Sunday, August 16, 2009

Image Streaming Part 4: A Conversation with Charles P. Reinert

In the third part of my image streaming series, I presented the entirety of Dr. Charles Reinert's study concerning image streaming and IQ improvement, which suggested that image streaming resulted in an average IQ increase for students who practiced the technique. A few months ago, I contacted Dr. Reinert by e-mail, and asked him a few questions about his study, and I thought I would share an edited version of the exchange (Dr. Reinert gave his permission).

OS: Why has no further study been done to confirm or refute your findings concerning image streaming? The findings seem quite interesting, and it surprises me that you haven't followed up on your research.

Dr. Charles Reinert: I have no idea why others have not done any followup work. I was a physics professor at the time, not trained in psychological research or the like. I had a full teaching schedule at SMSU, with no allocated time for research. After having experienced image streaming at a conference in Arizona a year or so before I did my work, I was much impressed with the theory underlying the image streaming protocol and my brief experience in doing it at the conference-- so much so that I determined to "give it a go" in a couple of physics courses I was teaching at the time, to see what might happen. I did not do much followup work, though I did teach a course the following year (as I recall), where the students did (only) image streaming, and we endeavored to test, not only their analytical skills, but also their creativity. What we found seemed to be clear indication that at least some types of creativity were enhanced, as measured by a standard test of creativity furnished to me by my psychologist colleagues. (The name of the test escapes me now.) As I recall, the analytical skills also increased, though I do not recall any details of that.

OS: Are there any scientific publications in peer reviewed journals which support the Whimbey Method, or the Image Streaming method (Try as I might, I cannot find publications supporting or refuting either technique)? If there are no publications, are you familiar with the reasons why neither of these methods have been studied rigorously?

Dr. Charles Reinert: ...I don't have a clue as to whether anyone has done any other work regarding Whimbey's work or Image Streaming. What I do recall is that in conversations with Win Wenger preceding and also after my preliminary work, he was having major difficulty in getting anyone to do such work. It seemed that he would have professionals all set to do the work, and then, for some reason, the efforts would fall through. There was a part of Win, and a part of me, at the time, that suspected that, because we were "challenging" the prevailing paradigm that it is "impossible" to change IQ, anyone who even sought to TEST that paradigm was perceived to be a few cards short of a full deck, as they say.

OS: Do you personally believe that image streaming is effective?

Dr. Charles Reinert: I have NO DOUBT whatsoever in my own mind that image streaming is effective, and that it pretty much does what Win believed it could do, which was to increase general intelligence (AND creativity, by my own measures) at a rate in the vicinity of a few IQ points over several hours of practice. I felt so strongly in my own mind, following my admittedly somewhat crude work, that I made the image streaming activity a "standard" part of my physics students' homework thereafter for many years. I also taught my then 3 year old daughter to do it, and we would have great fun while I was driving her the 20 miles to daycare-- I image streamed with my eyes open of course, and daughter (name removed) did it (I think ) with eyes closed. She quickly became very adept at it and I have to believe that this early practice became a continuing factor in her scholastic success, and likely in her being admitted (on her first try) to the veterinary medicine school at the University of Minnesota a few years ago. Another thing that seemed to happen to me and others who have done this work is that after one has been image streaming for about a month, the number of A Ha's, Ho Ho's, and He He's-- (the exclamations that are typically associated with what I term "creative breakthroughs" in my thinking), seem to dramatically increase.

OS: Why are there no peer reviewed publications supporting any of Win Wenger's theories (I appreciate that you may not know the answer to this, but your proceedings paper suggested you had contact with him)?

Dr. Charles Reinert: I don't know the answer to this. Perhaps no money available? No interest? Win's work IS of the type that I, if I were a creativity consultant to industry, would likely wish to teach the employees. Are you familiar with any of Win's publications? One is "Beyond Teaching and Learning"; another deals with what he has called "The Einstein Effect", as I recall, and he has a prolific number of other, smaller publications, which I have picked up at conferences on accelerative learning and teaching. If you are interested in developing your analytic or creative skills, it may be worthwhile to pick up a few of them and begin to learn how Win thinks. I do not know whether he is still presenting at conferences-- he used to be very active in what was once called the "Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching", which later took another name because of copyright infringement. As I have gone off in other directions since that time, I have no idea whether that organization is still extant. However, if you get an opportunity to participate in any of his workshops, I would strongly urge you to do so. That may be the best way to convince yourself of the validity or lack thereof of Win's approaches to thinking.... And, of course, practice the technique for a month or so, a half hour per day, and come to your own conclusions. Then, do what seems to be the best thing to do with what you have learned....
Following this conversation, during the conversation where I asked Dr. Reinert if I could publish the above statements, he also wanted to add a few comments, which I present below.

OS: ...perhaps the most important aspect of the work (he is referring to his proceedings paper, found in part 3 of my image streaming series) is that it seemed to have been one of the first serious efforts to "test" image streaming, and (hopefully) gave some long needed impetus to Dr. Wenger's wonderful work. As I discovered, "IQ" is not an easy thing to measure, and the way in which I chose to measure it (using Art Whimbey's "WASI" test) was certainly an incomplete way to do so. On the other hand, the WASI was available, easy to administer, and was (according to Dr. Whimbey) a test which correlated well with other more accepted methods. As to the value of Image Streaming, this for me emerged as I did more and more of it, and began to have more creative "Aha" experiences. There is a part of me that would suggest, "Image Streaming is a bit like falling in love. It's difficult to MEASURE the effect that it has on one, but when you've experienced it, you know you've changed!"


And... that was the end of our e-mail interaction.

Personally, I don't know what to believe about image streaming. Dr. Reinert's study seems reasonably well conducted, but the absence of peer review and a proper control group makes me more than wary.His enthusiasm about image streaming was evident in our conversation, and it really makes me want to believe that image streaming works,  but I won't come down on either side of the fence until there's a successful repetition of Dr. Reinert's study.

Interestingly, no one (as of this writing), has bothered to attempt to repeat this experiment, including Win Wenger (the creator of image streaming) himself. The fact that other scientists haven't attempted to repeat this experiment isn't all that surprising, as for decades the prevailing dogma has been that IQ cannot be changed, and a non-peer reviewed study presented at the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching is unlikely to spur much interest in the scientific community, for the reason that no one other than the members of the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching would even know about the study. It is curious though, given its availability on the internet, that no one has attempted to repeat the study yet. Even more curious is that Win Wenger has not repeated the experiment himself.

So, does image streaming increase IQ? According to Dr. Reinert's paper, it does. But more work will have to be done in the future to validate his work (cough... cough... Project Renaissance (which is Win Wenger's organization)).


5 comments:

  1. Love your blog. Very interesting stuff!

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  2. wow! very impressive series on image streaming. Have you ever applied it yourself? If so, what is your personal feeling on its effects?

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  3. Scored 1000 on sat so i've been thinking about iq off and on over the years. My median iq is 108, according to sat, and 98 when adjusted. In my school there was a student who got 1600 on sat!! A guy in my class got 1300+ (i'm not surprised, he was always an achiever).

    In some ways I feel stupid and inadequate. The worst feeling is that I can't do anything about it. I'm caucasion and was in a lower middle income family so I had opportunities a poor child wouldn't have. I should feel blessed. I think the best chance we got of changing our iq is when we're children. After that (i'm an adult now), we might very well be stuck with it for life.

    But When I apply myself to a subject, like in school, I generally find that I derive great pleasure from it - if I don't let the stress of exams get the better of me. Compared to a more sedentary lifestyle (i've been there), going to school and being active makes me feel like a genius (more aha! moments). Maybe we should do as they say, make lemonade out of lemons. Do the best with what we got. Still, in some of my classes I've had the chance to see trully smart people in action, and it has always been a sobering experience.

    Anyway, so here I am. Thought this was interesting.

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  4. So, a professor of physics, the hardest of the sciences, doesn't think to have control group? Give me an f-ing break, dude. Jaeggi's research has thrown some doubt on the immutable IQ notion, and nobody, including this "physics professor" and Wing Wenger, have published anything about image streaming. This has charlatan written ALL OVER IT

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  5. Interesting, I'm hoping someone will do a more stringent test of this method, preferably with a control group who do nothing, even better if you can introduce a sham technique that is known to be uncorrelated with intelligence, and have both researchers and subjects be blinded to which group is doing which.

    Meanwhile, I'm going to test this out myself as there is no harm in failure and a lot to gain in success.

    @the above comment
    So did the heliocentric model of astronomy when it was first discovered, doesn't mean it's not worth investigating. :)

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