preoccupation and how it interferes with focus. Introduce scarcity.

In your first developmental paragraph, discuss scarcity and bandwidth. Explain how they interact and remember to provide your own examples.

In your second developmental paragraph, discuss measures that can be taken to counteract scarcity: scheduling family time, eating properly, taking care of health, sports, sticking to a routine, signing up for automatic bill payment and the like.

In your conclusion, write a restatement.

FREEING UP INTELLIGENCE KEY AND TEACHER’S NOTES

This interesting text tells the biological story of how preoccupation and inner or outer distractions affect cognitive skills. We always knew that this was the case but not the connections and how it actually works. Like all texts about problems, there are solutions too and plenty of opportunity to ask some good careful reading questions.

1.       Yes, they will because of the powerful effect of even slight distraction.

2.       Noisy trains of thought / OR, disruptions that come from within

3.       No it wouldn’t because internal disruptions stem from scarcity and there is no scarcity here.

4.       It constantly draws us back to that urgent unmet goal and taxes our bandwidth and our most fundamental capacities.

5.       Executive control

6.       Because it was realistic and very likely got them thinking about their own financial concerns

The all too real non-hypothetical thinking about scarcity

7.       Positive

8.       Has a smaller effect

9.       The fact that the same person has fewer IQ points when he or she is preoccupied by scarcity (than when not)

10.   Reduced executive function will hamper self control.

11.   Chocolate chip cookies and Mars bars

12.   Negative

13.   Compulsivity

14.   So as to be able to study the same farmers when they are rich and poor and know that there is nothing specific about the preharvest and postharvest months.

15.   The poor do have lower effective capacity than those who are well off not because they are less capable but rather because part of their mind is captured by scarcity.

16.   No it is not; it is concerns about dieting because dieting is a form of scarcity

17.   Manage and cultivate bandwidth despite pressures to the contrary brought on by scarcity.

18.   Increasing