Paying Attention, Making Sense of It

To understand and learn from our experiences, we need to be able to

1. pay attention to what is happening,
2. remember sequences of events, and
3. try out different causative scenarios

-- while continuing to attend to real world events as they occur around us. Some people are better at paying attention than others (via Simoleonsense).

Attention and working memory are centered on the pre-frontal cortices, but involve many other parts of the cortex and sub-cortex. They are important features of both intelligence and executive functions. Being able to focus on a task (learning or acting) despite distractions from the outer and inner worlds, is a complex skill that often separates the highly successful from less successful persons.

Intelligence as measured in IQ tests is highly heritable (between 50 and 80%). Executive functions of the pre-frontal lobes also seem to be highly heritable, but may be more trainable than IQ. Interestingly, since short term memory and attention can be trained in children between the ages of 4 and 7 years, both EF capacity and IQ scores can be raised in young children with proper training. It is too early to tell whether such gains will be long-lasting.

The fact that we seem to have the ability to favourably alter a young child's trajectory in life should offer us some hope for the future. Though the current Obama / Pelosi reich will do nothing to upset the powerful teachers' unions or public employee unions, eventually the current fascist rule in the US will pass, and more thoughtful and progressive leadership may come about.

But honestly -- only a fool would wait for an enlightened leadership to come about before utilising what is known to help those he cares about. The current perfect storm of fascism in the US is slowly teaching Americans the difference between the government and the country. The dumbed down, academically lobotomised, psychologically neotenised, slow learning citizenry of the US is becoming at least dimly aware that the government is not their parent, is not their god, is not worth believing or honouring. They are ever so slowly learning that the US government is more their enemy now than at any time in the nation's history.

Such knowledge should stimulate at least a little nascent self-sufficiency. And just because today's Americans are dumbed down, incompetent perpetual adolescents, there is no reason why future Americans should be forced into the same dead end.