Empirical Research on Attitudes Toward Cognitive Enhancement Is Essential to Inform Policy and Practice Guidelines

Abstract

Two articles in this issue examine public attitudes toward cognitive enhancement. Forlini and Racine present qualitative data from a focus group study with university students, parents, and health care providers in Canada (Forlini and Racine 2012). Franke and colleagues (Franke et al. 2012) report quantitative data from self-report questionnaires completed by German high school and undergraduate university students. These two studies originate from different continents and use different methods, but they both demonstrate the complexity of attitudes toward cognitive enhancement and raise further questions that should be explored to better inform policy and practice guidelines.