Good call; we’d figured that we would just notice if our cognitive performance declined, since we perform lots of cognitive tasks daily, but maybe we should be suspect of our ability to judge our performance.
Does anyone have any suggestions for test we could use? Would, for example, my mean Tetris score (or distribution of Tetris scores, since I could get better or worse with each passing game as my brain got more used to Tetris or as it got more tired) per waking period (not that I plan to play Tetris every waking period), be a good reference?
EDIT: Tetris sounds like a really stupid way to measure cognitive skills, now that I re-read this. I guess it was just the first thing I thought of that I could easily keep quantitative track of.
EDIT 2: I play a lot of Tetris (~1 hour a day, but not usually for more than ~20 minutes at a time), and it is the only video game I play.
This post features a comment (search the world “cultish”—that’s the one) in which someone reports to have tried polyphasic sleep and noticed a decline in memorization ability, as found through using Anki. Perhaps browse through their shared decks (install Anki and browse the list through the application or Ctrl+F via this method) and find something that is vaguely familiar or unfamiliar and try and learn it.
Honestly, you might be better off postponing until you get some good data before to make sure you have a non-affected control sample. Taking tests while conducting your experiment might make it difficult to gauge when any potential negative effects have worn off. At least you have a “default” opportunity now—afterward, perhaps you should just pick an arbitrary time to recoup (like 3mos) and take the tests again (or pick an equally unfamiliar new topic to learn). Then compare your performance.
Lastly, what are your target criteria? Awareness? Learning abilities? Ability to follow conversation? Deep thought development? You might want to establish some clear goals beforehand—what if you can memorize like a champ… but you develop twitches or feel like you’re about to collapse all the time? Just saying—think through your experiment before you do it… even if it means postponing your start. Better to do this on the front end.
Honestly, you might be better off postponing until you get some good data before to make sure you have a non-affected control sample.
This is my greatest regret with my experiment. It’s clear to me when I’m not functioning at all, but reduced function is a lot more subtle. It’s also hard to establish a baseline- driving to the store to pick up some alarm stuff before I transitioned, I noticed I was consistently making navigation errors, leading to it taking significantly longer to get there. I found it amusing because of how reliable it was that I would make the wrong choice, but it made me wonder how I would be able to compare cognitive function.
My target criterion is having more time per day to do stuff, and that’s it. A small decline in some cognitive abilities might be worth the significant increase in available time (if it’s not permanent!).
Reaction times can do amazing things when you get clever.
Relatively simple reaction times are reported to correlate g somewhere around 0.3 to 0.5 depending on details, with faster times associated with higher IQ. Brutally simple procedure: hold a ruler up vertically and have it dropped by an unpredictable process while holding fingers in a position to pinch it and stop the fall after you detect that it has begun to fall. Record how many centimeters it falls in a spreadsheet. If the number gets big, something is probably going wrong with your brain.
Having a friend on hand to drop the ruler is a big help. Also, for any drinkers out there, try this while sober and then after having some drinks (tested one at a time, because you’ll be surprised how quickly results show up).
I wouldn’t suggest playing Tetris as a data gathering strategy, but if you’re playing it anyways, you might as wel collect the data (scores), as long as setting up the logging can be made into a one-time task.
Good call; we’d figured that we would just notice if our cognitive performance declined, since we perform lots of cognitive tasks daily, but maybe we should be suspect of our ability to judge our performance.
Does anyone have any suggestions for test we could use? Would, for example, my mean Tetris score (or distribution of Tetris scores, since I could get better or worse with each passing game as my brain got more used to Tetris or as it got more tired) per waking period (not that I plan to play Tetris every waking period), be a good reference?
EDIT: Tetris sounds like a really stupid way to measure cognitive skills, now that I re-read this. I guess it was just the first thing I thought of that I could easily keep quantitative track of.
EDIT 2: I play a lot of Tetris (~1 hour a day, but not usually for more than ~20 minutes at a time), and it is the only video game I play.
This post features a comment (search the world “cultish”—that’s the one) in which someone reports to have tried polyphasic sleep and noticed a decline in memorization ability, as found through using Anki. Perhaps browse through their shared decks (install Anki and browse the list through the application or Ctrl+F via this method) and find something that is vaguely familiar or unfamiliar and try and learn it.
Honestly, you might be better off postponing until you get some good data before to make sure you have a non-affected control sample. Taking tests while conducting your experiment might make it difficult to gauge when any potential negative effects have worn off. At least you have a “default” opportunity now—afterward, perhaps you should just pick an arbitrary time to recoup (like 3mos) and take the tests again (or pick an equally unfamiliar new topic to learn). Then compare your performance.
Lastly, what are your target criteria? Awareness? Learning abilities? Ability to follow conversation? Deep thought development? You might want to establish some clear goals beforehand—what if you can memorize like a champ… but you develop twitches or feel like you’re about to collapse all the time? Just saying—think through your experiment before you do it… even if it means postponing your start. Better to do this on the front end.
This is my greatest regret with my experiment. It’s clear to me when I’m not functioning at all, but reduced function is a lot more subtle. It’s also hard to establish a baseline- driving to the store to pick up some alarm stuff before I transitioned, I noticed I was consistently making navigation errors, leading to it taking significantly longer to get there. I found it amusing because of how reliable it was that I would make the wrong choice, but it made me wonder how I would be able to compare cognitive function.
My target criterion is having more time per day to do stuff, and that’s it. A small decline in some cognitive abilities might be worth the significant increase in available time (if it’s not permanent!).
Reaction times can do amazing things when you get clever.
Relatively simple reaction times are reported to correlate g somewhere around 0.3 to 0.5 depending on details, with faster times associated with higher IQ. Brutally simple procedure: hold a ruler up vertically and have it dropped by an unpredictable process while holding fingers in a position to pinch it and stop the fall after you detect that it has begun to fall. Record how many centimeters it falls in a spreadsheet. If the number gets big, something is probably going wrong with your brain.
Having a friend on hand to drop the ruler is a big help. Also, for any drinkers out there, try this while sober and then after having some drinks (tested one at a time, because you’ll be surprised how quickly results show up).
You probably want a bunch of quick, dissimilar tests. One interesting one which hasn’t received much attention is the Embedded Figures Test.
If he’s on Linux, he could try a suite of puzzlegames like gbrainy.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of that! I’m on Ubuntu, so that’s perfect!
I’m going to point out that since the writing of this post, a tool has been created for exactly this purpose: Quantified Mind
I wouldn’t suggest playing Tetris as a data gathering strategy, but if you’re playing it anyways, you might as wel collect the data (scores), as long as setting up the logging can be made into a one-time task.
You could try sudoku or a crossword puzzle.