From: Gary Miller (garymiller@starband.net)
Date: Sat Dec 14 2002 - 11:36:51 MST
>> "The board games chess and GO take practice, not intellect, brain
scans
>> of players suggest. Intelligence areas appear inactive when people
>> puzzle over game strategy."
This study could in fact be valid if there were no flaws in their
methodology. Have there been any other studies to confirm this.?
Since I am a chess player let me offer the following observations.
When people are first learning chess they seem to struggle with first
remembering names of the piece and learning how the pieces move and
other simple misc rules of the game. This activity involves rote
memorization.
Once that phase has been mastered in the second phase players become
concerned with preventing their pieces from being captured and capturing
their opponents pieces in the next move. This involves the self
discipline to force ones mind to spatially examine each piece of yours
and your opponents to identify which pieces may be taken and the cost of
taking the piece.
In the third stage the users attempt to discipline their minds to look
more moves ahead and begin to form high level heuristics for strategy
such as control as many squares as you can etc...
And finally after much experience at playing, pattern recognition based
upon previous games that you've played becomes key in helping to
deciding where and how deeply to focus your attention.
If the player is serious and has the motivation they may read and
memorize classical games based upon masters of the games.
I would bet money that disproving the notion that excellent chess does
not require high intelligence would be as simple as giving IQ tests to
the ranking Chess masters and above and comparing their IQ scores to
lower ranked players who have also played the game seriously for a few
years. I would be very surprised if there was not a high positive
correlation between IQ and their USCF Chess rating.
I would also think studying MRI's of a person learning chess and
progressing through the stages of learning would be very instructive.
It may be that as a person learns chess that some area of the brain
becomes hardwired so to speak for performing much of the pattern
recognition and looking ahead in the game. That may be why the
cognition does not show up in the normal area of the brain where
thinking is normally observed. Or intellect may have other components
within the brain that have not yet been discovered.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org] On Behalf Of Emil
Gilliam
Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 2:01 AM
To: sl4@sl4.org
Subject: Chess and Go study
Bleah, bad pop-science writing -- but the actual research articles
referred to cost (too much) money online, so this is better than
nothing:
"The board games chess and GO take practice, not intellect, brain scans
of players suggest. Intelligence areas appear inactive when people
puzzle over game strategy."
http://www.nature.com/nsu/021209/021209-10.html
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