Comments on: Reinventing the Wheel

By: Perla

Perla — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:30:50 +0000

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By: Fly

Fly — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 14:20:35 +0000

If a population experiences a common environmental change across SES and race, then snapshot studies of differences due to environment may not show the change while comparisons between generations would (Flynn Effect)?

Mother?s health and nutrition may have lasting effects:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/health/30age.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=eea0952d60448481&ex=1311912000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

By: Fly

Fly — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 07:39:04 +0000

Sharpe: ?After reading Jensen's 1969 paper I am even more strongly of the opinion that the only way to access the approximately 20% variance attributable to the environment is through better pre- and peri-natal care for children from lower SES environments.?

I strongly agree with your main point. Avoiding harmful substances, breast feeding, and supplementing with fish oils, vitamins, and minerals should improve IQ.

However, I believe that the potential improvement is greater than a part of 20% environmental variance.

First, I suspect the 20% number does not represent a population of poor blacks. I?d expect the environmental contribution to be higher in that subpopulation.

Second, the 20% number is only what has been measured in the past. Applying the best information known to date could raise the bottom scores by more than 7 points. As brain function and development are better understood, more effective interventions will be possible. So future improvements are not constrained by past statistics.

I?m hopeful that future advances in nutrition, medicine, biotech, and education will significantly increase intelligence.

By: David B

David B — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 02:29:08 +0000

The cumulative (environmental) Flynn Effect is over 20 IQ points. It may be argued that this only affects IQ test results and not the mystical quality g, but that’s too subtle for me.

By: Alex B.

Alex B. — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 20:20:55 +0000

Anyway, I'm confused...

I explicitly stated, assuming that the before and after IQs were directly comparable. That is an assumption, which I think is not necessarily tenable; but, for the sake of argument, if it were so, then I offered the fourth branch of the critique.

That being said, the r2 values (in the second branch of the critique) had nothing to do with pre-post testing. It had to do with post testing only and its relation to SES.

They are two seperate. independent critiques of the article (well, not so much the article, per se, but the blantent misrepresentation of it by the NYT)

By: Dan Nexon

Dan Nexon — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 19:56:39 +0000

Why does it follow that this is the upper limit (of how variation in environmental factors shape scores on IQ tests)?

Anyway, I’m confused, because first you argued that the study involved contained numerous methodological flaws–lack of randomization, endogeneity issues, and so forth–and then you assert that this is the upper limit of environmental influence. How does that follow?

By: The Real Richard Sharpe

The Real Richard Sharpe — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:29:13 +0000

After reading Jensen’s 1969 paper I am even more strongly of the opinion that the only way to access the approximately 20% variance attributable to the environment is through better pre- and peri-natal care for children from lower SES environments.

Unfortunately, certain strong lobby groups have opposing interests.

By: rikurzhen

rikurzhen — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 15:48:35 +0000

alex, that was my guess, but i’d never seen the responses

By: Alex B.

Alex B. — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 13:24:37 +0000

the only people i've read claim to do anything like that is The Abecedarian project

Claim is the key word.

Spitz, H. H. (1992). Does the Carolina Abecedarian Early Intervention Project prevent sociocultural
mental retardation? Intelligence , 16, 225

Spitz, H. H. (1993). Early educational intervention research and Cronbach's two disciplines of scientific psychology. Intelligence , 17 , 251-256.

By: rikurzhen

rikurzhen — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:35:18 +0000

you can environmentally influence IQ all the way to brain death. what's not been well demonstrated is any way to cause a lasting increase in g among children raised in better-than-criminal environments.

the only people i've read claim to do anything like that is The Abecedarian project

By: Alex B.

Alex B. — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:18:57 +0000

6-17%, particularly at the upper range, is still a fairly significant change in cognitive performance as measured by the tests in question.

But these were not run of the mill MR children. They were from extreme circumstances. So this is likly a likly a cap as far as shared environments can influence IQ outcomes, and not really that applicable to folks from "normal" environments.

By: Alex B.

Alex B. — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:09:30 +0000

Why would we want to be defiant about it?

Stupid spell checker can't read my mind. Thanks for the catch. I changed it.

By: Dan Nexon

Dan Nexon — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 11:07:17 +0000

So a less snide comment: 6-17%, particularly at the upper range, is still a fairly significant change in cognitive performance as measured by the tests in question. Given that the debate is not, at least among sane people, about whether cognitive capacity is heritable, but about the degree to which environmental factors can influence cognitive performance, this still seems like a fairly significant rebuttal of strong (in these relative terms) determinism.

By: Dan Nexon

Dan Nexon — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:59:19 +0000

Many, many apologies. I didn’t hit the “read the rest of the post” link.

By: Dan Nexon

Dan Nexon — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:35:02 +0000

The study you link to suggests that Head Start is of limited effectiveness because other environmental factors eventually swamp its influence, therefore supporting David Kirp's argument that IQ manifestation is heavily influenced by socio-cultural, rather than innate, variables. Do you have a criticism of the study's research design or some other reasons why we should discount it?

By: The Real Richard Sharpe

The Real Richard Sharpe — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:34:57 +0000

What we can defiantly conclude is that abusing or neglecting your children so bad that the government has to take them away tends to produce lower IQs (although some kids will still be in the average range) (Emphasis added)

Why would we want to be defiant about it?