Type 1 and Type 2 Intelligence

Yet again, Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article, Implicit Learning,  which discusses intelligence and the human brain.

What he’s calling Type 1 and Type 2 intelligence map directly to what I refer to as Right-brain and Left-brain thinking. His conclusion is most interesting:

Needless to say, these results raise a ton of interesting questions. The one I’m most interested in is whether or not these Type 1/implicit learning skills can be improved over time. While numerous studies have demonstrated that experience can improve the performance of the unconscious in extremely specific contexts – a Nascar driver will have better driving reflexes – there has been little research into the malleability of the overarching Type 1 system. If these unconscious/implicit learning skills turn out to be teachable, then we suddenly have an entirely new way to educating the brain and improving cognitive performance.

I make the assertion in Trading from Your Gut that, in fact, Type 1 learning skills can be taught and that one is foolish to ignore this possibility.

I also believe that the Type 1 system is much more malleable than people believe. One of the ways that I find most effective to teach the Type 1 system is to expose yourself to new experience, to keep on learning difficult concepts, to expose yourself to new cultures, new ideas, other ways of looking at the world. In this way, I believe that traveling someplace that is very different from where you living, living abroad, and learning a foreign language all help develop a more responsive and flexible Type 1 intelligence.

It will be interesting to follow the research in this area.

Tagged as: Intelligence, Intuition, Learning, Left Brain, Right Brain, Trading