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IQ AND "MODERN-NESS."
There's a lot of good stuff in Malcolm Gladwell's review of James Flynn's What is Intelligence? Flynn is the researcher behind "the Flynn Effect," the observation that, across cultures, IQs rise over time, suggesting that the measurement is anything but intrinsic and immutable. To put it lightly, that finding has implications:
The best way to understand why I.Q.s rise, Flynn argues, is to look at one of the most widely used I.Q. tests, the so-called WISC (for Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children). The WISC is composed of ten subtests, each of which measures a different aspect of I.Q. Flynn points out that scores in some of the categories—those measuring general knowledge, say, or vocabulary or the ability to do basic arithmetic—have risen only modestly over time. The big gains on the WISC are largely in the category known as “similarities,” where you get questions such as “In what way are ‘dogs’ and ‘rabbits’ alike?” Today, we tend to give what, for the purposes of I.Q. tests, is the right answer: dogs and rabbits are both mammals. A nineteenth-century American would have said that “you use dogs to hunt rabbits.”“If the everyday world is your cognitive home, it is not natural to detach abstractions and logic and the hypothetical from their concrete referents,” Flynn writes. Our great-grandparents may have been perfectly intelligent. But they would have done poorly on I.Q. tests because they did not participate in the twentieth century’s great cognitive revolution, in which we learned to sort experience according to a new set of abstract categories. In Flynn’s phrase, we have now had to put on “scientific spectacles,” which enable us to make sense of the WISC questions about similarities. To say that Dutch I.Q. scores rose substantially between 1952 and 1982 was another way of saying that the Netherlands in 1982 was, in at least certain respects, much more cognitively demanding than the Netherlands in 1952. An I.Q., in other words, measures not so much how smart we are as how modern we are.
If, rather than testing some innate capacity known as "intelligence," IQ actually tests how familiar individuals are with a particular mode of abstract analysis, that throws the whole universe of hereditary determinism into chaos. It suggests that what we call intelligence is, on some level, closer to a skill, and it can be refined and strengthened through practice.
A few more interesting quotes from the article after the jump.
Take the big topic in IQ -- race. It's true that there's a black-white IQ gap. But it's not a stable one. Not only has it halved over the past century, but it changes over the course of maturation:
The black-white gap, [Flynn] pointed out, differs dramatically by age. He noted that the tests we have for measuring the cognitive functioning of infants, though admittedly crude, show the races to be almost the same. By age four, the average black I.Q. is 95.4—only four and a half points behind the average white I.Q. Then the real gap emerges: from age four through twenty-four, blacks lose six-tenths of a point a year, until their scores settle at 83.4.That steady decline, Flynn said, did not resemble the usual pattern of genetic influence. Instead, it was exactly what you would expect, given the disparate cognitive environments that whites and blacks encounter as they grow older. Black children are more likely to be raised in single-parent homes than are white children—and single-parent homes are less cognitively complex than two-parent homes. The average I.Q. of first-grade students in schools that blacks attend is 95, which means that “kids who want to be above average don’t have to aim as high.” There were possibly adverse differences between black teen-age culture and white teen-age culture, and an enormous number of young black men are in jail—which is hardly the kind of environment in which someone would learn to put on scientific spectacles.
We also see effects related to how many books a parent keeps in the household, how many words they speak to their child, how complex those words are, etc, etc. And, indeed, a child who grows up in a home where part of the entertainment is, in effect, abstract reasoning practice masquerading as fun car games, is going to be far better prepared for the IQ test -- but not because he's innately smarter." Back to Gladwell:
When I was growing up, my family would sometimes play Twenty Questions on long car trips. My father was one of those people who insist that the standard categories of animal, vegetable, and mineral be supplemented with a fourth category: “abstract.” Abstract could mean something like “whatever it was that was going through my mind when we drove past the water tower fifty miles back.” That abstract category sounds absurdly difficult, but it wasn’t: it merely required that we ask a slightly different set of questions and grasp a slightly different set of conventions, and, after two or three rounds of practice, guessing the contents of someone’s mind fifty miles ago becomes as easy as guessing Winston Churchill. (There is one exception. That was the trip on which my old roommate Tom Connell chose, as an abstraction, “the Unknown Soldier”—which allowed him legitimately and gleefully to answer “I have no idea” to almost every question. There were four of us playing. We gave up after an hour.) Flynn would say that my father was teaching his three sons how to put on scientific spectacles, and that extra practice probably bumped up all of our I.Q.s a few notches. But let’s be clear about what this means. There’s a world of difference between an I.Q. advantage that’s genetic and one that depends on extended car time with Graham Gladwell.
Like the SAT, tere's no doubt that IQ tests something. The evidence is even pretty strong that it tests something related to achievement. The case weakens when proponents begin claiming that it tests something genetic and immutable -- when the results are seen as a blood sample rather than a fitness test.
COMMENTS (24)
When I was in grad school (ph.d. in education), I came upon a statistic which I have remembered ever since (a certain familiarity with stat terminology is useful): More than 70% of all variance in students'/childrens' scores on standardized tests (of ALL kinds) is accounted for by one variable alone--the socio-economic status of the parents. Of that variance, almost half is accounted for by one additional factor: whether or not the MOTHER had attended a post-secondary institution. I doubt that it has changed in the intervening 20 years...
Posted by: woody, tokin librul | December 12, 2007 10:43 AM
In the film "The Golden Door" there's a scene at Ellis Island in which an elderly Sicilian peasant woman fails an intelligence test: a wooden puzzle - put the odd-shaped pieces into a square wooden tray. She heaps the pieces in a jumble- they're all in the tray, what difference does it make if they're not flat? It's clear that before this, she's never seen a puzzle.
Posted by: Bloix | December 12, 2007 10:45 AM
A CBS "60 Minutes" segment some years ago showed Australian Aborigine kids -- who did NOT go to school -- looking at 25 rocks on 25 squares for two minutes; then, after the rocks were thrown into a pail, the kids would pick the rocks out and put them back on the same squares -- the tester looking a a Polaroid and trying to figure out if the kid got it right (Einstein couldn't perform this).
All which shows what we lose by going to school -- presumably we gain something too, which something presumably shows up on IQ test results -- I would guess gross differences in schooling make for different skill levels doing IQ tests. So much for Murray's "bell curve" on race.
Posted by: Denis Drew | December 12, 2007 10:54 AM
If, rather than testing some innate capacity known as "intelligence," IQ actually tests how familiar individuals are with a particular mode of abstract analysis, that throws the whole universe of hereditary determinism into chaos. It suggests that what we call intelligence is, on some level, closer to a skill, and it can be refined and strengthened through practice.
I think every good teacher knows this. I think, in fact, that getting or not getting this point might define being a good or a bad teacher.
I don't think many journalists or policy makers get this point, unfortunately.
Posted by: rm | December 12, 2007 11:14 AM
Bloix: Stephen Jay Gould, in his classic Mismeasure of Man, tells of an early IQ test for (IIRC) WWI army recruits. There were versions for literate and for illiterate persons. The version for illiterates had drawings for the test taker to complete. One had a drawing of a house where (again, going from memory) the correct answer was to add a chimney. Many Italian recruits instead put in a crucifix, right where they expected one to be. They were, of course, marked wrong.
Clearly IQ tests measure something, but it is not clear to me what this is, of if it is anything interesting.
Posted by: Richard Hershberger | December 12, 2007 11:21 AM
On the WISC: it's one of those tests which is treated as a professional secret by those who administer it. If you've seen it, you can't take it. Or at least, you're not meant to take it.
But there's an inherent paradox in closely holding such tests, in that they still rely upon an implied cultural familiarity with the subject matter and format.
While psychologists have generally approached these disparities in a critical, scholarly manner -- there's an interesting piece on validity issues when testing Native Americans -- institutions often lag behind that kind of work, with statutes and regulations based upon outmoded assumptions about testing.
So even as the people administering standardized tests come to realise that they're a blunt instrument that measure, most of all, test-taking aptitude, they're limited in how they can use this new understanding by institutional lag.
I'm not sure if it's an index of 'modernity', unless you define modernity as 'the tendency to take the macro view and put everyone on a curve'.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | December 12, 2007 11:28 AM
The case weakens when proponents begin claiming that it tests something genetic and immutable -- when the results are seen as a blood sample rather than a fitness test.
I don't think anyone seriously believes it tests something immutable. Everyone realizes that the environment plays a very large role. Everyone should also realize that genetics plays a large role. For example, we all know that among siblings who share the same environment, some are just inherently smarter than others. That is, they have a genetic propensity to attain a higher IQ under a similar environment.
What is at issue in this controversy is whether or not there is a significant difference in the mean of this genetic propensity in different racial groups. Gladwell does a good job of marshalling evidence against that view, but I'm sure people on the other side have plenty of other evidence in favor of that view.
My take is that its a difficult question to answer scientifically, and that the jury is still out.
Posted by: Jim W | December 12, 2007 12:05 PM
If the gap was reversed, you wouldn't be all up in arms about it.
Posted by: El Viajero | December 12, 2007 12:07 PM
I have been dealing with IQ testing through working with Gifted Education for years. Though IQ is used as one, if not the main, identification requirement in most programs for gifted, I long ago realized that there is one inherent problem with all of these tests - ALL. They are based on "language".
If you consider the comment above dealing with the difficulty of determining IQ in the young and infants it's because of language. Either they don't have any or they don't have enough. There are no tests that can measure their ability. We are held hostage by language.
The same argument applies to ethnic, racial, socio-economic biases. The language of the test does not really measure the ability of the child because of its differences based on background.
The best example I can give is one that I dealt with when I was administering required IQ tests for the program with which I was involved. It had nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It involved the area of the country that the child was from.
The item was a series of four pictures: a rocking chair, a saddle, a front porch (stoop) and a couch. The question given orally was - "Which of these do you not sit on?"
I could tell instantly if a child was born and raised in Chicago and not from another part of the country. [I have since come to identify that the same happens with kids from New York and New Jersey.}
The kids from Chicago instantly said the "saddle". You "ride" a saddle; you don't "sit" on it. In Chicago, you "sit" on the stoop, ie front porch. [The correct answer according to publishers of the test.]
The kids from Chicago were incorrect, of course, because the rest of the country doesn't sit on the "stoop." In Hawaii you would sit on the "lanai", so I wonder if that would make a difference.
A test of any kind is meant to measure known things. How can you test something that you don't know? How can we know intelligence? We can't. We can only know the language abilities of a child based on a predetermined set of criteria arbitrarily established by some university guru or publishing company or governmental body.
I am required to use IQ because of "national norms" but I really use them as one thing - an indicator. Gifted kids have a certain way of dealing with language that is both playful and inquisitive. Other kids may know a lot of language, but they don't necessarily "play" with the language. Oh, and gifted kids "manipulate" language also.
This IQ issue has driven me nuts for years. It keeps popping up over and over. There will never be an end to it as long as people are looking for "statistics" to use in order to discriminate.
Posted by: Mike Ireland | December 12, 2007 12:13 PM
You see? Mike Ireland is a good teacher. Jim W is, I hope, not a teacher. Jim, some questions are not only not the right questions, they are not even wrong.
Posted by: rm | December 12, 2007 12:23 PM
My view is that Jim W. is either a racist, or doesn't understand very basic scientific and logical principles. Jim would have us believe contrary to easily available evidence that one side is saying there is a racial component to IQ and the other side is saying there is not, hence an equal burden of proof. No, that is _not_ the case. One side, the side associated with racists, have been insisting on the essential inferiority in whatever intellectual dimension of one particular 'race'. The other side is saying that there is no credible evidence for this. Iow, very unequal burdens of proof. And the people making the claims for racial inferiority have failed rather spectacularly to back up their claims; rather than stick only to the most rigorous research with the most narrow and specific conclusions, these bozos will jump on any research, no matter how sloppy or shoddy, no matter the pedigree of whose doing the research or who's supporting it.
Posted by: ScentOfViolets | December 12, 2007 12:42 PM
rm,
I'm happy to inform you that I'm not a teacher. To make a point I can respond to, though, you'll need to specify which questions I may have asked that are not even wrong.
ScentOfViolets,
I agree that there is not an equal burden of proof. The side that believes there is a significant difference has a greater burden of proof, a priori, because the natural null hypothesis is that races are equally endowed intellectually due to the fact that we have only evolved in geographical separation for around 40K years.
However, the evidence, taken at face value at least, has generally been on the side of people saying that there is a genetic component to the IQ differences between the races because that's what the tests have been telling us. This is why its nice to see arguments that are well put together by Gladwell and others that give us a plausible explanation for the tsting data based on environment only. I don't think its racist to think that the arguments on neither side are conclusive yet.
Posted by: Jim W | December 12, 2007 1:21 PM
It suggests that what we call intelligence is, on some level, closer to a skill, and it can be refined and strengthened through practice.
I'm always a little surprised when I come across statements like this. I just can't help thinking, "doesn't everyone know this by now?"
Not that it's really the kind of thing that everyone should know, but this idea has been around for a very long time, supported by, well just about all the biological evidence that I can think of, and yet it seems to have a hard time breaking out beyond the scientific community -- people still seem to write and talk about this as though it's cutting edge stuff...
Posted by: Brian | December 12, 2007 2:30 PM
No Jim, that's very specifically what the research has not been telling us. And this is very well documented. It is also very well documented that there is no scientific basis what is popularly conceived as race (how many millions of times has this fact been pointed out?)
Indeed, no one has ever suggested a plausible (i.e., testable) reason for intelligence being differentially selected for or against in any but the most marginal environments.
Posted by: ScentOfViolets | December 12, 2007 2:42 PM
I didn't mean the IQ research has been telling us that one race is more intelligent than another. That begs the question. I meant that the research has been showing one race consistently getting higher IQ scores than another. This naturally leads to a testable scientific hypothesis: that the difference is at least partially due to genetic differences. The problem is that confounding environmental effects makes this a difficult scientific hypothesis to test, as I stated in my first comment.
Its also been pointed out a million times that if the commonly used racial labels correlate with genetic differences, which they do, then this provides a possible genetic basis for differences in IQ tests. Whether these populations are different "races" according to someone's scientific definition is obviously irrelevant.
Posted by: Jim W | December 12, 2007 2:58 PM
I do think, on the other hand, that there is probably a scientificalistically valid correlation between race and ability to drive a $60,000 luxury sedan. I think if you tested a random sample of people of all races in the U.S. and people of all races in Mali, you would find an undeniable genetic bias toward driving-luxury-car-edness among those of European descent . . . not that individuals of any race might not have this genetically evolved ability, but among populations as a whole there would be an undeniable difference. Anyone who denies this is just a, well, a denialist. Why can't you face the truth?
Posted by: rm | December 12, 2007 2:59 PM
Actually, Jim, your first statement, the one I took issue with was this:
The rest of what you write, frankly, makes no sense:
Er, no, when scientists say there is no basis for race, they are going with what the population geneticists say. To say that there might be a 'racial' basis for a possible difference difference in intelligence, but that this basis is not genetic in nature is, well, nonsensical.
Further, while there may be certain phenotypical correlations, these are correlations of background, ancestry, not of 'race'. The most genetically divergent population from the basic African stock is not a European or Asian population (or subpopulation), it is the inhabitants of Oceania - Micronesians, Australian bushmen, etc. Yet, the very people who would be most confused with people of immediate African descent would be these same Australian aborigines - the same color, the hair, the face and body type, etc.
The same is true with any of a number of various inherited diseases: sickle cell anemia, for example, is not associated with Africans per se, but people who have grown up in a particular environment. There are Semitic peoples who also have a high incidence of sickle cell anemia, not because of their 'blackness' (there are other Semitic populations who share a higher percentage of their traits with the canonical 'African'), but because that trait was selected for in their particular environment. And so it goes. That's all there is to it. There is only a 'controversy' in the sense that evolution is a 'controversial' theory amongst certain willfully ignorant types.
Could new data change this picture? Is new data scientifically or logically possible. Certainly. That's why people who know about this sort of thing state their beliefs in the form of 'no evidence exists . . .' rather than in more absolutist terms.
Posted by: ScentOfViolets | December 12, 2007 4:00 PM
What you are saying about populations is true.
What I am saying is also true: that there is a positive correlation between the commonly used racial categories and the populations you are describing. Note that I'm not saying the correlation coefficient equals one.
Also, when people talk about racial differences and IQ, they definitely don't group Australian aborigines with Africans. They look at populations that are differentiated based on their ancestry.
Posted by: Jim W | December 12, 2007 4:32 PM
Its also been pointed out a million times that if the commonly used racial labels correlate with genetic differences, which they do, then this provides a possible genetic basis for differences in IQ tests. Whether these populations are different "races" according to someone's scientific definition is obviously irrelevant.
In case my last response is too terse, my point is that whether you label two populations as being of the same or different races is a meaningless semantic issue. If there is a statistically significant difference in the genetics of the two populations, then it is possible that there could be a statistically significant difference in their phenotypes , if the environment is held constant.
This is true if the two populations are Europeans and Africans, or if the two populations are Norwegians and Swedes.
Posted by: Jim W | December 12, 2007 4:47 PM
There may be differences between races. I feel its likely, since so many other systems vary, so may IQ. If there is no difference in IQ as a measure in intelligence as a scientific fact that may not lead to the fact that all races are equal, but that the test is itself flawed.
More to the point Ive always wondered why it matters. I know the more humane of us would like to use this as evidence that we are equal, the racists among us would like to use their data to prove otherwise.
Lets say indians prove less intelligent. (I purposefully chose an obviously incorrect group) Does that mean Apu at the squishy mart is dumber then I? No .. it would mean that on average an indian would have a lower IQ then the avg white. So what?
Even if that were fact it would not lead to my discriminating against them as individuals. I know many people of all races are dumber then rocks, so evaluating them individually on the basis of their group membership would be pointless.
Its an interesting factoid.. but really not all that important to anyone other then sociologists and bored intellectuals.
Posted by: david b | December 12, 2007 8:28 PM
Its an interesting factoid
No, dude; the very fact that the topic generates any discussion at all is evidence of how stupid we all are. This is a non-question. Except for the racism embedded in our basic cultural schema, this would not even be an intelligible question.
Posted by: rm | December 12, 2007 9:56 PM
"single-parent homes are less cognitively complex than two-parent homes."
What? How are single-parent homes less "cognitively complex"? Why should this be so? What is the evidence for this? It sounds like a ridiculous claim to make, considering that the quality of family environments depends on so much more than whether both a child's parents are involved. I think the degree of involvement of the parents matters. Admittedly, single parents may have less time for their children, so that the children don't get enough stimulation, but this is also true of two parent households. Also, parents are not the only people who can make a difference in a child's life. Other family members or even mentors can serve the same functions as parents.
Posted by: Felicia | December 13, 2007 12:21 PM
The entire IQ industry is another example of social science attempting to "scientifically" classify, control, and enslave whole populations of "subhumans." Nazis, Soviets, Western social science in the service of capitalism and intellectual elites--the game is always the same and it's always about power. Check out Foucault.
Posted by: Foucauldian | December 14, 2007 3:08 AM
If, rather than testing some innate capacity known as "intelligence," IQ actually tests how familiar individuals are with a particular mode of abstract analysis, that throws the whole universe of hereditary determinism into chaos. It suggests that what we call intelligence is, on some level, closer to a skill, and it can be refined and strengthened through practice.
well, of course. in one.
Posted by: zafar | December 14, 2007 4:53 AM