When researchers compared high IQ and average test subjects in a learning paradigm, the results were surprising.

In some areas high IQ individuals work less, as might be expected by the idea that higher IQ people have more efficient brains for learning tasks, but in other areas, high IQ brains were working harder.

When were high IQ brains working harder? Not prior or during the task, it seems, but when feedback was given and individuals were learning from their mistakes.

From Graham et al. : “the Average IQ group failed to produce as much activation during feedback evaluation as did the High IQ group. These group differences are inconsistent with the neural efficiency hypothesis and instead suggest that the High IQ individuals were engaged in greater cognitive processing which we will argue reflects more strategic response planning at the time of feedback evaluation.”

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