I am a 15 year old boy/man with Asperger’s Syndrome, Dyslexia(which I have almost overcome.), ADD and paranoia with an IQ of +147 and consider myself adult for my age. I like to make math, physics and chemistry excercises(from school and books from the library.). I use Lumosity and play Sudoku, logic puzzles and play chess with my 60 year old neighbour who is a replacer in the dutch national team.
I am now trying to join MENSA, I made their online IQ-test quickly and without trouble and we sent an email to them to learn more about it.
What can I do to train my brain/improve my IQ(hard excercises or learning different ways of thinking)?
Hi, I’m a long time member of Mensa. If your +147 IQ score was from a properly proctored IQ test, there’s a very good chance that you’ll just submit the results from it and be accepted.
As far as training your brain for a higher IQ, I don’t think that very much can be done there. The puzzles and other things that you are doing are certainly good.
I’m very good a puzzles where if you move one gear, which way would a connected gear move. I remember seeing those kinds of questions on various standardized tests.
Given your age, I suggest that you also train the rest of your body. Running, cycling, swimming and so on are all good ways to get blood to your brain. Even some competitive sports can be intellectually challenging. My youngest daughter was once a top college cyclist and also became a mechanical engineer. She hasn’t tested yet, but I think she may be brighter than me. My son is a CPA and I know he’s smarter. We did things like ride bicycles across Missouri and Iowa when he was your age.
It’s probably easier to lose IQ points from things like illegal drugs and alcohol.
(I wanted to add this to the question information but I couldn’t edit the message: I mostly ment to find out other ways of thinking. Also, I am going request an university to give me the 1st years’ physics textbook to deepen my knowledge.)
Thanks for this information! The test was taken quite a while ago so I don’t think it still counts(even though intelligence often increases by time) so that’s why I want to take the test.
I took the Mensa proctored test many decades ago. It was actually two tests and each was a different style IQ test. Stanford-Binet and California Test of Mental Maturity if I remember correctly. I remember during the second test I suffered brain-lock. I don’t know how long I was sitting there frozen. Could have been seconds. Could have been minutes. Felt like hours. I don’t think I could have answered what my name was. Of the two tests, I did better on the second one!
I don’t think much about thinking. I just do it. I read quite a lot, but don’t really enjoy playing games or puzzles. I was OK in chess but didn’t play it enough to get really good.
Actually as I can think pretty well, I spend more of my recreational time exercising and playing sports as that takes more effort for me. The one time I was published in the Mensa Bulletin, it was about riding my bicycle 200 miles in one day when I turned 50 years old.
I was just thinking so hard. It wasn’t anything like fear or worry. I’d never experienced anything quite like it before or after. Thankfully the lower functions, such as breathing, are handled by another part of the brain!
Practice. Seriously, find different ways to approach the same problem and go through them all to the end. Do this all the time. After a while, you will start automatically thinking differently.
I’m learning Latin because I love to read and etymology is an interest to me. Now that I have a good solid background in understanding words, I read differently. Its hard to explain, but the content is fuller and richer and I understand better.
I think chasing your interests is best; also, physical exercise and doing emotional work on things that trouble and distract you is helpful. You might also look into medication that treats ADD – I hear some scientists take this just for the performance improvement. Medications are generally mixed blessings so you should solicit advice from wise doctors and users about this. Finally, I’d recommend not doing stuff just because strangers on some web site suggest it.
It’s easy to find physics info, including textbooks (if it’s the exercises in particular you want), without having to try asking a university for them. This depends where you are, of course. I think you can find a huge amount of physics reading material starting with Wikipedia pages about specific topics and using their citations to start branching out. Also, many university courses put exercises and test questions on the web.
Flatlined, I understand what you mean JerrySTL, by freeze I see it as getting stuck in a question.
I also ment mind expanding/way of thinking changing books, I ordered those books because I am going to that university and I wanted challenge/more information about the sciences. Also what are some ways to prepare for the university?
I have noticed that there have been many books published in recent years about how to train your brain, how the mind works, how to become smarter, etc. Here are some examples; I haven’t read any of them yet, but many of them are on my to-read list:
This video from the University of Manchester argues that the evidence that classical “brain training” exercises make you better at anything other than that specific brain training game “contentious”.
I don’t know if you have any musical aptitude, but one thing that I find highly stimulating for my brain is mastering various forms of musical independence. For a drummer, this often takes the form of polyrhythms and polymeters. For pianists, playing a distinct melody on each hand. For guitarists, playing and singing at the same time.
What I love about independence exercises (and musicianship in general) is that you have to learn how to break a problem down into manageable parts, find some sort of method that works for you, then learn how to apply that method to unfamiliar situations or try new ideas altogether.
With independence, you really have to learn each part well enough that they can be run on autopilot. The truly satisfying moment comes when you realize that you’re playing both parts on autopilot. The first time I got to that point, I was like “Wait, how exactly is my brain doing this right now???”