I don’t understand what the neuro stuff in the second half of the post is meant to contribute here.
If the LSAT (or studying for it) has measurable cognitive benefits, or is predictive of future success, awesome! So who cares whether you can detect some cerebral blood flow difference with fMRI?
If the LSAT has no predictive (or other) value, sad! So who cares whether you can detect some cerebral blood flow difference with fMRI?
Obviously this is in no way specific to your post, don’t mean to single you out. But the “it happens IN THE BRAIN so it’s super important” way of thinking is to my mind a corrosive trope in contemporary discourse which I like to call attention to whenever I see it. In my opinion these kind of New Yorker-friendly brain imaging studies tend to obscure more than they illuminate for most issues.
But to answer your questions in the final paragraph
1) Yes I studied for it, quite a bit actually (was studying for the GRE in parallel, which was actually more important, but the LSAT studying was more fun).
2) I’d say yes it definitely improved my logical reasoning skills but no, (3) there was likely little lasting benefit. Two reasons:
(a) because as a general rule interventions that boost cognitive performance in the short term tend to wash out over longer timescales, so my default position would be that the same is true for the LSAT, and
(b) LSAT-type reasoning wasn’t terribly far removed from the kind of thinking I was used to, so the marginal benefit was probably small.
I don’t understand what the neuro stuff in the second half of the post is meant to contribute here.
If the LSAT (or studying for it) has measurable cognitive benefits, or is predictive of future success, awesome! So who cares whether you can detect some cerebral blood flow difference with fMRI?
If the LSAT has no predictive (or other) value, sad! So who cares whether you can detect some cerebral blood flow difference with fMRI?
Obviously this is in no way specific to your post, don’t mean to single you out. But the “it happens IN THE BRAIN so it’s super important” way of thinking is to my mind a corrosive trope in contemporary discourse which I like to call attention to whenever I see it. In my opinion these kind of New Yorker-friendly brain imaging studies tend to obscure more than they illuminate for most issues.
But to answer your questions in the final paragraph 1) Yes I studied for it, quite a bit actually (was studying for the GRE in parallel, which was actually more important, but the LSAT studying was more fun). 2) I’d say yes it definitely improved my logical reasoning skills but no, (3) there was likely little lasting benefit.
Two reasons: (a) because as a general rule interventions that boost cognitive performance in the short term tend to wash out over longer timescales, so my default position would be that the same is true for the LSAT, and (b) LSAT-type reasoning wasn’t terribly far removed from the kind of thinking I was used to, so the marginal benefit was probably small.