[Phys-L] Mental Exercise & Integrity (was Evaluation tests redux)

[brian whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>]

On 7/28/2014 1:35 PM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:
> /snip/
>
> I don't like giving a "test" on the first day of school, but I'd rather
> raise the red flags early than later. If you plan to do this sort of
> thing, I highly recommend to do it in class. If done at home or online,
> there will be integrity issues. /snip/
   Integrity Issues.

There is a popular online mental agility application called Lumosity 
which claims to improve one's mental acuity (the evidence for such 
transference is however slender).

 Two of the games involve remembering patterns short-term:   the quasi 
random layout of squares on a checkerboard, or the quasi random layout 
of diagonal mirrors on a checkerboard.
The object of the first is to accurately recall the layout - the 
objective of the second game is to predict the exit square of a light 
pulse (let us call it) given the entrance square, and recalling the 
mirrors which deflect it repeatedly round the board.

Now the fact of the matter is that my short-term visual pattern recall 
is abysmal, so after a while, I adopted a new strategy: I took closeup 
pictures of the screen while the test pattern was presented, then 
recalled the camera images to provide a (perfect!) answer for each 
pattern in a series of possibly twenty..

Naturally enough, the game responded by increasing the board size and 
pattern complexity, so my scores on these games soared. Still the 
application weighted these outlying scores so that the overall effect 
was quite modest.

The question: Why would I cheat in such an obvious way? Probably, 
because I could, possibly because I was gratified by the results.
On a second level (I rationalize) the ability to find another way to 
overcome obstacles is some kind of mental acuity measure.

....And from there, it is *SUCH* a short step to acquiescing with the 
politicians who uniformly accept large (or small) sums in support of 
their campaigns, and in support of donors' hidden agendas.

Brian Whatcott   Altus OK