So Doing Math Doesn’t Make You Smarter?

Various studies point to the conclusion that subjecting the mind to formal discipline — as when studying geometry or Latin — does not, in general, engender a broad transfer of learning. There is no sweeping increase of a general capacity for tasks like writing a speech or balancing a checkbook. But surely a narrower claim is true: that mathematics, so systematically built as it is on inference, must develop logical thinking. Right?