How to Raise Our I.Q.

Here you go: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4548943/B...

> In fact, the belief that IQ is "overwhelmingly inherited" is considered socially repugnant,

Yes. A lot of people believe that inherited intelligence is socially repugnant. That is why they like to dismiss it with articles such as these. Steven Pinker called this the “is” versus “ought to be” dilemma. Most people want intelligence to be based solely on the environment (i.e. changeable through education) and not inherited (almost like no people wanted the earth to be round 600 years ago).

It is interesting to me that he used IQ tests instead of g-loaded tests such as Raven's progressive matrices. The reason for this is that RPM is a better measure for the general intelligence and thus will not serve as his little straw man.

There are several studies that show that general intelligence is largely inherited. A good example is twin studies in which two twins are reared apart (i.e. in different environments). Several studies have shown that it is not possible to “boost” the general intelligence factor through education. Several studies have shown that general intelligence is influenced by the physiology of the brain (a good review article of this is “Positron Emission Tomography Studies of Intelligence by Richard J. Haier).

From the article:

> One gauge of that is that when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study.

> Another indication of malleability is that I.Q. has risen sharply over time.

Uhm... It is widely known that the IQ increases among children given extensive education. What is also widely accepted is that IQ tests is not a good measure for general intelligence – factor analysis or g-loaded tests are.

Also, it has been shown that the effects of boosting the IQ scores of children largely disappear when they reach adulthood.

Also – children adopted at birth do not have IQ scores that resemble their parents or their other siblings.

> University of Michigan, has just demolished this view in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,”

He should maybe other top rated researchers still holding that view that he demolished that. Most of these points he raises in his books have been known since the 70ies. Also, the debate on intelligence is good – but it should be based on peer reviewed research, not books. It is sad that public perception is formed by only one side in the debate.

> The implication of this new research on intelligence is that the economic-stimulus package should also be an intellectual-stimulus program. By my calculation, if we were to push early childhood education and bolster schools in poor neighborhoods,

How much is spent on the bottom 10% of children versus the top 10% of children? Wouldn't extra money be better spent on the top 10% (who is currently neglected).

If the Flynn effect was true, then our great-grand parents must have had average IQs that would have categorized them as mentally disabled today. Clearly, this was not the case. My grand parents in their prime were just as smart as my parents, and my parents and uncles are just as smart as my cousins.

It's also interesting that measures of vocabulary and numeracy have been flat over the past century. More evidence that cognitive abilities have been flat.

emphasize "culture fair" tests such as Raven Progressive Matrices, which were presumed then not to include item content that is taught by compulsory schooling,

Here is the problem. Doing a Raven Progressive Matrix is just as much a learned skill as math or vocabulary. If people went from learning no math in 1900, to learning lots of math in 2000, scores on math tests would go up, even without any gains in underlying cognitive abilities.

All the Flynn effect means is that people have much more exposure to the type of puzzles in the Raven Progressive Matrix today than they did in the 1950's. Numeracy and vocab are actually better measures of historical trends in IQ, because environmental exposure has been more constant between the two time periods.

When people try and measure intelligence, they are trying to measure the underlying cognitive abilities that allow people to learn faster and achieve higher levels of cognitive skills. Unfortunately, there is simply no way to measure this directly. The only way to measure it, is to give a person a skill test, and then control for environment. This will always be fraught with potential for error.

We had almost this exact same discussion a month ago. Firstly, you quote only from Flynn and not from any scientist holding an opposing viewpoint (e.g. Arthur Jensen). Although Flynn is a good scientist, I don't think that it is good to rely just on the studies of one political scientists and activist – he is author of “How to Defend Humane Ideals: Substitutes for Objectivity” after all).

There are numerous studies that also show that the general intelligence factor is due to physiological effects (e.g. size of different areas of the brain, etc...). How do you explain that?

There is a theory on why when people are trained in a task they do better – it turns out that the amount of “general intelligence” used is less. There are also studies that show this effect with PET scans of the brain:

> Thus, the largest GMR decreases with practice were found on subtests with the highest g loadings. Jensen noted this finding was consistent with what he termed the conservation of g. Namely, with practice and training, tasks become more automatized and require less g.

(from Haier [1])

There is a recent study (2008, te Nijenhuis ,van Vianen , van der Flier [2]) that shows that the increase in RSPM and other scores is because of training and is not an increase in the overall general intelligence [2] (the studies that you cited is all 8 years or older). Incidentally this study cites two of the Flynn papers that you cited (Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure, IQ Gains, WISC Subtests and Fluid g: g Theory and the Relevance of Spearman's Hypothesis to Race).

The idea that Flynn proposes (i.e. that general intelligence is increased over time is dismissed). Here is a full quote of the abstract of the paper (if you need the full paper and do not have access to it, msg. me and I will email it for you):

IQ scores provide the best general predictor of success in education, job training, and work. However, there are many ways in which IQ scores can be increased, for instance by means of retesting or participation in learning potential training programs. What is the nature of these score gains? Jensen [Jensen, A.R. (1998a). The g factor: The science of mental ability. London: Praeger] argued that the effects of cognitive interventions on abilities can be explained in terms of Carroll's three-stratum hierarchical factor model. We tested his hypothesis using test–retest data from various Dutch, British, and American IQ test batteries combined into a meta-analysis and learning potential data from South Africa using Raven's Progressive Matrices. The meta-analysis of 64 test–retest studies using IQ batteries (total N = 26,990) yielded a correlation between g loadings and score gains of − 1.00, meaning there is no g saturation in score gains. The learning potential study showed that: (1) the correlation between score gains and the g loadedness of item scores is − .39, (2) the g loadedness of item scores decreases after a mediated intervention training, and (3) low-g participants increased their scores more than high-g participants. So, our results support Jensen's hypothesis. The generalizability of test scores resides predominantly in the g component, while the test-specific ability component and the narrow ability component are virtually non-generalizable. As the score gains are not related to g, the generalizable g component decreases and, as it is not unlikely that the training itself is not g-loaded, it is easy to understand why the score gains did not generalize to scores on other cognitive tests and to g-loaded external criteria.

So what we have for the immutability of general intelligence is a theory, intelligence test results confirming the theory and PET scans of the brain showing this effect.

[1] Richard J. Haier, Ph.D., Positron Emission Tomography Studies of Intelligence: From Psychometrics to Neurobiology

[2] Jan te Nijenhuis , Annelies E.M. van Vianen , Henk van der Flier, Score gains on g-loaded tests: No g

PS: This reply is a little long so sorry for that.

There was a comment on iSteve, where someone said that perhaps whites were not intrinsically smarter than the global average (of about 90) but, that they've had a headstart of a century of Flynn Effect.