Dumbing down since the Victorian era?

[Gail]

Apparently the average IQ level in Westerners have dropped by 14 points since the Victorian era. Interesting article!

IQ is falling... why?

[cricket]

We have safety precautions and labor laws for even our intellectually challenged children.

[Igakusei]

I'd caution you to read it more carefully. It appears that all they did was analyzed a series of studies showing that average human reaction time may have dropped, and the correlation to "general intelligence" is only secondary. While this doesn't completely invalidate it, you do need to be very careful when you're measuring one thing as a proxy for a second, and making conclusions about the second.

On the flip side, it also refers to the Flynn effect. IQ tests are standardized at 100, meaning that the mean score is 100 by definition. But if you take a group of kids today and give them an old IQ test from say, 1980, the kids from 2013 will average better than 100 even though the kids from 1980 averaged just 100. And the further back you go to find tests, the higher kids score. So by that measure, intelligence has actually been increasing.

All that said, it's probably a result of more modern kids being taught in abstract terms, meaning they're taught the skills that IQ tests are testing for.

Here's a very typical excerpt from an interview from a rural Russian village in the 1920s:

Quote:

Q: There are no camels in Germany; the city of B is in Germany; are there camels there or not?

A: I don’t know, I have never seen German villages. If B is a large city, there should be camels there.

Q: But what if there aren’t any in all of Germany?

A: If B is a village, there is probably no room for camels.

Nowadays very few children would miss a question like that, because we're taught from a young age to see "Germany," "B," and "Camels" in the above context as nothing more than stand-ins for logical symbols that can be manipulated. More people are accustomed to thinking in abstract terms like this now than the utilitarian terms that we used to, so are we getting more "intelligent" or are we just getting better at taking IQ tests? Depends partly on how you define intelligence.

Are we actually getting more or less biologically intelligent? Well, it's almost impossible to say. I expect that answering that question was part of the aim of this current study, but changes in the frequency with which people hone their reaction skills over time can muddy this one up too (e.g. kids nowadays spend hours indoors playing video games instead of playing outside, what might that do?). And even if they don't, we're still measuring a proxy for intelligence, not intelligence itself. Whatever that is.

[Bravus]

Yes, the original finding sounded wrong to me because I was aware of the Flynn effect.

Worth noting, also, that knowledge and intelligence are different things...

[Gail]

Worth noting, also, that knowledge and intelligence are different things...

I understand that... While knowledge is what you pick up through teaching, experience, reading, experimenting, intelligence is your "figgurin'" skill which would bring into play your creativity.

I would think that creativity is something that can be squashed if not exercised- true?

What did you thinks of the author's linking the decline of intelligence with the idea of less children being produced by intelligent adults?

[Bravus]

Couple of issues, I think:

1. What kind of clocks were they using in the late 1800s to measure reaction times in the hundred millisecond (tenth of a second) range? How accurate do we think measurements of reactions times taken with those tools would be? And that's the measure used to make the claims about decreasing intelligence.

2. The 'intelligent people having fewer children' thing comes up now and then, but 'regression to the mean' (interestingly, discovered by Francis Galton who is also mentioned in the article) means that children tend to be closer to average than their parents, in general. Very smart people will have children a little dumber, very dumb people will have children a little smarter.

Combine this with the Flynn effect and increased stimulation for babies and small children (intelligence is not purely genetic, the brain is plastic, and a rich stimulating childhood helps) mean that I still have deep misgivings about the conclusions in this article.

[Bravus]

(and there haven't been enough generations for evolution (or its lack to be at all relevant - they're reaching on that one)

[Bravus]

Heh, the timing device is right there in a picture in the article.

[Bravus]

I could, of course, be wrong!

Will be very interested to see the academic response to this paper, which is very new.

[joeb]

Apparently the average IQ level in Westerners have dropped by 14 points since the Victorian era. Interesting article!

IQ is falling... why?

I agree, Gail. The older I get, the dumber I get....

[phkrause]

Wow, I wonder where that leaves me? I was already dumb!! LOL