A Possible Explanation for the Flynn Effect
| AR Articles on Science and Genetics |
|---|
| More news stories on Science and Genetics |
The Flynn Effect, discovered by Richard Lynn (Lynn, 1977) and documented and named for James R. Flynn (Flynn, 1984, 1987), is a world-wide increase in IQ scores of about 3 IQ points per decade. That is, people today score higher on an old IQ test than people the same age did who took the same test decades earlier.
By suggesting the malleability of intelligence and the possibility that tweaking the environment might increase it, the Flynn Effect has raised the hopes of egalitarians, who believe that “all the races are equal in intelligence” (United Nations, 1950; also Flynn, 1999) and fervently want to erase the black-white IQ gap. Unfortunately, the cause of the Flynn Effect has not yet been pinpointed and, until it is, a program cannot be designed that will put the cause of the Flynn Effect to work increasing black intelligence. Moreover, as many experts suspect, the Flynn Effect may be only an increase in IQ scores, not an increase in real intelligence (i.e., the genetic potential for high intelligence), which may actually be declining (Lynn, 1996).
A possible explanation for the increase in IQ scores is that children today mature sooner, both physically and mentally, than children did decades ago (Sarich, 1999). Today’s children score higher, not because their real intelligence has increased, but because their brains are more mature. A 10 year old today has a brain that has grown faster and has more neural connections than the brain of a 10 year old who lived, say, 50 years ago. Because today’s 10 year olds have brains that, perhaps, 12 year olds had 50 years ago, they do better on an IQ test taken by 10 year olds 50 years ago. Psychologists think they are comparing identical groups of children—10 year olds to 10 year olds, but they are actually comparing apples and oranges—10 year old brains to 12 year old brains. Real intelligence has not increased, children just acquire it sooner, and fully mature people today may actually be less intelligent than fully mature people were decades ago.
Table 1 (Terman et al., 1973) shows Flynn Effect changes in average IQ scores.
Table 1
Estimates of the Average 1972 IQ Scores When the 1972 Stanford-Binet Test Performance Is Referenced to the 1937 Norms
  |
That the maximum increase in IQ scores occurred between the ages of 2-0 and 4-6 is strong evidence that accelerated maturation is responsible for the Flynn Effect because not much else could cause such a large increase in the IQ scores of American children who are that young. The scores fall from age 3-6 to age 10-0, then rise again, consistent with faster maturation to age 3-6, followed by a slowing of the rate of maturation up to puberty and a second acceleration at puberty, which now begins earlier so the effects of the second acceleration start showing up at age 11-0.
The difference between black and white IQ scores is small at a young age, then increases towards adulthood. Lynn (2006, p. 45) reports an average IQ of 92 for 2 year old sub-Saharan Africans (s-S Africans), which drops to 67 by adulthood. (Lynn, 2006, p. 37). There is good evidence that blacks mature faster than whites, and that the black brain matures earlier than the white brain. (Rushton, 2000, pp, 147-150). The greater maturity of 2 year old s-S Africans raises their IQ scores, so they test only 8 IQ points (100—92) behind 2 year old whites. By adulthood, however, when both white and black brains are fully mature and therefore at the same level of maturity, the difference in IQ scores is much larger, 33 IQ points (100—67). This suggests that lower IQ scores at maturity may be the result of faster maturation, and that the Flynn Effect is due to faster maturation.
Adult female brain size, adjusted for body size, is about 100cc smaller than male brain size (Ankney, 1992; Rushton, 1992) and average adult female intelligence is about 3.63 IQ points (Jackson, 2006) or about 5 IQ points (Lynn, 2006) lower. Up to about age 14, however, faster-maturing girls have identical or higher IQ scores than boys, but after boys have their growth spurt at puberty they catch up and score higher than girls. (Colom, 2004). This also suggests that faster maturation may result in a lower IQ at maturity, and that the Flynn Effect is due to faster maturation.
If IQ scores are lower at maturity, real intelligence has very likely fallen. If it has, the Flynn Effect is not the good news that egalitarians hoped it would be, but is instead ominously bad news because it means that people are becoming less intelligent. The higher fertility of less intelligent people is often given as the reason for a dysgenic drop in real intelligence from one generation to the next (Lynn et al., 2004), but that would not explain a drop in real intelligence within a population as it ages; accelerated maturation would.
The Right Tail Effect
Figure 1 shows the bell-shaped IQ curves for males (blue) and females (red).
Figure 1
(Nyborg, 2005). “General Intelligence” is the number of standard deviations (SDs) above or below the mean IQ of all the test takers; one SD is about 15 IQ points and males have a greater SD than females. “Frequency” times 100 is the percentage of males or females who have the corresponding IQs. “Ratio” is the number of males at an IQ level divided by the number of females at that level.
In Figure 1, the number of males and females is the same (i.e., the total area under the male curve is the same as the total area under the female curve), but there are more males at the high end of the curve (i.e., the area under the male curve above, say, 1 SD is greater). There are two reasons for that: (1) the male mean IQ is higher, which disproportionately increases the number of males at the high end of the curve and reduces the number at the low end. That is, if the male mean is 5% greater than the female mean, the number of males who are above, say, 1 SD will be more than 5% greater than the number of females who are above 1 SD, and (2) the male curve has a greater SD, i.e., fewer males than females are in the middle of their curve and more are at the right and left ends.
The dotted line in Figure 1 is the number of times more males there are than females at each IQ level. The difference between the male and female means and SDs causes the dotted line to rise rapidly as IQ increases, which is the “right tail effect.” Even though the difference between the male and female means and SDs is only a few IQ points, those differences cause a large difference between the number of males and the number of females who have high IQs.
Because the difference between average black IQ and average white IQ is much greater than the difference between average male IQ and average female IQ, and the black SD is less than the white SD (Jensen, 1998, p. 353; La Griffe du Lion, 2000), the black-white right tail effect is greater than the male-female right tail effect (Herrnstein et al., 1994, p. 279). As a result, the number of high IQ blacks is far less than the number of high IQ whites.
The right tail effect is a mathematical result that occurs when any two groups have different means and/or different SDs. The two groups may be tested at the same time, but differ in age, sex, race, etc. (e.g., males and females, blacks and whites), or the two groups may be similar, but tested at two different times (e.g., 10 year olds in 1920 and 10 year olds in 1970). If two similar groups are tested decades apart and the curve with the higher mean is at the later time, then not only will IQ scores be increasing, but high IQ scores will be increasing disproportionately. Also, the increase in the number of high scorers will be matched by an equal decrease in the number of low scorers. In other words, as long as the size and shape of the later curve is the same as the earlier curve, a right tail increase (more high scorers) is matched by an equal left tail decrease (fewer low scorers), and a right tail decrease (fewer high scorers) is matched by a left tail increase (more low scorers).
The Left Tail Effect
A study in Spain (Table 2) shows that the Flynn Effect increased low-end scores much more than high-end scores, i.e., the number of people with low scores decreased more than the number of people with high scores increased.
Table 2
 (Colom et al., 2005). The difference between the 1970 and 1999 Raw Scores is shown in the last column. |
Those results should immediately raise suspicions about the Flynn Effect because, as explained in the preceding paragraph, if the IQ curve has moved to the right, the decrease in low scorers must be matched by an equal increase in high scorers. Since that did not occur, we know that something else is affecting the scores besides the Flynn Effect.
Similar to the results in Table 2, SAT scores, which correlate 0.8 with IQ scores (Seligman, 1991; Flynn, 1984), dropped at the same time that IQ scores were rising. (Deary, 2001, Chap. 6; Herrnstein et al., 1994, pp. 425-427). If the Flynn Effect is due to an increase in real intelligence then it is difficult to explain why SAT scores would fall at the same time that IQ scores increase. However, if the Flynn Effect occurs because the children taking the test are more mature, then an explanation becomes possible, namely that the children taking the test are both more mature and their real intelligence has fallen.
The IQ tests are taken by everyone, but the SAT takers are a more intelligent subset. If we compare people who took the SAT decades apart, we find that SAT scores are lower. The reason is that real IQ has fallen and, due to the right tail effect, the number of people at the right side of the SAT curve has fallen disproportionately.
On the other hand, if we compare people of the same age who took the IQ tests in the same years that the SAT was taken, we find that IQ scores have increased. The reason is that the test takers who took the more recent IQ test were more mature. Although increased maturity raised the IQ scores of everyone, the decrease in real intelligence disproportionately lowered the number of people at the high end, ergo, rising IQ scores and falling SAT scores and, in Table 2, the number of people with high scores did not increase as much as the number of people with low scores.
The Flynn Effect in Mature Adults
Once the brain is fully mature, there obviously can be no effect on IQ scores due to accelerated maturation. The density of grey matter in the brain increases to age 30 then rapidly declines, but the volume of white matter in the brain does not peak until about age 45. (Sowell et al., 2003). Thus, any increase in the IQ scores of people over those ages cannot be attributed to accelerated maturation. While IQ scores decline somewhat in the elderly (Mortensen et al., 1993; Raven et al, 1998, Graph G1), today’s elderly nevertheless score higher than elderly people did decades earlier. In one study, people of ages 20 to 70 who took an IQ test in 1942 were compared to people of ages 20 to 70 who took an IQ test in 1992. Those who took the 1992 test, including people over 45 and even people who were 70, did better than people the same age did who took the 1942 test. (Raven et al., 1998, Graph G2).
However, between 1900 and 2000 life expectancy at birth for all races and both sexes in the United States increased 63% from 47.3 to 77.0 (CDC, 2006, Table 27). Also, there is a right tail effect because intelligent people live longer than less intelligent people (Hemmingsson et al., 2006; Gottfredson et al., 2004) so, as a population ages, the number of people in the higher IQ percentiles increases disproportionately. In other words, people whose brain is not fully mature have increased IQ scores due to accelerated maturation, and people whose brain is fully mature have increased IQ scores because, while everyone is living longer, more intelligent people live longer than less intelligent people.
The Flynn Effect appears to have stalled or even reversed in Norway and some other countries (Sundet et al., 2004; Teasdale et al., 2005 & 2007). If accelerated maturation, as proposed, is the cause of the Flynn Effect, then in these countries children have stopped maturing earlier, either because the rapidity of maturation has reached a biological limit or because whatever was causing more rapid maturation has diminished or reversed.
Children Mature Earlier
There is considerable evidence that children today mature earlier. “In the abandoned medieval village of Wharram Percy in Yorkshire, the churchyard has yielded hundreds of skeletons for analysis. There ten-year-olds were around 8in shorter than children today: by the time they were fully grown they were nearly as tall as modern adults.” (Roberts et al., 2005).
A 1997 study of 17,000 American girls (Herman-Giddens et al, 1997) and a British study at Bristol University (Golding, 2000) tracked 14,000 children and found one in six girls with signs of puberty by eight years old, compared to one in 100 a generation ago. “The average age at menarche—when periods start—has plummeted over the past 150 years in western societies from around 17 years old down to 12 or 13.” (Macleod, M., 2007). Boys, too, showed an earlier onset of puberty. (Karpati, 2002).
Possible Causes for Earlier Maturation
A number of reasons have been given for the earlier maturation of children. Explanations have included hereditary and diet factors, increases in obesity and body weight, chemicals acting as endocrine disrupters, and the sexualization of children by the media.
An explanation that is consistent with experimental evidence and evolutionary theory is that earlier maturation is due to increased calories. It is known that substantial calorie reduction can extend the maximum life span of a variety of organisms, including monkeys, rats, mice, flies, worms, and yeast, by 30 to 70 percent (Weindruch et al., 1986; Yu et al., 1985). Restricting calories reduces aging in humans, which can be expected to extend life span. (Youngman et al., 1992; Roth et al., 2002; Heilbronn et al., 2003; Masoro, 2005). If reduced calories increase life span, increased calories should shorten life span by accelerating maturation.
That children consume more calories is shown by the increase in childhood obesity, which has been widely publicized and is a major concern. “A multivariate analysis confirms that obesity (as measured by BMI) is significantly associated with early puberty in white girls and is associated with early puberty in black girls as well, but to a lesser extent.” (Kaplowitz et al., 2001; also, Lee et al., 2007).
An earlier maturation, i.e., adapting a more “r” reproductive strategy (Rushton, 2000), when excess calories are consumed over a significant period of time, enables individuals to have more surviving offspring. Conversely, a delay in maturation when food is not available prevents the birth of children who are not likely to survive. The poorly nourished !Kung women of Namibia begin menstruation at 17, while well-fed white Americans begin at 12. (Arsuaga, 2001, p. 218). “Obesity can lead to larger babies . . . ,” increasing the need for Cesarean births, further evidence that increased calories accelerates maturation. (Susman, 2006).
Lynn (1990) has suggested that the Flynn Effect may be due to improved nutrition. Better nutrition, however, implies not just an increase in IQ scores, but that a deficiency in the brain has been remedied, so that real intelligence has increased, which is not consistent with Lynn’s later position that real intelligence has fallen. (Lynn et al., 2004). Given the brain’s first claim on the body’s resources and the absence of supporting data, that hypothesis does not seem likely except for severe nutritional deprivation, which is not applicable to developed countries that have had Flynn Effects. If the Flynn Effect is due to increased calories, however, the Effect would be only the normal age-related increase in intelligence occurring at a younger age.
It is primarily the quantity of food that affects the maturation rate, not its nutritional quality. Indeed, overall nutrition in the industrialized nations may have actually declined because, despite the fortification of milk, cereals, salt, and other foods with vitamins and other nutrients, there is a greater consumption of low-nutritional, but high-calorie, “junk” food and sugary soft drinks.
There is evidence for increased head circumference (Ounsted et al., 1985) and brain weight (Kretschmann et al, 1979) in children, and also for brain weight in adults (Miller et al., 1977). Faster maturation explains the increased head circumference and brain weight in children. The small increase in the brain weight of people whose brains are fully mature is due to (1) the fact that, on average, more intelligent people have larger brains (“r” = 0.44, Lynn, 2006, p. 214) and (2) the increased life span of more intelligent people, resulting in a right tail effect—a disproportional increase in the number of more intelligent mature people, as explained above.
Testing the Proposed Explanation
There are a few ways that the proposed explanation can be tested. Group A are children of several decades ago who at that time had a chronological and maturity age of, say, 10. Group B are children living at the same time as Group A, but they had a chronological and maturity age of, say, 12. Group C are more mature children living today who, compared to Groups A and B, have a chronological age of 10 and a maturity age of 12. Group C takes the same two intelligence tests that Groups A and B took decades ago. The proposed explanation predicts that the scores of Group C will be higher than the scores of Group A due to their increased maturity, but lower than the scores of group B due to their decreased real intelligence.
The proposed explanation also predicts a positive correlation between the increase in IQ scores and the number of years that the age of puberty (and other indicia of maturation) has dropped.
Assuming that increased calories are the principal cause of faster maturation, a similar positive correlation is predicted between yearly increase in calorie consumption (or increase in obesity) and the increase in IQ scores, though there may be a lag time between the two and, of course, the effect will eventually reach a biological limit.
The proposed explanation further suggests that the Flynn Effect should be at a maximum at about the age at which the difference in maturation between the earlier and later test takers is greatest. As suggested by Table 1, a curve plotting maturation differences and the Flynn Effect against age may show two Flynn Effect peaks and two corresponding maturation difference peaks, one for toddlers and the other for teenagers; the toddler maturation difference peak is expected to be greater because the toddler Flynn Effect is greater.
References
Ankney, C.D. (1992). Sex differences in relative brain size: The mismeasure of woman, too? Intelligence, 16:329-336.
Arsuaga, J.L. (2001). The Neanderthal’s Necklace. Four Walls Eight Windows: New York. CDC. (2006). Health, United States, 2006 with Chartbook on Trends in the Health of Americans. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Colom, R., Lluis-Font, J.M., Andres-Pueyo, A. (2005). The generational intelligence gains are caused by decreasing variance in the lower half of the distribution: Supporting evidence for the nutrition hypothesis. Intelligence, 33:83-91.
Colom, R. & Lynn, R. (2004). Testing the developmental theory of sex differences in intelligence on 12-18 year olds. Personality and Individual Differences, 36(1):75-82.
Deary, J.J. (2001). Intelligence: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Flynn, J.R. (1984). The mean IQ of Americans: Massive gains 1932-1978. Psychological Bull,95(1):29-51.
Flynn, J.R. (1987). Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: what IQ tests really measure. Psychological Bulletin, 101:171-191.
Flynn, J.R. (1999). Searching for justice: The discovery of IQ gains over time. American Psychologist 54:5-20.
Golding, J. (June 19, 2000). University of Bristol’s Institute of Child Health, ALSPAC: the Avon longitudinal study of parents and children, BBC News.
Gottfredson, L. & Deary, I.J. (2004). Intelligence predicts health and longevity, but why? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(1):1-4.
Heilbronn, L.K., & Ravussin, E. (2003). Calorie restriction and aging: Review of the literature and implications for studies in humans. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 78:361-369.
Hemmingsson, T., Melin, B., Allebeck, P., & Lundberg, I. (2006). The association between cognitive ability measured at ages 18-20 and mortality during 30 years of follow-up—a prospective observational study among Swedish males born 1949-51. International Journal of Epidemiology, 35(3):665-670.
Herman-Giddens, M.E., Slora, E.J., Wasserman, R.C., Bourdony, C.J., Bhapkar, M.V., Koch, G.G., & Hasemeir, C.M. (1997). Secondary sexual characteristics and menses in young girls seen I office practice: a study from the pediatric research in office settings network. Pediatrics, 99(4):505-512.
Herrnstein, R.J. & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press.
Jackson, D.N. & Rushton, J.P. (Sept.-Oct., 2006). Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test. Intelligence, 34:479-486.
Jensen, A.R. (1998). The g Factor. Praeger: Connecticut, USA.
Kaplowitz, P.B., Slora, E.J., Wasserman, R.C., Pedlow, S.E., & Herman- Giddens, M.E. (2001). Earlier onset of puberty in girls: Relation to increased body mass Index and race. Pediatrics, 108:347-353.
Karpati, A.M., Rubin, C.H., Kieszak, S.M., Marcus, M., & Troiano, R.P. (2002). Stature and pubertal stage assessment in American boys: the 1988-1994 Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Health Studies Branch, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30333, USA. J. Adolesc Health, 30(3):205-12.
Kretschmann, H.-J., Schleicher, A., Wingert, F., Zilles, K., & Löblich, H.—J. (1979). Human brain growth in the 19th and 20th century. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 40(2-3):169-188.
La Griffe du Lion (Sept., 2000). The politics of mental retardation: A tail of the bell curve. 2(9).
Lee, J.M., Appugliese, D., Kaciroti, N., Corwyn, R.F., Bradley, R.H., & Lumeng, J.C. (Mar., 2007). Weight Status in Young Girls and the Onset of Puberty, Pediatrics, 119(3):E624-E630.
Lynn, R. (1977). The intelligence of the Japanese. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 30:69-72.
Lynn, R. (1990). The role of nutrition in secular increases in intelligence. Personality & Individual Differences, 11(3):173-285.
Lynn, R. (1996). Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations. Westport, CN: Praeger.
Lynn, R. & Van Court, M. (2004). New evidence of dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States. Intelligence, 32:193-201.
Lynn, R. (2006). Race Differences in Intelligence. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Pub.
MacCleod, M (Feb. 10, 2007). “Why are girls growing up so fast?” New Scientist, Issue 2590, 38-41.
Masoro, E.J. (2005). Overview of caloric restriction and ageing. Mechanisms of Ageing & Development, 126:913-922.
Miller, A.K.H. & Corsellis, J.A.N. (1977). Evidence for a secular increase in human brain weight during the past century. Annals of Human Biology, 4(3):253-257.
Mortensen, E.L. & Kleven, M. (1993). A Wais longitudinal-study of cognitive-development during the life-span from ages 50 to 70. Developmental Neuropsychology, 9(2):11115-11130.
Nyborg, H. (2005). Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(3):497-509.
Ounsted, M., Moar, V.A., & Scott, A. (1985). Head circumference charts updated. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 60:936-939.
Roberts, C. & Cox, M. (2005). Medieval ancestors measured up to our height standards. British Archaeology, 84:51.
Roth, G.S., Lane, M.A., Ingram, D.K., Mattison, J.A., Elahi, D., Tobin, J.D., Muller, D., & Metter, E.J. (2002). Biomarkers of caloric restriction may predict longevity in humans. National Institute on Aging, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
Rushton, J.P. (1992). Cranial capacity related to sex, rank, and race in a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. military personnel. Intelligence, 16:401-413.
Rushton, J.P. (2000). Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, Third Edition, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Sarich, V (Feb. 7, 1999). Sarich says 70IQ blacks are normal except IQ vs 70IQ whites. Email message from Vincent Sarich; posted by Arthur Hu.
Seligman, D. (Apr. 15, 1991). Is America smart enough? IQ and national productivity. National Review.
Sowell, E.R., Peterson, B.S., Thompson, P.M., Welcome, S.E., Henkenius, A.L., & Toga, A.W. (2003). Mapping cortical change across human life span. Nature Neuroscience, 6:309-315.
Sundet, J.M., Barlaug, D.G., & Torjussen, T.M. (2004). The end of the Flynn effect? A study of secular trends in mean intelligence test scores of Norwegian conscripts during half a century. Intelligence, 32:349-362.
Susman, E. (May 10, 2006). ACOG [American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Rising Cesarean Birth Rates in U.S. Tied to Obesity. MedPage Today, online.
Teasdale, T.W. & Owen, D.R. (2005). A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(4):837-843.
Teasdale, T.W. & Owen, D.R. (2007). Secular declines in cognitive test scores: A reversal of the Flynn Effect. Intelligence, In Press. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2007.01.007
Terman, L.A. & Merrill, M.A. (1973). Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Manual for the Third Revision Form L-M (1972 Norms Edition). Houghton Mifflin Company.
Weindruch, R, Walford, R.L., Fligiel, S., & Guthrie, D. (1986). The retardation of ageing in mice by dietary restriction: longevity, cancer, immunity and lifetime energy intake. Journal of Nutrition, 116(4):641-654.
Youngman, L.D., Park, J.Y., & Ames, B.N. (1992). Protein oxidation associated with ageing is reduced by dietary restriction of protein or calories. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 89(19):9112—9116.
Yu, B.P., Masoro, E.J., McMahan, C.A., & Gerontol, J. (1985). Nutritional influences on ageing of Fisher 344 rats: I. Physical, metabolic, and longevity characteristics. J. Geonntol., 40(6):657-670.
(Posted on January 17, 2008)
Comments
They need to add in testosterone, and tie it in with IQ.
Posted by at 6:21 PM on January 17
The Flynn effect is a hare-brained theory that is more wishful thinking than fact.
It’s an example of leftist ideologues wanting to show the quality of the races and they work uphill and overtime trying to get absurd squares to fit in small round holes.
Posted by at 6:24 PM on January 17
Certainly an interesting read - I thought that I.Q. for blacks/whites etc “peaked”, however the evidence that it actually drops for blacks was food for thought…
Posted by Obscuratus at 6:26 PM on January 17
Sheer cant. But the nativists claim that IQ scores reflect “intelligence”, so how come then that increases in IQ scores do no reflect increases in “real intelligence”. The usual disingenuous and evasive explantions of the Flynn effect—in this instance put down to more rapid maturation. This, in answer to the claim that the cause of the Flynn effect has not yet been detected.
But the Flynn effect obviously gives the lie to the hypothesis that cognitive abilities are set in utero.
Posted by OCCAM at 7:02 PM on January 17
Not a single PC follower will care to read this. As soon as they know it is about IQ and Race, they will reject it out-right. Keep the world flat and keep the Earth as the center of the Universe!!!! Facts are the last thing they want to consider. Remember, all Beliefs are based on beliefs and never facts.
Posted by LOGIC at 8:44 PM on January 17
This is an absolutely brilliant, internally self-consistent, and intuitively correct explanation of the Flynn Effect. In fact, once considered this explanation is so intuitively obvious that it is embarrassing that I did not think of (or perhaps more accurately: think through) this explanation myself. Bravo and hats off to Richard Fuerle!!
Predictably, despite widespread touting by the MSM of the Flynn Effect as invalidating genetic explanations of racial differences in IQ, Fuerle’s logical explanation of the Effect refuting the environmentalist paradigm will never see the light of day in the MSM until the data are overwhelming - and maybe not even then to judge by the widespread, ostrich-like failure of the MSM to face the facts of racial disparities in innate intelligence, however defined or measured. Fortunately he provides a road map for researchers to follow, thereby shortening enormously the time-lag before confirmation of his explanation, which in my opinion is a near-certainty.
Posted by Pasadena Mike at 8:56 PM on January 17
“The usual disingenuous and evasive explantions of the Flynn effect …”
What errors of fact or logic does this author make? No doubt you’ve familiarized yourself with every title in the article’s bibliograpy and have a detailed critique on tap.
“But the Flynn effect obviously gives the lie to the hypothesis that cognitive abilities are set in utero.”
You don’t seem to understand what the Flynn Effect is. Even if it is real, it measures the rise of IQ among different generations, and has nothing to do with any individual’s IQ.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 10:39 PM on January 17
“But the nativists claim”
Well, well. Another ad-hominem, after four years of pointing out that this will not work here.
Posted by TabuLa Raza at 10:44 PM on January 17
Well, improved nourishment and a far more varied diet does contribute towards increased brain size although I don’t believe it means individual IQs across the general sphere are automatically increased along with it, BUT because of the improved nourishment and more varied diets, the potential to improve individual IQs is also increased.
On an ominous note, the long-time acceptance and prevalence of junk food is causing untold health problems which there’s no need to mention. If junk food is doing so much damage to the body, what is it not doing to the brain!
Luckily, the whole of an average population doesn’t continually gorge on junk food except by way of an occasional change, perhaps. It would seem though, unfortunately, pre-teens and teens are increasingly doing so these days.
Then there’s the widespread use of narcotics to consider as well. Long term use of these and unavoidable build-up leading to overdosing, literally rots the brain.
Posted by A Swain at 11:10 PM on January 17
Very interesting. When I used to be a leftist a decade ago, I remember liberal environmentalists shrieking that chemicals and pollution were responsible for US teenage girls having periods at ever-younger ages.
Now, it is revealed that an abundance of food is the cause. This expains why our thin 19th century ancestors, as well as girls in Namibia, didn’t buy their first tampons until age 17.
Posted by Lothrop Stoddard at 2:07 AM on January 18
Let me be the first to say:
Brawndo! It’s got the electrolytes that plants crave.
Posted by CSinAL at 2:35 AM on January 18
Well the Flynn theory has always seemed like one of the most implausible scientific theories..
If human beings increase by IQ approximately 3 points every decade then shouldn’t we all be Thomas Edisons and Sir Issac Newtons by now?
If this IQ boost is affecting all people of all races shouldn’t Africans have at least achieved the IQ of Whites from the 1940s or 50s or so who were busy splitting the atom and developing spacecraft?
The data just has no correlation to the real world.
Posted by at 11:51 AM on January 18
“Even if it is real, it measures the rise of IQ among different generations, and has nothing to do with any individual’s IQ.”
The Flynn effect is almost universally regarded as true, the only question among competent researchers now is “why”? And, isn’t a generation a collection of individuals?
IQ tests prove time and time again, that the white Americans 100 years ago had the same cognitive abilities as black Africans today. I didn’t create the data.
Posted by at 12:18 PM on January 18
“The Flynn effect is almost universally regarded as true, the only question among competent researchers now is “why”?”
Actually it is not. This article is only one of many critiques of the Flynn effect, a fact which even cursory research would reveal to you. Nor do you answer the question: why is *this article* mistaken?
“And, isn’t a generation a collection of individuals?”
Yes, but that fact has no bearing on the question. The issue is intelligence between *different* generations, not between individuals of the same generation. Assuming for the sake of argument that Generation A has a higher average IQ than Generation B, the question of the heritability of any person’s IQ remains unaddressed and unaffected. Even if everything claimed for the Flynn Effect were so, attributing these gains entirely to environmental causes is an unjustified leap. If this version of the FE theory is true, why is every single attempt to raise, say, the intelligence of American blacks by altering their “environment” an utter failure? Even the proponents of Head Start have conceded defeat, though of course the money keeps flowing.
“IQ tests prove time and time again, that the white Americans 100 years ago had the same cognitive abilities as black Africans today.”
This assumes far too much and raises serious problems. For one thing it would mean that the most powerful industrial nation in the history of the world was created by a population that would by modern standards be borderline-retarded. This simply doesn’t pass the laugh test. Furthermore the questions regarding black Africa would remain: why can African blacks not build or even maintain a society of the kind their intellectual equivalents created a more than a century ago? The test of any hypothesis is the extent to which it accounts for observable, phenonmenal reality, and your thesis is by this standard extremely poor.
“I didn’t create the data.”
The question is the interpretation of data, not its creation. Until such observations as the following, from an astute anonymous poster, can be addressed:
“If this IQ boost is affecting all people of all races shouldn’t Africans have at least achieved the IQ of Whites from the 1940s or 50s or so who were busy splitting the atom and developing spacecraft?”
there is no reason to place such an absurd degree on confidence in what environmentalists claim for the Flynn Effect.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 2:12 PM on January 18
If the Flynn Effect is real and IQ in western nations appear to have risen, I have to believe there are two forces at work.
First is better and varied nutrition. Food produced by and for the west is increasingly more abundant and nutritious. We all know that better nutrition and more calories contribute to accelerated maturation. Early maturation and higher IQ may be the result of better nutrition.
The second reason could be that the west simply has greater intellectual stimulation and naturally ‘feeds’ the brain.
Let’s say a child with a genetic predisposition for a potential IQ of 120 is born in a rural agrarian community where he is unlikely to ever get any intellectual stimulation that would cause his brain to reach its full potential.
Take that same child and put him in a first world setting with schools, communication, entertainment and every other intellectual stimulation at his disposal. In the enriched intellectual environment provided by the west, he’s far more likely to reach his full intellectual potential.
While I firmly believe that IQ is largely set in the genes, I do see the importance of environment. Would Sir Isaac Newton have reached his potential if he had been born in abject poverty and had no access to education? (There are, however, natural limits. You can not create a genius from a moron regardless of how much you send on education but you can use a school environment to determine which will be which.)
That IQ appears to be rising in western nations could simply be the natural result of every day life in the west. That an African refuge who moves to the US is forced to learn how to count so he can use money would certainly appears as a rise in intelligence.
Genetics, nutrition, and mental stimulation from a variety of environmental factors combine to give us IQ. First and foremost, you have to have the genes.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 2:53 PM on January 18
The only way this is useful is to study who uses their intelligence wisely. The Caucasians have won this contest. Way to go guys!
Posted by Lars at 6:33 PM on January 18
“Take that same child and put him in a first world setting with schools, communication, entertainment and every other intellectual stimulation at his disposal. In the enriched intellectual environment provided by the west, he’s far more likely to reach his full intellectual potential.”
But this begs the question as to where the enriched environment came from in the first place. Long ago, all were in a primitive condition- how did any manage to break free without stimulation? Someone had to get the ball rolling, starting with nature alone AND NO OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE.
Posted by belle kerve at 11:57 PM on January 18
“This assumes far too much and raises serious problems. For one thing it would mean that the most powerful industrial nation in the history of the world was created by a population that would by modern standards be borderline-retarded.”
Sir, I think you misunderstand the point. The Flynn effect says that IQ scores are rising around the world, it does not say why, that is for others to hypothesize. It is generally accepted that Sub-Saharan Africans today have an IQ of about 70. It is also generally accepted that this was the IQ of white Americans 100 years ago. Maybe the 70 of the whites is different than the 70 of the Africans, but all researchers agree that the raw scores are about the same. If the 70s are different, does this mean that IQ tests are useless?
Posted by at 11:58 PM on January 18
“The Flynn effect says that IQ scores are rising around the world, it does not say why, that is for others to hypothesize.”
You simply do not address my objection. For one thing, the Flynn Effect has been subject to many criticisms, of which this article is one. Saying that something is “generally accepted” does not make it so. Before asking “why” a thing is happening it is useful to ask “whether” it is happening. This article offers an interpretation which you have now expressly ignored for three posts. It’s hardly reasonable to call for hypotheses and then to ignore them.
In addition, the question I and others have posed remains unanswered: if white Americans of 1908 and earlier averaged 70 in IQ, how on earth did they create the society they did in fact create? Why cannot Africans create or even maintain such a society, if they are the intellectual equals of 19th-century whites? Saying that somehow an African 70 differs from a white 70 simply concedes that whatever the Flynn Effect measures is, as Rushton and others have suggested, generally unrelated to “g.”
Until you or someone can explain why equally intelligent populations differ so radically in their intellectual achievements, there is exactly no reason to believe your assetion that “white Americans 100 years ago had the same cognitive abilities as black Africans today.” This is your Nothing but a rather exotic interpretation of IQ data supports this notion; every speck of real-world evidence is against it.
Finally, it is worth pointing our that our opponents, present company included, are contradicting their own arguments about intelligence by appealing to the Flynn Effect. Over the past four years, the same “opposition” posters have asserted the following three things:
1)Intelligence cannot be measured by IQ tests (they’re “biased,” and so on);
2)Blacks and whites do not differ in intelligence on average,; and
3)The Flynn Effect proves that whites of 1900 and African blacks of 2008 are intellectual equals.
These statements are mutually exclusive, and at least two of them are wrong of necessity. Egalitarians who appeal to the Flynn Effect have to abandon 1 and 2 above.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 10:17 AM on January 19
I am reading Michael Levin’s book and in it he discussed briefly the Flynn Effect. Interestingly, the increase in IQ we are supposedly seeing is not making school any easier for most of the newer generations; if IQ is a measure of intelligence in the real world we may be seeing a disproving of it as an effective measure of capability. Certainly the educational authorities are not reassured by the gains purported to be in the offing because of the Flynn Effect. They talk of “America’s Perfect Storm” and the looming crisis of competence we face. Personally I think IQ is related to the ability to stratagize and is improving because we are gaining more information about and power over our environment. A person with a GPS system is more “intelligent” than one with a map, and that one is more intelligent than one with a compass, and that one than more so than one with knowledge of the stars only. Any other ideas?
Posted by mark at 1:56 PM on January 19
It’s kind of interesting that people who believe in natural selection and evolution, also place so much faith in ‘the Flynn Effect’. People of all races with lower IQ’s, have been having a greater number of children for quite some time now.
Posted by at 12:03 AM on January 20
Cassiodorus,
The issue of IQ tests is really about whether the results faithfully reflect group native intelligence or are strongly influenced by cultural and environmental inputs.
Nativists—i.e. those who believe that IQ tests reflect innate “native intelligence”—argue that environmental effects have a negligible impact on test scores while others argue for varying degrees of environmental and cultural impacts.
Those who argue that the different population groups must be equal in cognitive potential do so on the basis that there are no valid reasons why any particular environment would select for higher cognitive potentials in any single geographical region given that the threshold of cognitive skills attained in Africa some 160,000 years ago was more than adequate to survive in any of the world’s environments.
Thus there was no need for large populations to be selected on the basis of more challenging environments.
Posted by OCCAM at 12:12 PM on January 22
“The issue of IQ tests is really about whether the results faithfully reflect group native intelligence or are strongly influenced by cultural and environmental inputs”
No kidding. The point that has been made at wearisome length here and elsewhere is that environmental explanations are extremely weak. Every attempt to raise the intellectual profile of blacks by manipulating their environment is extremely weak.
“Those who argue that the different population groups must be equal in cognitive potential do so on the basis that there are no valid reasons why any particular environment would select for higher cognitive potentials in any single geographical region given that the threshold of cognitive skills attained in Africa some 160,000 years ago was more than adequate to survive in any of the world’s environments.”
The question is of course begged: what reason is there to believe that sub-Saharan Africa exerts the same adaptive pressure on intelligence as other reasons? In any case it is perfectly clear that for whatever reason human groups are not equal in “cognitive potential;” the ongoing failure of black populations relative to everyone else, regardless of where these black groups actually live, is more than ample proof of this. When blacks can maintain a modern industrial society of the sort that has been handed to them in Zimbabwe or South Africa, or when blacks in North American or Europe attain intellectual parity with non-black host populations, there may be reason to revisit this issue. Only a fool would be holding his breath waiting for that, however.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 6:38 PM on January 22