-Caveat Lector-
http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Science/20010106/UMENTN.html
Researchers find IQs are rising, and TV might be a big reason
CAROLYN ABRAHAM
MEDICAL REPORTER
Saturday, January 6, 2001In a culture of couch potatoes where TV
quiz shows pass for brain teasers and how-to books "for dummies"
fly off the shelves, it can be hard to reconcile the notion that
the human species is smarter than ever.
But if IQ tests are any measure -- and even critics say they have
some value -- then there is evidence people are making mental
gains. For the past two decades, researchers have collected
information showing that IQs around the world rose steadily over
the past century.
The rise has been too swift for genetics or evolution to explain.
And researchers cannot precisely say what's driving the
phenomenon. But many suspect that the very same TV-watching,
video-game-playing cultural trappings we blame for "dumbing us
down" may also be partly responsible for raising our IQs.
For while better health, nutrition and schooling help explain IQ
gains in the first half of the 20th century, they don't shed much
light on IQ increases in the second half.
"In the second half, there has been this new kind of visual
literacy," said Ulric Neisser, a Cornell University psychology
professor who studies the climbing-IQ phenomenon and edited the
book The Rising Curve.
"Movies and television and video games, with their rapidly
changing images, have had an effect on the way people think . . .
like when we have to program the VCR you get your kids or your
grandkids to do it.
"Dr. Neisser's theory that the digital world has better prepared
children for certain parts of IQ tests jibes with findings that
the big gains are not in areas such as vocabulary, factual
information or arithmetic -- things people learn in school.
Instead, advances have been most dramatic in solving visual
problems and puzzles and answering questions creatively.
As a result, some researchers play down the significance of
rising IQs, including the sociologist who first discovered the
trend in the 1980s. But everyone agrees the trend is real.
>From Argentina to urban China, from Belgium to Britain to the
Netherlands and yes, even to mentally maligned North America,
people have scored higher on standard intelligence tests than the
generation before them. The trend is even threatening the
exclusivity of the Mensa high-IQ club.
"It's causing some real grief," said John Saringer, former
president of Mensa Canada. Because Mensans must rank in the top 2
per cent of a tested population, older members of the group might
not qualify by today's standards.
"It's an embarrassing joke. A lot of people wouldn't want to have
to reapply just in case. Luckily, once somebody gets in we kind
of throw their test scores away."
IQs in the United States have jumped about three points every
decade since the 1920s, when widespread IQ testing began. The
trend for other developed countries is similar. In fact,
researchers suggest that people who scored in the normal range in
the early years of the 20th century would rank below average by
today's tests.
"We notice that each time the tests are revised by [U.S.] testing
companies you have to know more to be average," said Julianne
Conry, a University of British Columbia educational psychologist
who specializes in ability testing.
"I think the increase is real. It's a pattern we've seen for too
long for it be an artifact.
"Dr. Conry said educators noticed one of the most dramatic
test-score increases among children between the ages of 3 and 5
during the early 1970s.
"This would have coincided with the debut years of Sesame
Street," she said. "Parents were also taking a real interest in
preschool programs for children, but it was also the result of
watching programs like Sesame Street.
"Dr. Neisser has no doubts rising test scores reflect a brighter
society.
"Looking around, we are living in a golden age of intellectual
achievement. We are drenched in spectacular achievements in
technology. Of course we're smarter.
"The rising-IQ trend is often called the Flynn Effect after New
Zealand sociologist James Flynn, who first noticed the phenomenon
in the 1980s. Since 1984, Dr. Flynn has published a series of
papers showing that IQs in at least 13 developed countries have
gained five to 25 points in recent decades.
He managed to find what others had missed because he did not look
at average IQ scores, which rank how people compare with each
other at a certain point.
Instead, Dr. Flynn looked at the number of questions people
answered correctly on the intelligence tests over the years and
found everyone from school children to soldiers was scoring
progressively better.Interestingly, Dr. Flynn does not
necessarily believe the Flynn Effect points to a rise in
intelligence.
"If people, children, were really becoming smarter, teachers
would be saying, 'My gosh I can't believe how fast kids learn
today,' and they are not saying that," he said in an interview
this week.
"If people were really getting as smart as the test scores
suggest, we should be blinded by brilliance."He suggests that the
rising-IQ trend tells us more about what society demands of
people's mental abilities than about their actual intelligence
level because the gains have been in very specific skills.
The improvement of these skills, he speculated, reflects the
social changes since the Depression. He said families have become
smaller and have more time and money to seek mental challenges in
their leisure. The average age of grand-master chess players, for
example, has declined steadily since the 1950s, he noted.
As well, video games and water-cooler banter have risen to levels
that seem to have endowed people with a knack for excelling at
test sections that deal with things such as block design,
similarities between words and phrases, filling in the missing
pieces of pictures and matrices.
For example, children might not know the capital of Italy any
better than they did 30 years ago, but they can more easily
answer questions such as, "What do dusk and dawn have in common?"
"All of these things have in common the fact that they require
active participation in non-practical problem solving," Dr.
Flynn said.Howard Russell, a mathematician and testing specialist
with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, cautioned
that intelligence tests do not necessarily measure "intelligence"
but a person's preparedness for tests.
"Scores can easily be influenced by factors other than real
strides in intellect," Dr. Russell said. "There are many things
that can make them go up or down.
"Early in the 20th century, he explained, testers could be
assured that most of the subjects were seeing the test questions
for the first time, whereas today that's often not the case. As
Dr. Neisser put it: "You can hardly go to McDonald's without
having a puzzle on your food wrapper.
"One of his co-workers discovered that a maze used on one of the
standard intelligence tests for children could also be found on a
place mat at the International House of Pancakes.But even though
Dr. Russell is skeptical about what test scores actually mean, he
agrees they seem to the reflect the notion "that more people can
increasingly do more complicated things and that more people have
more opportunity to do such things.
"In that regard, he said things such as computers have been a
boon to students for thinking mathematically. "They no longer
have to imagine a three-dimensional object spinning around in
their minds, they can see it.
"The rise in visualization skills is borne out by results from
the Raven's Progressive Matrices IQ test.
People who took the non-verbal Raven test in 1942, for example,
averaged 24 points and so 24 was recalibrated to 100, which
represented the average intelligence level. People tested in
1992, however, averaged 54 points -- thereby raising the bar of
what the 100-average score actually represented.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
