Dual n-backing, and, my fluid intelligence seems to be off the charts

So having gone through all that intelligence stuff and hearing about this big news that apparently the dual n-back game increases fluid intelligence, I decided I might as well try out an n-back game myself.  In an n-back game, you are presented with a sequence of objects (numbers, letters, sounds, etc) and you press something if the next object you are shown matches the one that was n objects ago.  So, if you were doing a 1-back game you would just be pressing the button if the object you were shown matches the one immediately before it, and if you were doing, say, a 3-back game you would press the button if the object matches the one from 3 ago (like A, B, C, A, the last A matches the letter from 3 times back so you would press the button).  Now it's a dual n-back game when you have to memorize 2 streams of objects at once (which I didn't know at first, so I just made a single n-back game).  I made my rough calculator version in about 10 minutes with 5 speed options and your choice of n and how many digits to use.  I played it a few times on low n levels, figured that was too easy and jumped to 7-back and struggled with that a little (if it was slow enough I could do it well but if it was very fast it got tough).  Then it started to bug me about how much was lacking from this TI-83 game created in 10 minutes, and I looked for a better version online.  I found this, and I downloaded it, started it up, and went with the default settings.  Here are the results from my first 20 tries:

The way it works is you advance a level if you score 80% or above and you drop a level if you score 50% or below three times without advancing.  D is for dual and the number in the middle is the n-back level, so D3B is dual 3-back.  I expect that this is pretty good for a first 20, which is why I had to be fair and mention the single n-back practice I had on my calculator.  I didn't do all 20 at once, I did about 5 or 6 and then did other stuff and then did it again later.  Also I cheated and quit in the middle a couple rounds when I missed a bunch at the start (osu! reflex), but it was after I had already done a few on D3B, and I only quit 2 or 3 times.

Then, I saw the FAQ and the discussions and the current research and all of that, all about the dual n-back game, and I realized that some people were taking this very seriously.  There were studies that had been done recently, and people who put a lot of time and effort into training on the dual n-back.  For me though, I couldn't help but feel that... it was just another game.

For me it didn't feel all that new.  I had made my own memory games and the like before, so I was used to memorizing things in a different way.  Also, I had had practice playing two player modes on games by myself, and playing two different games at once.  That was, in essence, very similar to the dual n-back game as you have to take in two different streams of information at once and remember a command for each stream and when to execute it.  I didn't see much reason why the dual n-back task itself is special.  There was one question that I needed the answer to though.  How were they measuring intelligence?

And that, that was by the Raven's Progressive Matrices test.  All right, I said, I need to see what this test is like, and I googled it and found a sample test.  So I took it, and it was one of those tests where you finish and then they tell you, "Oh yeah, if you want your results you have to pay," and I wasn't paying. But they showed a "sample" result.  This is the sample result they showed me:

It's so strange.  It doesn't make sense to show that sample result to the average person, it doesn't make sense to get that sample result randomly if you're choosing randomly out of all possible results, and it doesn't really make sense to give you your real result as a sample.  (I'm guessing the sample result is randomly chosen from a range of scores near your actual score.)  But here's the thing: I'm pret-ty sure I got all of the questions right.  None of my answers were guesses, I had a clear line of logic behind every one, and I had all my answers down from the picture, like, I knew what I expected the answer to be and then I found that in the answer choices.  And this is coming from someone who says, "I'm not completely sure," when he's about 90% sure.  I'm pretty sure I got them all right.  Which means... I would have gotten the highest score possible (unless time is a factor but I finished in 20-25 minutes out of the 45 allotted).  That looks like a reasonable max score to me.  Perhaps they got a random sample result meant to be higher than my score but there was no higher valid score and they ended up showing the max score as the sample result.  But I look at the description and think that, well, I suppose it could suit me.

It was funny because I was seeing the logic behind how the test was created as I was taking the test.  I could see how the test could measure your ability to learn, in a way.  The key word was progressive.  The test was progressive, and it's not just that the questions got harder, but that they built on concepts shown in previous questions.  Had I seen the questions out of order, or had I been given just a single question, I might not have been able to come up with the right answer, but, because I could remember the concepts when they were shown in a simpler manner, I could recognize those concepts when they came up again in a more complex problem.  Which gives a potential explanation for why practice on the dual n-back task would increase performance on Raven's Progressive Matrices.  You improve your memory, and, more specifically, your ability to recall pieces of past information out of a longer sequence.  Now on the test, you'll be able to perform better because you can remember and recall the concepts shown in previous questions, so, just from that, you'll tend to score higher.  Now, is that an improvement of your fluid intelligence, or an improvement of your memory in a way that will help you solve the test questions (or both)?

Well anyway, apparently if I can do really well on Raven's Progressive Matrices I'm "undoubtedly a genius", and I do think I can do well on them.  But I still have my doubts about IQ tests and the like, and those doubts aren't going to go away because I think I'd do well on them.  Besides, I believe you can improve your intelligence, so it's not like I'm just going to be content with being at a high enough level that the tests will say I'm smart.  I'll always be aiming higher.

One last thing: I stopped playing dual n-back after that.  Like I said, a lot of it feels very similar to stuff I've already done, so I don't believe that dual n-back practice would improve my mind much.  The method of memorizing and recalling is new to me, so I could improve at that though.  As for how fast I think I would improve and how far I think I could go, I'm not sure.  D4B felt hard enough that it would take a bit more effort to pass than D3B took me.  They say someone got to 11 or 12 back, and I wouldn't count that out as a possibility for me, but I have no plans to do it enough to get that good at it.  But the fact that people do get good at it is, I think, worth pointing out.  This is a challenging memory task, right?  And people are improving on it with practice, right?  I see this as support for the idea that you can improve in any mental area through practice.  And if you can do that, why wouldn't you be able to improve your intelligence?  (I see people saying, "Well I never seemed to be able to pass this one level no matter how hard I tried, so it seems there's a limit to how much I can improve," to which I could reply that you can't know that you'll never become able of doing better, maybe you just have to practice harder or think about it differently or train differently.  But, I don't know.)