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| Does Often Pensive Make You Smarter? |
People with the assumption that they often travel may have sharper brains.
A study shows that people who are constantly "distracted" have more "working memory." This allows them to do two things together at one time.
Psychologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Daniel Levinson, said those with higher working memory capacity reported more frequent blanking during simple tasks even though their performance was not in doubt.
Participants in this study had to press a button in response to the presence of certain characters on the screen or press at the right time. The researchers analyzed periodically to see if their minds were wandering. At the conclusion of the observations, the scientists measured the participants' working memory capacity, giving them a score for their ability to remember a set of letters interspersed with easy math questions.
Levinson points out that more mental workspace is needed, for example, to add two spoken numbers without writing them down. These capacities are linked to common measures of intelligence such as overall reading and IQ scores.
This new study underscores how important working memory is to helping the brain focus on the most difficult problems.
The results of Levinson's observations were published online in Psychological Science. This is the first time an observation has shown a correlation between wandering assumptions and intelligence.