Link Between Non-Academic Activities and Fluid Intelligence

Exercise

There is some controversy and debate on the best ways to improve fluid intelligence, common sense would suggest that non-academic pursuits—including aerobic exercise—are key to improving not only cognition but someone's long-term success in life.
Physical activity - playing a musical instrument, making art, improving motor skills, and getting a good night's sleep—with optimizing brain function and improving cognitive abilities.

Recently, Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientists working with education researchers at Harvard University and Brown University found that students at academically high-performing schools did not necessarily have improved fluid intelligence.

Fluid intelligence is the capacity to think logically and solve problems in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge. Fluid intelligence involves the ability to identify patterns and relationships that underpin novel problems and to extrapolate these findings using logic.
On the other hand, crystallized intelligence is the ability to utilize skills, knowledge, and experience. Crystallized intelligence represents your lifetime of intellectual achievement, as demonstrated largely through one's vocabulary and general explicit knowledge that could be measured on a standardized test.

Interestingly, schools where students have had the highest gains on test scores do not show similar gains in fluid intelligence, according to the new study. In fact, those schools with high scores on crystallized intelligence tests had almost no effect on students' performance on tests of fluid intelligence skills, such as working memory capacity, speed of information processing, and ability to solve abstract problems.

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SOURCE: THE ATHLETE'S WAY