BBC Future Topics

8/17/2019 BBC Future Topics

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Tổng hợp bởi Quân – lớp IELTS 03 của Thầy Vinh IELTS

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CONTENTS

Topic 1. Improve your memory in 40 seconds ........................................................................ 1Topic 2. Is another human living inside you? ......................................................................... 2

Topic 3. The best (and worst) ways to spot a liar ................................................................... 4

Topic 4. How to learn 30 languages ....................................................................................... 8

Topic 5. The mystery of the female orgasm ......................................................................... 13

Topic 6. The suprising downsides of being clever ................................................................ 19

Topic 7. Why do babies laugh out loud ............................................................................... 23

Topic 8. Why do we intiutively believe we have free will? ..................................................... 25

Topic 9. I can predict the weather with my nose ................................................................... 27

Topic 11. The geniuses who invented prothetic limbs .......................................................... 33

Topic. 12. If alien life exists on exoplanets, how would we know? ........................................ 36Topic 13. To find aliens, we need to build a giant space parasol .......................................... 37

Topic 14. What is it like to have never felt an emotion? ........................................................ 41

Topic 15. The submarines that revealed a mysterious world ................................................ 45

Topic 16. The air that makes you fat ................................................................................... 48

Topic 17. The future of medicine is testing our body fluids at home ..................................... 51

Topic 18. Dose it pay to be kind to strangers ....................................................................... 54

Topic 19. How much would you payt to live for an extra year ............................................... 58

Topic 20. The secret codes you’re not meant to know ......................................................... 61

Topic 21. Are any foods safe to eat anymore? Here’s the truth ............................................ 64

Topic 22. Is beer better (or worse) for you than wine? ......................................................... 68

Topic 23. Does mixing alcoholic drinks cause hangover? .................................................... 71

Topic 24. Does coffee really sober you up when drunk ........................................................ 73

Topic 25. How to live forever ................................................................................................ 74

Topic 26. The real reason germs spread in the winter.......................................................... 77

Topic 27. Why do we laugh inappropriately? ........................................................................ 80

Topic 28. One of science’s most baffling question? Why we yawn ....................................... 84

Topic 29. How muc would you pay to live for an extra year? ................................................ 87

Topic 30. The nasa team keeping tabs on intergalatic death rays ........................................ 90

Topic 31. The private investigator who spies using drones .................................................. 92

Topic 32. Why do women live longer than men? .................................................................. 95

Topic 33. Why the US hides 700 million barrels of oil underground ...................................... 98Topic 34. How do you dismantle a nuclear submarine? ..................................................... 102

Topic 35. The secret of the desert aircraft “boneyards” ...................................................... 106

Topic 36. The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust ................................................ 110

Topic 37. Have you ever felt “Solastalgia”? ........................................................................ 113

Topic 38. Wernher von Braun’s Bold plan for space exploration ........................................ 115


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Topic 1. Improve your memory in 40 seconds

Ever had the feeling your past is slipping away? There’s a simple trick that should

reinforce your recollections.

By David Robson

11 November 2015

Have you ever seen or heard something amazing – a scene in a film, a joke or a song – only

to forget it later on? Instead of the crystal clear images you wan ted to recall, you’re instead

left with scraps of images and mangled sentences, or more frustratingly still, nothing at all.

Even monumental events, like meeting a film star, can sometimes fade surprisingly quickly.

There may be a disarmingly simple way to cement those memories, however. According to

research by Chris Bird at the University of Sussex, all it requires is a few seconds of your

time and a bit of imagination.

Bird recently asked some students to lie in a brain scanner and view a series of short clips

from YouTube (involving, for example, neighbours playing practical jokes on each other).

Straight after some of the clips, they were given 40 seconds to replay the scene in their

minds and describe it to themselves. For the others, they just moved onto a new video.

By simply describing the event to themselves, they were able to remember twice as many

details a week or two later

It turned out that simply describing the event to themselves massively improved their

chances of remembering it accurately a week or so later: on average, they were able to

remember twice as many details. Want to prove it for yourself? Take a look at the short video

below to test this simple principle of memory improvement, and you will see how powerful it

can be.

Bird also found that his brain scans appeared to reflect the strength of the memory: when the

activity during their descriptions closely mirrored the activation as they watched the video

itself, the students seemed to have built particularly strong foundations for later recall.

That may, perhaps, be a sign of just how much effort and detail they were imagining as they

described the scene. It could also be that it allowed the students to peg the events to other

memories; one student compared a character in the clips to James Bond, for instance –

instantly making him more memorable.

In other words, if you want to make sure something sticks in your mind, just take a minute or

so to describe it to yourself, consciously and deliberately picking the most vivid details.

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Bird can see how it might be particularly important in the courtroom. “The fin dings have

implications for any situation where accurate recall of an event is critical, such as witnessing

an accident or crime,” he says. “Memory for the event will be significantly improved if the

witness rehearses the sequence of events as soon as poss ible afterwards.” But it could be

equally helpful for anyone hoping to cling to something worth remembering.Interested to learn more ways to boost your memory? Here are BBC Future's guides on

"How to learn like a memory champion" and "How to learn 30 languages" .

Topic 2. Is another human living inside you?

You may think your body and mind are your own. In fact, you are a fusion of many

organisms - including, potentially, another person. Words by David Robson,

photography by Ariko Inaoka.

By David Robson

18 September 2015

Once upon a time, your origins were easy to understand. Your dad met your mum, they hadsome fun, and from a tiny fertilised egg you emerged kicking and screaming into the world.You are half your mum, half your dad – and 100% yourself.

Except, that simple tale has now become a lot more complicated. Besides your genes fromparents, you are a mosaic of viruses, bacteria – and potentially, other humans. Indeed, if youare a twin, you are particularly likely to be carrying bits of your sibling within your body andbrain. Stranger still, they may be influencing how you act.

“A very large number of different human and non-human individuals are struggling inside usfor control “

“Humans are not unitary individuals but superorganisms,” says Peter Kramer at theUniversity of Padua. “A very large number of different human and non-human individuals areall incessantly struggling inside us for control.” Together with Paola Bressan, he recentlywrote a paper in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science, calling for psychologistsand psychiatrists to appreciate the ways this may influence our behaviour.

That may sound alarming, but it has long been known that our bodies are really a mishmashof many different organisms. Microbes in your gut can produce neurotransmitters that alter

your mood; some scientists have even proposed that the microbes may sway your appetite, so that you crave their favourite food. An infection of a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii ,meanwhile, might just lead you to your death. In nature, the microbe warps rats’ brains sothat they are attracted to cats, which will then offer a cosy home for it to reproduce. Buthumans can be infected and subjected to the same kind of mind control too: the microbeseems to make someone risky, and increases the chance they will suffer from schizophreniaor suicidal depression. Currently, around a third of British meat carries this parasite, forinstance – despite the fact an infection could contribute to these mental illnesses. “We shouldstop this,” says Kramer.

Infiltrating siblings

In this light, it becomes clear that our actions are not entirely our own. It’s enough to makeyou question your sense of identity, but the idea of infiltration becomes even more eerie

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when you realise that your brain has not just been invaded by tiny microbes – but also byother human beings.

Even non-conjoined twins could be sharing organs without realising it

The most visible example might be a case of conjoined twins sharing a brain, says Kramer,

but even regular twins could have shared organs without realising it. During earlydevelopment, cells can be passed between twins or triplets. Once considered a rareoccurrence, we now know it is surprisingly common. Around 8% of non-identical twins and21% of triplets, for example, have not one, but two blood groups: one produced by their owncells, and one produced by “alien” cells absorbed from their twin. They are, in other words, achimera – a fusion of two bodies – and it may occur in many organs, including the brain.

Developing together in the womb, twins may swap cells, making them even closer than we'dpreviously realised (Credit: Ariko Inaoka)

Brothers from another mother

Women accidentally carrying a "twin's" child

Lydia Fairchild’s paternity test was meant to be straightforward, proving to the courts that hertwo sons’ father was the person she said he was. When the test came back, however,Fairchild herself came up as a blank: there was no trace of her DNA in her own children.

The courts threatened to convict her of illegal surrogacy – they assumed it was a scam togain benefits. Luckily, at around the same time, a scientific paper reported a similar case inwhich a woman was apparently not the biological mother of two of her three children. Thereason was that she was a chimera: a case in which two twins had merged into one bodyearly in development. Being the product of two different cell lines, some of her eggs carried a

genome that was different from the rest of the body.

Needless to say, the discovery has caused Fairchild to question her own identity. “Telling mysons about this was the hardest part because I felt that part of me hadn't passed on to them,”she told the website Jezebel. “I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder if they'll really feel that I'm not quitetheir real mother somehow because the genes that I should've given to them, I didn't give tothem.’”

A chimera brain could have serious consequences. For instance, we know that thearrangement of different brain regions can be crucial for its function – but the presence offoreign tissue, being directed by different genes carrying a different blueprint, may throw thatintricate design into disarray. This may explain, for instance, why twins are less likely to be

right-handed – a simple trait that normally relies on the relative organisation of the right andthe left hemispheres. Perhaps chimerism has upset the balance.

Even if you do not think you ever had a twin, there are many other ways you might beinvaded by another human’s cells. It’s possible, for instance, that you started off as twofoetuses in the womb, but the twins merged during early development. Since it occurs atsuch an early age of development, the cells can become incorporated into the tissue andseem to develop normally, yet they are carrying another person’s genetic blueprint. “You looklike one person, but you have the cells of another person in you – effectively, you havealways been two people,” says Kramer. In one extreme case, a woman was surprised to betold that she was not the biological mother of her two children (See “Brother from another

mother”, left). Alternatively, cells from an older sibling might stay around the mother’s body,only to find their way into your body after you are conceived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krista_and_Tatiana_Hoganhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krista_and_Tatiana_Hoganhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krista_and_Tatiana_Hoganhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8741872http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8741872http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8741872http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8741872http://pictorial.jezebel.com/one-person-two-sets-of-dna-the-strange-case-of-the-hu-1689290862http://pictorial.jezebel.com/one-person-two-sets-of-dna-the-strange-case-of-the-hu-1689290862http://pictorial.jezebel.com/one-person-two-sets-of-dna-the-strange-case-of-the-hu-1689290862http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8741872http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8741872https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krista_and_Tatiana_Hogan


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However it happens, it’s perfectly plausible that tissue from another human could cause thebrain to develop in unexpected ways, says Lee Nelson from the University of Washington.She’s currently examining whether cells from the mother herself may be implanted in thebaby brain. “A difference in the amount, cell type, or the time during development at whichthe cells were acquired could all result in abnormalities,” she says.

Nelson has found that even as an adult, you are not immune from human invaders. A coupleof years ago, Nelson and William Chan at the University of Alberta in Edmonton took slicesof women’s brain tissue and screened their genome for signs of the Y-chromosome. Around63% were harbouring male cells. “Not only did we find male DNA in female human brains asa general observation, we found it to be present in multiple brain regions,” says Chan. Inother words, their brains were speckled with cells from a man’s body. One logical conclusionis that it came from a baby: somehow, her own son’s stem cells had made it through theplacenta and lodged in her brain. Strangely, this seemed to decrease the chances that themother would subsequently develop Alzheimer’s – though exactly why remains a mystery.Some researchers are even beginning to wonder whether these cells might influence amother’s mindset during pregnancy.

Our knowledge of the human “superorganism” is still in its infancy, so many of theconsequences are purely theoretical at the moment. Kramer and Bressan's aim with theirpaper was not to give definitive answers, but to enlighten other psychologists andpsychiatrists about the many entities that make us who we are today. “We cannot understandhuman behaviour by considering only one or the other individual,” Kramer says. “Ultimately,we must understand them all to understand how ‘we’ behave.”

For instance, scientists often compare sets of twins to understand the origins of behaviour,but the fact that even non-identical twins may have swapped bits of brain tissue might havemuddied those results. We should be particularly careful when using these twin studies tocompare conditions such as schizophrenia that may arise from faulty brain organisation,Bressan and Kramer say.

In general, however, we shouldn’t feel hostile towards these invaders – after all, they madeyou who you are today. “I think it is now clear that our natural immigrants are with us for thelong-term, for better or for worse,” says Nelson. “And I would think “for better” outweighs ‘forworse’.”

Topic 3. The best (and worst) ways to spot a liar

Forget body language or eye movements. There are much better ways to identify the

deceitful.

By David Robson

7 September 2015

Thomas Ormerod’s team of security officers faced a seemingly impossible task. At airportsacross Europe, they were asked to interview passengers on their history and travel plans.Ormerod had planted a handful of people arriving at security with a false history, and amade-up future – and his team had to guess who they were. In fact, just one in 1000 of thepeople they interviewed would be deceiving them. Identifying the liar should have been aboutas easy as finding a needle in a haystack.

Using previous methods of lie detection, you might as well just flip a coin

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So, what did they do? One option would be to focus on body language or eye movements,right? It would have been a bad idea. Study after study has found that attempts – even bytrained police officers – to read lies from body language and facial expressions are moreoften little better than chance. According to one study, just 50 out of 20,000 people managedto make a correct judgement with more than 80% accuracy. Most people might as well justflip a coin.

Ormerod’s team tried something different – and managed to identify the fake passengers inthe vast majority of cases. Their secret? To throw away many of the accepted cues todeception and start anew with some startlingly straightforward techniques.

When it comes to spotting liars, the eyes don't have it (Credit: Thinkstock)

Over the last few years, deception research has been plagued by disappointing results. Mostprevious work had focused on reading a liar’s intentions via their body language or from theirface – blushing cheeks, a nervous laugh, darting eyes. The most famous example is BillClinton touching his nose when he denied his affair with Monica Lewinsky – taken at the timeto be a sure sign he was lying. The idea, says Timothy Levine at the University of Alabama inBirmingham, was that the act of lying provokes some strong emotions – nerves, guilt,perhaps even exhilaration at the challenge – that are difficult to contain. Even if we think we

have a poker face, we might still give away tiny flickers of movement known as “micro-expressions” that might give the game away, they claimed.

The problem is the huge variety of human behaviour – there is no universal dictionary ofbody language

Yet the more psychologists looked, the more elusive any reliable cues appeared to be. Theproblem is the huge variety of human behaviour. With familiarity, you might be able to spotsomeone’s tics whenever they are telling the truth, but others will probably act verydifferently; there is no universal dictionary of body language. “There are no consistent signsthat always arise alongside deception,” says Ormerod, who is based at the University of

Sussex. “I giggle nervously, others become more serious, some make eye contact, someavoid it.” Levine agrees: “The evidence is pretty clear that there aren’t any reliable cues thatdistinguish truth and lies,” he says. And although you may hear that our subconscious canspot these signs even if they seem to escape our awareness, this too seems to have beendisproved.

Despite these damning results, our safety often still hinges on the existence of these mythicalcues. Consider the screening some passengers might face before a long-haul flight – aprocess Ormerod was asked to investigate in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. Typically, hesays, officers will use a “yes/no” questionnaire about the flyer’s intentions, and they aretrained to observe “suspicious signs” (such as nervous body language) that might betraydeception. “It doesn’t give a chance to listen to what they say, and think about credibility,

observe behaviour change – they are the critical aspects of deception detection,” he says.The existing protocols are also prone to bias, he says – officers were more likely to find

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suspicious signs in certain ethnic groups, for instance. “The current method actually preventsdeception detection,” he says.

If only body language revealed deception (Credit: Getty Images)

Clearly, a new method is needed. But given some of the dismal results from the lab, whatshould it be? Ormerod’s answer was disarmingly simple: shift the focus away from the subtlemannerisms to the words people are actually saying, gently probing the right pressure pointsto make the liar’s front crumble.

Ormerod and his colleague Coral Dando at the University of Wolverhampton identified a

series of conversational principles that should increase your chances of uncovering deceit:

Use open questions. This forces the liar to expand on their tale until they becomeentrapped in their own web of deceit.

Employ the element of surprise. Investigators should try to increase the liar’s “cognitiveload” – such as by asking them unanticipated questions that might be slightly confusing, orasking them to report an event backwards in time – techniques that make it harder for themto maintain their façade.

Watch for small, verifiable details. If a passenger says they are at the University of Oxford,

ask them to tell you about their journey to work. If you do find a contradiction, though, don’tgive yourself away – it’s better to allow the liar’s confidence to build as they rattle off morefalsehoods, rather than correcting them.

Observe changes in confidence. Watch carefully to see how a potential liar’s style changeswhen they are challenged: a liar may be just as verbose when they feel in charge of aconversation, but their comfort zone is limited and they may clam up if they feel like they arelosing control.

Liar vs liar

It takes one to know one

Ironically, liars turn out to be better lie detectors. Geoffrey Bird at University College Londonand colleagues recently set up a game in which subjects had to reveal true or falsestatements about themselves. They were also asked to judge each other’s credibility. Itturned out that people who were better at telling fibs could also detect others’ tall tales,perhaps because they recognised the tricks.

The aim is a casual conversation rather than an intense interrogation. Under this gentlepressure, however, the liar will give themselves away by contradicting their own story, or bybecoming obviously evasive or erratic in their responses. “The important thing is that there isno magic silver bullet; we are taking the best things and putting them together for a cognitive

approach,” says Ormerod.

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A psychological experiment in an airport revealed new tricks to spot liars (Credit: Thinkstock)

Ormerod openly admits his strategy might sound like common sense. “A friend said that youare trying to patent the art of conversation,” he says. But the results speak for themselves.The team prepared a handful of fake passengers, with realistic tickets and travel documents.They were given a week to prepare their story, and were then asked to line up with other,genuine passengers at airports across Europe. Officers trained in Ormerod and Dando’sinterviewing technique were more than 20 times more likely to detect these fake passengersthan people using the suspicious signs, finding them 70% of the time.

“It’s really impressive,” says Levine, who was not involved in this study. He thinks it isparticularly important that they conducted the experiment in real airports. “It’s the mostrealistic study around.”

The art of persuasion

Levine’s own experiments have proven similarly powerful. Like Ormerod, he believes thatclever interviews designed to reveal holes in a liar’s story are far better than trying to identifytell-tale signs in body language. He recently set up a trivia game, in which undergraduatesplayed in pairs for a cash prize of $5 for each correct answer they gave. Unknown to thestudents, their partners were actors, and when the game master temporarily left the room,

the actor would suggest that they quickly peek at the answers to cheat on the game. Ahandful of the students took him up on the offer.

One expert was even correct 100% of the time, across 33 interviews

Afterwards, the students were all questioned by real federal agents about whether or not theyhad cheated. Using tactical questions to probe their stories – without focusing on bodylanguage or other cues – they managed to find the cheaters with more than 90% accuracy; one expert was even correct 100% of the time, across 33 interviews – a staggering resultthat towers above the accuracy of body language analyses. Importantly, a follow-up studyfound that even novices managed to achieve nearly 80% accuracy, simply by using the right,open-ended questions that asked, for instance, how their partner would tell the story.

Are police any better at spotting lying suspects than anyone else? (Credit: Thinkstock)

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Indeed, often the investigators persuaded the cheaters to openly admit their misdeed. “Theexperts were fabulously good at this,” says Levine. Their secret was a simple trick known tomasters in the art of persuasion: they would open the conversation by asking the studentshow honest they were. Simply getting them to say they told the truth primed them to be morecandid later. “People want to think of being honest, and this ties them into beingcooperative,” says Levine. “Even the people who weren’t honest had difficulty pretending to

be cooperative [after this], so for the most part you could see who was faking it.”

Another trick is to ask people how honest they are

Clearly, such tricks may already be used by some expert detectives – but given the folkloresurrounding body language, it’s worth emphasising just how powerful persuasion can becompared to the dubious science of body language. Despite their successes, Ormerod andLevine are both keen that others attempt to replicate and expand on their findings, to makesure that they stand up in different situations. “We should watch out for big sweeping claims,”says Levine.

Although the techniques will primarily help law enforcement, the same principles might just

help you hunt out the liars in your own life. “I do it with kids all the time,” Ormerod says. Themain thing to remember is to keep an open mind and not to jump to early conclusions: justbecause someone looks nervous, or struggles to remember a crucial detail, does not meanthey are guilty. Instead, you should be looking for more general inconsistencies.

There is no fool-proof form of lie detection, but using a little tact, intelligence, and persuasion,you can hope that eventually, the truth will out.

Topic 4. How to learn 30 languages

Some people can speak a seemingly impossible number of tongues. How do they

manage it, asks David Robson, and what can we learn from them?

By David Robson 29 May 2015

Out on a sunny Berlin balcony, Tim Keeley and Daniel Krasa are firing words like bullets ateach other. First German, then Hindi, Nepali, Polish, Croatian, Mandarin and Thai – they’vebarely spoken one language before the conversation seamlessly melds into another.Together, they pass through about 20 different languages or so in total.

Back inside, I find small groups exchanging tongue twisters. Others are gathering in threes,

preparing for a rapid-fire game that involves interpreting two different languagessimultaneously. It looks like the perfect recipe for a headache, but they are nonchalant. “It’squite a common situation for us,” a woman called Alisa tells me.

It can be difficult enough to learn one foreign tongue. Yet I’m here in Berlin for the PolyglotGathering, a meeting of 350 or so people who speak multiple languages – some as diverseas Manx, Klingon and Saami, the language of reindeer herders in Scandinavia. Indeed, asurprising proportion of them are “hyperglots”, like Keeley and Krasa, who can speak at least10 languages. One of the most proficient linguists I meet here, Richard Simcott, leads a teamof polyglots at a company called eModeration – and he uses about 30 languages himself.

With a modest knowledge of Italian and some rudimentary Danish, I feel somewhat out of

place among the hyperglots. But they say you should learn from the best, so I am here to tryto discover their secrets.

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Most of us struggle with the simplest phrases - but it needn't be that way (Credit: Thinkstock)

When you consider the challenges for the brain, it’s no wonder most of us find learning alanguage so demanding. We have many different memory systems, and mastering adifferent tongue requires all of them. There’s procedural memory – the fine programming ofmuscles to perfect an accent – and declarative memory, which is the ability to rememberfacts (at least 10,000 new words if you want to come close to native fluency, not to mentionthe grammar). What’s more, unless you want to sound like a stuttering robot, those wordsand structures have to make it to the tip of your tongue within a split second, meaning theyhave to be programmed in both “explicit” and “implicit” memory.

Speaking extra languages delays dementia by five years or more

That tough mental workout comes with big payoffs, however; it is arguably the best braintraining you can try. Numerous studies have shown that being multilingual can improveattention and memory, and that this can provide a “cognitive reserve” that delays the onset ofdementia. Looking at the experiences of immigrants, Ellen Bialystok at York University inCanada has found that speaking two languages delayed dementia diagnosis by five years. Those who knew three languages, however, were diagnosed 6.4 years later thanmonolinguals, while for those fluent in four or more languages, enjoyed an extra nine yearsof healthy cognition.

If you want to stay sharp in old age, learning a language could be the best neural workout(Credit: Getty Images)

Those lasting benefits are a stark contrast to the failure of most commercial “brain training”games you can download – which generally fail to offer long-term improvements in memoryor attention.

Learning a new language as we age is easier than you might assume

Until recently, however, many neuroscientists had suggested that most of us are too old toreach native-like fluency in a fresh language; according to the “critical period hypothesis”,

there is a narrow window during childhood in which we can pick up the nuances of a newlanguage. Yet Bialystok’s research suggests this may have been exaggerated; rather than asteep precipice, she has found that there is a very slight decline in our abilities as we age.

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Certainly, many of the hyperglots I meet in Berlin have mastered languages later in life.Keeley grew up in Florida, where he was exposed to native Spanish speakers at school. Asa child, he used to tune into foreign radio stations – despite not being able to understand aword. “It was like music to me,” he says. But it was only as an adult that he started travellingthe world – first to Colombia, where he also studied French, German and Portuguese atcollege. He then moved on to Switzerland and Eastern Europe before heading to Japan. He

now speaks at least 20 languages fluently, almost all of which were learnt as an adult. “Thecritical period hypothesis is a bunch of crap,” he says.

Polyglots tend to "inhabit" a language and its culture (Credit: Getty Images)

The question is, how do hyperglots master so many new tongues – and could the rest of ustry to emulate them? True, they may just be more motivated than most. Many, like Keeley,are globe-trotters who have moved from country to country, picking up languages as they go.It’s sometimes a case of sink or swim.

Yet even with the best intentions, many of us struggle to speak another languageconvincingly. Keeley, who is currently writing a book on the “social, psychological andaffective factors in becoming multilingual”, is sceptical that it’s simply a question of rawintelligence. “I don’t think it’s a major factor, although it does make it faster to have theanalytical ability,” he says.

Cultural chameleons

Instead, he thinks we need to look past the intellect, into the depths of our personality.Keeley’s theory is that learning a new language causes you to re-invent your sense of self –

and the best linguists are particularly good at taking on new identities. “You become achameleon,” he says.

Psychologists have long known that the words we speak are entwined with our identity. It’s acliche that French makes you more romantic, or Italian makes you more passionate, buteach language becomes associated with cultural norms that can affect how you behave – itcould be as simple as whether you value outspoken confidence or quiet reflection, forinstance. Importantly, various studies have found that multilingual people often adoptdifferent behaviours according to the language they are speaking.

Building friendship is the primary motivation for most hyperglots (Credit: Getty Images)

Different languages can also evoke different memories of your life – as the writer Vladimir

Nabokov discovered when working on his autobiography. The native Russian speaker wroteit first in his second language, English, with agonising difficulty, finding that “my memory wasattuned to one key – the musically reticent Russian, but it was forced into another key,

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English”. Once it was finally published, he decided to translate the memoirs back into thelanguage of his childhood, but as the Russian words flowed, he found his memories startedto unfurl with new details and perspectives. “His Russian version differed so much he felt theneed to retranslate to English,” says Aneta Pavlenko at Temple University in Philadelphia,whose book, The Bilingual Mind, explores many of these effects. It was almost as if hisEnglish and Russian selves had subtly different pasts.

Resisting the process of reinvention may prevent you from learning another language sowell, says Keeley, who is a professor of cross-cultural management at Kyushu SangyoUniversity in Japan. He recently ran a survey of Chinese speakers learning Japanese toexamine their “ego permeability” – with questions such as “I find it easy to put myself inother’s shoes and imagine how they feel” or “I can do impressions of other people”, andwhether you can change your opinions to suit the people you are near. As he suspected, thepeople who score highly on these traits had much greater fluency in their new language.

It is not just about the amount of time spent learning and using languages

How come? It’s well known that if you identify with someone, you are more likely to mimic

them – a process that would effortlessly improve language learning. But the adopted identity,and the associated memories, may also stop you from confusing the language with yourmother tongue – by building neural barriers between the languages. “There must be sometype of home in your mind for each language and culture and the related experiences, inorder for the languages to stay active and not get all mixed together,” Keeley says. “It is not just the amount of time spent learning and using the languages. The quality of the time, interms of emotional salience, is critical.” Indeed, that might explain why Keeley could switchso effortlessly between those 20-odd languages.

Of all the polyglots, Michael Levi Harris may demonstrate these principles the best. An actorby training, Harris also has an advanced knowledge of 10 languages, and an intermediate

understanding of 12 more. Occasionally, his passion has landed him in some difficulty. Heonce saw an online ad for a Maltese meet-up. Going along, he hoped to find a group ofpeople from Malta, only to walk into a room full of middle-aged women and their white lapdogs – an experience he recently relayed in a short film The Hyperglot. You can see a trailerbelow.

When I meet him in a cafe near the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, heeffortlessly slips into a rather posh, “received pronunciation” English accent, despite being anative New Yorker. As he does so, his whole posture changes as he melds into the newpersona. “I’m not really trying to consciously change my character or my persona. It justhappens, but I know that I am suddenly different.”

Importantly, Harris thinks that anyone can learn to adopt a new cultural skin in this way – andhe has a few tips for how to begin, based on his experiences of acting. The important thing,he says, is to try to imitate without even considering the spelling of the words. “Everyone canlisten and repeat,” he says. You may find yourself over -exaggerating, in the same way thatan actor may be a little over-the-top in their performance to start with – but that’s a crucialpart of the process, he says. “In acting first, you go really big, and then the director says OK,now tone it down. And you do the same with a language.” He also suggests looking carefullyat things like facial expressions – since they can be crucial to producing the sounds.Speaking with slightly pouted lips instantly makes you sound a little bit more French, forinstance.

Finally, he says you should try to overcome the embarrassment associated with producing"strange" noises – such as the guttural sounds in Arabic, for instance. “You have to realiseit’s not foreign to us – when you are disgusted, you already say ‘eugh’. And if youacknowledge and give your subconscious permission to do it in speech, you can make the

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sound.” That may sound a little silly, but the point is that all this should help you to get overyour natural inhibitions. “It’s all to do with owning the language, which is what actors have todo to make the audience believe that these words are yours. When you own words you canspeak more confidently, which is how people will engage with you.”

Can thespians teach us all a better way to learn? (Credit: Thinkstock)

There’s one big factor that stops people learning languages efficiently…

Even so, most agree that you shouldn’t be too ambitious, particularly when starting out. “Ifthere’s a single factor that stops people learning languages efficiently, it’s that we feel wehave to be native-like – it’s an unreachable standard that looms over us,” says TempleUniversity’s Pavlenko. “The ease of expression is what matters to me a lot – finding a betterway to express myself, colloquially.”

Along these lines, you should also practice a little and often – perhaps just for 15-minutestints, four times a day. “I think the analogies with exercise are quite good,” says Alex

Rawlings, who has developed a series of polyglot workshops with Richard Simcott to teachtheir techniques. Even if you are too busy or tired to do serious study, just practising adialogue or listening to a foreign pop song can help, says Simcott.

In the UK, Australia and US, it is easy to believe that we don’t need to make that effort.Indeed, before I met the hyperglots, I had wondered if their obsession merited the hard work;perhaps, I thought, it was just about bragging rights. Yet all of the hyperglots I meet aregenuinely enthusiastic about the amazing benefits that can only be achieved by this fullimmersion in different languages – including the chance to make friends and connections,even across difficult cultural barriers.

Harris, for instance, describes living in Dubai. “As a Jewish person living in the Middle East, I

faced challenges. But it turns out that one of my best friends was from Lebanon,” he says.“And when I moved away, he said ‘when we first met I didn’t think I could be friends with youand now you’re leaving, I’m distraught’. It’s one of the most precious things to me.”

As Judith Meyer, who organised the gathering in Berlin, tells me, she saw Ukrainians andRussians, Israelis and Palestinians all conversing at the gathering. “Learning anotherlanguage really does open up whole new worlds.”

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Topic 5. The mystery of the female orgasm

From the existence of the G-spot to the origin of multiple orgasms, female sexuality once

mystified scientists. But as Linda Geddes discovers, radical experiments are finally revealing

some answers.

By Linda Geddes 26 June 2015

On my washing machine, there is a lock. To activate it, you must hold down the start buttonfor a particular length of time at just the right intensity; too soft and nothing happens, too hardand the machine beeps angrily at you. Once you’ve mastered the technique, it’s easy; thelights switch on, things start moving and the cycle ultimately climaxes in a shudderingwhirling crescendo of noise. Finally, an entangled heap of damp but refreshed clothestumbles out at the other end. But for the uninitiated, it’s a perplexing mystery.

Consider now the female orgasm. JD Salinger once wrote that “a woman’s body is like a

violin; it takes a terrific musician to play it right”. Pressed or caressed the right way, a womancan be transported to such ecstasy, that for a few seconds, the rest of the world ceases toexist. But get it wrong and pain, frustration, or dull nothingness can ensue. It’s a starkcontrast to a man’s experience; so long as they can get an erection, a few minutes ofvigorous stimulation generally results in ejaculation.

Why are orgasms so intensely pleasurable? How come women can experience multipleorgasms? And does the fabled G-spot even exist? These are some of the most enduringmysteries of medicine. “We are able to go to the moon, but we do not understand enoughabout our own bodies,” says Emmanuele Jannini at the University of Rome Tor Vergata – one of those who has spent his career trying to unravel it. Recent years have seen a flurry ofstudies by these real-life Masters of Sex, and they are finally getting some answers.

Brains on fire

Perhaps the scientists’ greatest skill is in persuading women to sweep aside their inhibitions,and masturbate – or even copulate – under the full glare of scientific research, including theuncomfortable environment of the fMRI scanner. One of the leaders of this research hasbeen Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who wanted to probe whetherbrain differences can explain why women and men experience sex so differently.

What we see is an overall activation of the brain – it’s all systems go

It turns out that despite their varied experiences, both men and women show roughly thesame neural activity during orgasm. “The similarities between men and women at orgasmare far greater than the differences,” says Komisaruk. “What we see is an overall activationof the brain; basically it’s like all systems go.”

This may explain why orgasms are so all-consuming – if the whole forest is blazing, it’sdifficult to discriminate between the different campfires that were there at the start. “Atorgasm, if everything gets activated simultaneously, this can obliterate the fine discriminationbetween activities,” Komisaruk adds. It is maybe why you can’t think about anything else.


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Women's brains still receive signals from the genitals after orgasm, allowing them to climaxmultiple times (Credit: Getty Images)

There are hotspots in this furnace, however. One is the nucleus accumbens, a brain regionthat deals in pleasure and reward through the release of a neurotransmitter called dopamine.Given the choice, rats will choose electrical stimulation of this brain region over food - to theextent that they would allow themselves to starve to death. Besides sex, it’s also activated bycocaine, amphetamine, caffeine, nicotine and chocolate. No wonder orgasms make you wantto keep on going back for more.

After orgasm, however, some important differences do emerge, which might begin to explainwhy men and women react so differently after climax. Komisaruk, with Kachina Allen, hasfound preliminary evidence that specific regions of the male brain become unresponsive tofurther sensory stimulation of the genitals in the immediate aftermath of orgasm, whereaswomen’s brains continue to be activated: this may be why some women experience multipleorgasms, and men do not.

Anatomy of pleasure

If these brain scans have generated some controversy, it has been nothing compared to theattempts to pin down the anatomy of the orgasm. The penis has just one route for carryingsensations to the brain, the female genital tract has three or four. At the seat of femalesexuality is the clitoris: familiar to most as a small, pebble-shaped nubbin, plonked in anawkward position, a centimetre or so in front of the vaginal opening. Precisely whodiscovered the importance of this structure is up for debate. Ice-age clay models, known as“Venus figurines”, depict a faceless woman with large breasts, a rounded belly, a prominentvagina and labia – and on one model, a clitoris.

It wasn’t until the 16th Century that the clitoris began to be described as a distinct physicalstructure, common to all women, with the function of inducing pleasure. In his book, De reanatomica, published in 1559, Realdo Columbo described the clitoris as “the seat of awoman’s delight”. Yet in subsequent centuries, female pleasure took a back seat, and theclitoris was largely forgotten – at least by anatomists and physicians. It re-emerged in the20th Century, but was still regarded as inferior by many. Though Sigmund Freud at leastacknowledged that women can experience orgasm, he believed that clitoral responsivity issuperseded by vaginal orgasm in mature women. The inability to experience vaginalorgasms is associated with psychosexual immaturity, he wrote.

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Can science reveal why women and men experience sex differently? (Credit: Getty Images)

If that were true, then there would be an awful lot of women out there who just aren’t realisingtheir sexual potential. Between thirty and forty percent of women claim never to haveexperienced an orgasm through vaginal penetration alone – though many more can orgasm

through clitoral stimulation.

The suggestion that the vaginal orgasm is somehow superior has irked many feminists. Itsounds as if women who don’t experience vaginal orgasms just aren’t trying hard enough. Soshould vaginal orgasms be a rite of passage for all women, or just a privileged few? Is it evenpossible to have an orgasm in the absence of a clitoris?

As soon as I touched the cervix, the rats would become rigidly immobile – Barry Komisaruk

Barry Komisaruk took the first steps to answering these questions by chance, while he wasstudying mating behaviours in rats. One day, while inserting a rod into a female rat’s vagina,he triggered a bizarre response: “As soon as I touched the cervix, the rats would become

rigidly immobile,” he says. Not only that, but during this kind of stimulation, the rats becameapparently insensitive to pain. Soon afterwards, he switched his rats for women, and noticedthe same thing: vaginal stimulation blocked the transmission of pain. But how?

The vagina and clitoris have many direct routes to the brain (Credit: Science Photo Library)

To find out, Komisaruk conducted a study with Beverly Whipple that looked at women withvarying degrees of spinal cord injury. They found that even when their injuries blocked theknown nerve pathways in the spinal cord from the genitals to the brain, these women couldstill feel when their vagina and cervix were being touched. Some even experienced orgasmfrom it, despite the pudendal nerve – which carries sensations from the clitoris to the brain – being cut. “Women with spinal cord injury who could not feel their clitoris, nevertheless hadorgasms from vaginal stimulation,” says Komisaruk. “That’s probably the best evidence thatvaginal orgasms exist.”

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The reason is that from the vagus nerves, which are situated outside the spinal cord, carrysensations from the vagina to the brain. “Women describe clitoral orgasms as more localisedand external, and vaginal orgasms as being internal and involving the whole-body; that’sprobably because the nerves that carry sensations from the clitoris are different from thenerves from the vagina,” Komisaruk adds. And as for the puzzling fact that vaginal orgasmscan block pain, the nerves connected to the spinal cord may inhibit the release of the

neurotransmitter involved in pain perception. Once signals reach the brain, they could alsotrigger the release of neurotransmitters like endorphins that also relieve pain.

So if different nerves can carry sensations from different regions of the female genitalia – andboth can trigger orgasm – are some regions of the vagina more sensitive than others? Whereshould couples go hunting for the elusive vaginal orgasm?

G marks the spot

The famed “G-spot” was, for a long time, the prime target. The term was first coined in theearly 80s, for the German obstetrician and gynaecologist, Ernst Gräfenberg. In 1950, hedescribed an erogenous zone on the anterior, or front wall of the vagina, which correlated

with the position of the urethra on the other side of that wall. Subsequent studies revealed acomplex of blood vessels, nerve endings and remnants of the female prostate gland in thesame area; and suggested that in a minority of women – particularly those with strong pelvicfloor muscles – stimulation of this area could trigger powerful orgasms and the release of asmall amount of fluid from the urethra that was not urine.

Word soon began to leak out about this magic button on the front wall of the vagina. Couplesinvested time, and - often fruitless - effort into finding it. Some feminists, meanwhile, claimedthat the publicity surrounding the G-spot was an attempt by men to recoup the importance ofvaginal penetration, after the spotlight had shifted to the clitoris during the sexual revolutionof the 60s and 70s.

The hunt for the fabled G-spot has revealed more complex anatomy (Credit: Getty Images)

Evidence to support or refute the existence of the G-spot is patchy, and often overhyped.One study ‘disproving’ the existence of a G-spot was based on an MRI scan of just onewoman. The debate is further obscured by a dispute about the correct terminology for thevarious inner regions of women’s private parts, and also where one structure starts andanother ends.

However, there do seem to be physical differences between women who claim to experiencevaginal orgasm and those who don’t. In 2008, Jannini published a study involving nine suchresponders, and 11 who said they’d never climaxed during penetrative sex alone. Ultrasoundscans revealed a thicker area of tissue in the space between the vagina and the urethra in

those that could.

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At the time, Jannini concluded that this might well be evidence for the fabled G-spot. Butfurther studies have prompted a rethink. “The word spot suggests a button; something thatyou can push to obtain an orgasm or pleasure,” he says. “It implies a concrete structurethat’s either there or it’s not. No-one has been able to clearly describe such a structure as aspot.”

The clitoris could also be described as a two-headed penis; both are derived from the sameembryonic tissue

So if it’s not a button, what else could it be? For a gr owing number of researchers the answeris simple: the clitoris. Although to most people, the clitoris is just a pea-shaped bobble underthe surface of the skin, recent MRI studies suggest that the clitoris is far from diminutive.They reveal a large, bulbous structure around 9cm in length, which somewhat resembles awishbone. It snakes its way around the outside of the vagina and up inside the pelvisalongside the urethra.

At the head of that wishbone is the glans – the external part that most people feel as theclitoris, and the most sensitive part. But the legs straddle the vaginal opening and extend into

the labia.

It could also be described as a two-headed penis. Both the clitoris and the penis are derivedfrom the same embryonic tissue; a swelling called the tubercle which emerges during theearly stages of embryogenesis and then branches into either the clitoris and vulval tissue ingirls, or the penis and scrotum in boys. But there are important differences: for one thing, thepenis doesn’t grow in response to hormones like testosterone once puberty ceases, whereasthe clitoris does. “It is not simply a little penis,” Jannini says. The vagina also responds tohormones, including oestrogen, which helps explain why women’s sexual response variesthroughout their lives.

This complexity may explain why it has been so difficult to prove – or disprove – theexistence of the G-spot; it’s not easy to stimulate the frontal wall of the vagina in isolation.You’re also likely rubbing up against the internal portions of the clitoris and the urethra aswell.

Women's sexuality has been a source of controversy throughout the ages (Credit: GettyImages)

Indeed, further research by Jannini and Odile Buisson at the Centre d’échographie in SaintGermain en Laye, France, has demonstrated this. They persuaded three women to eitherstimulate the front wall of their vaginas using a lubricated tampon, or use their fingers tostimulate the external parts of their clitoris - while using ultrasound to image what washappening beneath the skin. Vaginal penetration caused the internal parts of the clitoris andthe tissue around the urethra to move and become engorged, whereas during manualmasturbation, only the external parts of the clitoris were stimulated.

It gets even more complicated; in yet other women, vaginal penetration might simultaneously

be stimulating both the external and the internal parts of the clitoris.

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The woman had been born without a bladder, and had undergone extensive reconstructivesurgery. The silver lining? She has incredible orgasms

In 2009, a 42-year-old woman presented at the clinic of Rachel Pauls, a urogynecologistbased in Cincinnati, Ohio. The woman had been born without a bladder, and had undergoneextensive reconstructive surgery to correct some of these problems. There is a silver lining to

this cloud, however; “she has incredible orgasms,” Pauls says. Indeed, she told Pauls thatshe averages two orgasms every time she has sex – one through manual stimulation of herclitoris; the other through vaginal penetration alone. Pauls was particularly fascinated by herstory, because the women’s urethra – and therefore the associated bundle of nerves andstructures usually labelled the G-spot – wasn’t in the usual place. Additionally, the woman’sclitoris was positioned on the very edge of her vaginal opening. “It seemed likely that this waspart of why she had such good orgasms,” Pauls says. The penis would brush against it withevery thrust.

Does size matter?

This sparked an idea. Pauls wondered if the size, and location of the clitoris in healthy

women might influence the ease with which they orgasm during penetrative sex. So she andher colleagues recruited ten women who claimed rarely or never to achieve orgasm duringsexual encounters, and twenty women who said they climax almost every time, and used anMRI scanner to take a detailed look at their clitorises. They found that the smaller the size ofthe pea-shaped glans, and the further the clitoris was from the vagina, the harder they foundit to achieve orgasm.

There is no recipe for good sex (Credit: Getty Images)

Taken together, these studies imply that there are multiple routes by which women can

experience an orgasm, be it through vaginal stimulation, clitoral stimulation, or both at once.Further studies by Komisaruk have revealed that projections from different regions of thefemale genitals – and indeed the nipples – all converge on the same general region of thebrain, albeit in slightly different areas. “There’s a good neuro-anatomical basis for differenttypes of orgasms and different types of sensations,” Komisaruk says. “This could account forwhy combining clitoral, vaginal and cervical stimulation seems to produce these moreintense, complex and pleasurable orgasms that women describe.”

As for women who find it difficult to climax during penetrative sex – or indeed any sex – themessage is simple: experiment.

As for women who find it difficult to climax during penetrative sex – or indeed any sex – Paul’s message is simple: experiment. “Women come to see me as patients and they’ll say ‘Ican’t have vaginal orgasms, so there must be something wrong with me’. There’s nothingwrong with them. Everyone is a little different, so some women will have a lot of clitoral

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stimulation during sex, while for others it’s a little harder - so their partner may have to usetheir hands or a toy. But women should know that if they don’t have orgasms with straight outvaginal penetration, then that that’s normal.”

Jannini has an additional message for women: “Not only enjoy sex, but also enjoy knowingyourself and understanding who you are today, because probably tomorrow you will be

different.” And don’t underestimate the infinite variety that’s on offer. “Do not think of thefemale body as a machine that can always deliver the same,” he says.

Topic 6. The suprising downsides of being clever

Can high intelligence be a burden rather than a boon? David Robson investigates.

By David Robson 14 April 2015

If ignorance is bliss, does a high IQ equal misery? Popular opinion would have it so. We tendto think of geniuses as being plagued by existential angst, frustration, and loneliness. Think

of Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, or Lisa Simpson – lone stars, isolated even as they burn theirbrightest. As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing Iknow.”

The harsh truth is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions

The question may seem like a trivial matter concerning a select few – but the insights it offerscould have ramifications for many. Much of our education system is aimed at improvingacademic intelligence; although its limits are well known, IQ is still the primary way ofmeasuring cognitive abilities, and we spend millions on brain training and cognitiveenhancers that try to improve those scores. But what if the quest for genius is itself a fool ’s

errand?

Anxiety can be common among the highly intelligent (Credit: Thinkstock)

The first steps to answering these questions were taken almost a century ago, at the heightof the American Jazz Age. At the time, the new-fangled IQ test was gaining traction, afterproving itself in World War One recruitment centres, and in 1926, psychologist Lewis Termandecided to use it to identify and study a group of gifted children. Combing California’s schoolsfor the creme de la creme, he selected 1,500 pupils with an IQ of 140 or more – 80 of whomhad IQs above 170. Together, they became known as the “Termites”, and the highs and lowsof their lives are still being studied to this day.

The Termites’ average salary was twice that of the average white-collar job

As you might expect, many of the Termites did achieve wealth and fame – most notably JessOppenheimer, the writer of the classic 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy. Indeed, by the time his

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series aired on CBS, the Termites’ average salary was twice that of the average white-collar job. But not all the group met Terman’s expectations – there were many who pursued more“humble” professions such as police officers, seafarers, and typists. For this reason, Termanconcluded that “intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated”. Nor did theirsmarts endow personal happiness. Over the course of their lives, levels of divorce,alcoholism and suicide were about the same as the national average.

It's lonely being smart (Credit: Thinkstock)

As the Termites enter their dotage, the moral of their story – that intelligence does not equateto a better life – has been told again and again. At best, a great intellect makes nodifferences to your life satisfaction; at worst, it can actually mean you are less fulfilled.

That’s not to say that everyone with a high IQ is a tortured genius, as popular culture mightsuggest – but it is nevertheless puzzling. Why don’t the benefits of sharper intelligence payoff in the long term?

A weighty burden

One possibility is that knowledge of your talents becomes something of a ball and chain.Indeed, during the 1990s, the surviving Termites were asked to look back at the events intheir 80-year lifespan. Rather than basking in their successes, many reported that they hadbeen plagued by the sense that they had somehow failed to live up to their youthfulexpectations.

Early achievers don't always go on to be successful (Credit: Thinkstock)

That sense of burden – particularly when combined with others’ expectations – is a recurringmotif for many other gifted children. The most notable, and sad, case concerns the mathsprodigy Sufiah Yusof. Enrolled at Oxford University aged 12, she dropped out of her coursebefore taking her finals and started waitressing. She later worked as a call girl, entertainingclients with her ability to recite equations during sexual acts.

Sufiah Yusof, a child prodigy, enrolled at Oxford aged 12 but later dropped out and workedas a call girl

https://books.google.com/books?id=7IWaAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA100&ots=8z6o5onaTV&dq=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&f=falsehttps://books.google.com/books?id=7IWaAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA100&ots=8z6o5onaTV&dq=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&f=falsehttps://books.google.com/books?id=7IWaAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA100&ots=8z6o5onaTV&dq=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&f=falsehttps://books.google.com/books?id=7IWaAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA100&ots=8z6o5onaTV&dq=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&f=falsehttps://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15427609.2014.936182#.VR1XHRCtaFEhttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15427609.2014.936182#.VR1XHRCtaFEhttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15427609.2014.936182#.VR1XHRCtaFEhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10400121http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10400121http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10400121http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10400121https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=351315https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=351315https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=351315http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557568/I-love-girl--Im-control-boasts-fallen-child-genius.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557568/I-love-girl--Im-control-boasts-fallen-child-genius.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557568/I-love-girl--Im-control-boasts-fallen-child-genius.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557568/I-love-girl--Im-control-boasts-fallen-child-genius.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557568/I-love-girl--Im-control-boasts-fallen-child-genius.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557568/I-love-girl--Im-control-boasts-fallen-child-genius.htmlhttps://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=351315http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/1280_720/images/live/p0/2p/2q/p02p2q6s.jpghttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10400121http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10400121http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15427609.2014.936182#.VR1XHRCtaFEhttp://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/1280_720/images/live/p0/2p/2q/p02p2q4s.jpghttps://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40678https://books.google.com/books?id=7IWaAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA100&ots=8z6o5onaTV&dq=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&f=falsehttps://books.google.com/books?id=7IWaAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA100&ots=8z6o5onaTV&dq=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q=terman%20salary%20gifted%201955&f=false


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Another common complaint, often heard in student bars and internet forums, is that smarterpeople somehow have a clearer vision of the world’s failings. Whereas the rest of us areblinkered from existential angst, smarter people lay awake agonising over the humancondition or other people’s folly.

Constant worrying may, in fact, be a sign of intelligence – but not in the way these armchair

philosophers had imagined. Interviewing students on campus about various topics ofdiscussion, Alexander Penney at MacEwan University in Canada found that those with thehigher IQ did indeed feel more anxiety throughout the day. Interestingly, most worries weremundane, day-to-day concerns, though; the high-IQ students were far more likely to bereplaying an awkward conversation, than asking the “big questions”. “It’s not that theirworries were more profound, but they are just worrying more often about more things,” saysPenney. “If something negative happened, they thought about it more.”

(Credit: Thinkstock)

Probing more deeply, Penney found that this seemed to correlate with verbal intelligence – the kind tested by word games in IQ tests, compared to prowess at spatial puzzles (which, infact, seemed to reduce the risk of anxiety). He speculates that greater eloquence might also

make you more likely to verbalise anxieties and ruminate over them. It’s not necessarily adisadvantage, though. “Maybe they were problem-solving a bit more than most people,” hesays – which might help them to learn from their mistakes.

Mental blind spots

The harsh truth, however, is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions; infact, in some cases it might make your choices a little more foolish. Keith Stanovich at theUniversity of Toronto has spent the last decade building tests for rationality, and he hasfound that fair, unbiased decision-making is largely independent of IQ. Consider the “my-sidebias” – our tendency to be highly selective in the information we collect so that it reinforcesour previous attitudes. The more enlightened approach would be to leave your assumptionsat the door as you build your argument – but Stanovich found that smarter people are almostno more likely to do so than people with distinctly average IQs.

People who ace cognitive tests are more likely to see past their own flaws

That’s not all. People who ace standard cognitive tests are in fact slightly more likely to havea “bias blind spot”. That is, they are less able to see their own flaws, even when though theyare quite capable of criticising the foibles of others. And they have a greater tendency to fallfor the “gambler’s fallacy” – the idea that if a tossed coin turns heads 10 times, it will be morelikely to fall tails on the 11th. The fallacy has been the ruination of roulette players planningfor a red after a string of blacks, and it can also lead stock investors to sell their shares

before they reach peak value – in the belief that their luck has to run out sooner or later.

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Members of high IQ society Mensa are not immune to belief in the paranormal (Credit:Thinkstock)

A tendency to rely on gut instincts rather than rational thought might also explain why asurprisingly high number of Mensa members believe in the paranormal; or why someone withan IQ of 140 is about twice as likely to max out their credit card.

Indeed, Stanovich sees these biases in every strata of society. “There is plenty ofdysrationalia – people doing irrational things despite more than adequate intelligence – in ourworld today,” he says. “The people pushing the anti-vaccination meme on parents andspreading misinformation on websites are generally of more than average intelligence andeducation.” Clearly, clever people can be dangerously, and foolishly, misguided.

People with an IQ above 140 are twice as likely to overspend on their credit card (Credit:Thinkstock)

So if intelligence doesn’t lead to rational decisions and a better life, what does? IgorGrossmann, at the University of Waterloo in Canada, thinks we need to turn our minds to anage-old concept: “wisdom”. His approach is more scientific that it might at first sound. “Theconcept of wisdom has an ethereal quality to it,” he admits. “But if you look at the laydefinition of wisdom, many people would agree it’s the idea of someone who can make goodunbiased judgement.”

In one experiment, Grossmann presented his volunteers with different social dilemmas – ranging from what to do about the war in Crimea to heartfelt crises disclosed to Dear Abby, the Washington Post’s agony aunt. As the volunteers talked, a panel of psychologists judgedtheir reasoning and weakness to bias: whether it was a rounded argument, whether thecandidates were ready to admit the limits of their knowledge – their “intellectual humility” – and whether they were ignoring important details that didn’t fit their theory.

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High achievers tend to lament opportunities missed in their lives (Credit: Thinkstock)

High scores turned out to predict greater life satisfaction, relationship quality, and, crucially,reduced anxiety and rumination – all the qualities that seem to be absent in classically smartpeople. Wiser reasoning even seemed to ensure a longer life – those with the higher scoreswere less likely to die over intervening years. Crucially, Grossmann found that IQ was notrelated to any of these measures, and certainly didn’t predict greater wisdom. “People whoare very sharp may generate, very quickly, arguments [for] why their claims are the correctones – but may do it in a very biased fashion.”

Learnt wisdom

In the future, employers may well begin to start testing these abilities in place of IQ; Googlehas already announced that it plans to screen candidates for qualities like intellectualhumility, rather than sheer cognitive prowess.

Fortunately, wisdom is proba

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