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Instrumental Enrichment

a program for helping people improve their intellectual performance by developing the metacognitive and cognitive skills essential to successful performance of intellectual tasks. First used for pupils with intellectual disabilities, Instrumental Enrichment was later applied to performers at all ages and intellectual levels. The program involves solving puzzles, some of which are similar to the kinds of problems found on conventional intelligence tests, as well as bridging, which involves relating performance on these puzzles to the solution of real-world problems. Results of evaluations are mixed but suggest at least some benefits for performers with intellectual disabilities (who tend to be weak in metacognitive skills). [formulated in the 1970s by Romanian-born Israeli psychologist Reuven Feuerstein (1921–2014) and his collaborators]

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Psychology term of the day

January 30th 2025

Gödel’s proof

Gödel’s proof

a proof that in any logic system at least as powerful as arithmetic it is possible to state theorems that can be proved to be neither true nor false, using only the proof rules of that system. Published in 1931, this incompleteness result was very challenging to the mathematics of the time. British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954), with his proof of the undecidability of the halting problem, extended this result to computation (see Turing machine). [Kurt Gödel (1906–1978), Austrian-born U.S. mathematician]