IQ - Weiye Loh on Diigo

Mar

25

2012

How intelligent is the average IQ test designer? - SkepticReport

It is clear to everybody that if you solve a crossword puzzle, then you must also have the ability to do so. But the reverse conclusion is rather inane. If you do not solve it, it does not follow that you cannot solve it at all, in the sense that you completely and utterly lack the natural prerequisites for doing so. It just means that you did not solve it yet. So if you learn the principles of crossword puzzles – and maybe some foreign words and the names of a couple of ancient Norse and Greek gods – you will probably be able to solve them the next time.

www.skepticreport.com/sr

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IQ Measurement Data

it is no wonder that extended school attendance leads to a higher “IQ score” and that the lack of schooling leads to a score at the level of the mentally retarded.
This is a fact that the IQ theorists do not really like: They are not only very well aware of the fact that you can easily improve your faculties for solving IQ tests and thus gain a higher score, it is also common knowledge to them that the average population in industrial countries with regular schooling, as already mentioned, has become no less than 30 percent better at filling out IQ tests in the course of the 20th century.
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- And that is a contradiction in terms – one which Nyborg et al. are not very keen to announce. When you learn the principles behind IQ tests, you get better at doing them (no surprise, really), and therefore your score, i.e. your IQ, rises, but it should not rise since it is supposed to be a natural constant – in the opinion of the IQ proponents. Nyborg will not allow people to have higher IQs, and therefore he ends up disproving himself when he tries to explain away the ‘measured’ rise: The tendency of the IQ to rise is not caused by people’s increasing intelligence, but by the fact that they have learned how to do the exercises which, in the opinion of Nyborg et al., is a form of cheating – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s IQ, nor improve upon thine own! – and therefore the measured increase is declared nil and void!
- Helmuth Nyborg wants to prove the existence of an alleged inherent, innate factor “g”, “general intelligence”, which, almost by definition, is natural and unalterable. His particular kind of dullwittedness therefore is not a defect of nature and in his case nurture also cannot be blamed – at least not directly. Nyborg is not endowed with some kind of very poor “g” preventing him from seeing what ordinary mortals do not need to strain their brains too much to grasp.
- It is common knowledge that the school and educational system in the Western world revolves around selection: The best performing pupils/students get the opportunity to move on to the next level in the hierarchy of education, whereas the students who do not perform as well are deprived of this opportunity. And it is also no secret that the higher rungs in the hierarchy of education lead to the better paid rungs in the hierarchy of jobs. No wonder that “countless studies show that the g scores of school children (i.e. their IQ-test results. DS) can rather accurately predict how much they will earn 30 years later.

Oct

1

2011

Epiphenom: Deep thinkers are more likely to lose their faith

a new analysis by psychologists Gary Lewis, Stuart Ritchie, and Timothy Bates at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has provided some more, rigorous evidence that the link is indeed real. They took data from the large MacArthur Foundation Survey of Midlife Development in the United States and found that high IQ was significantly associated with every one of six different measures of religion.

This effect still held even after adjusting for factors like education, sex, age and even personality. OK, there was no longer a relationship with spirituality, the weakest of all indicators of religion. On the other hand the effect was strongest with fundamentalism

The authors point out that the effect is very small. And what's more, there's still no reason to suppose that atheists are more intelligent because of their intelligence. There might be some other factor that they didn't account for that's related to both.

epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/...s-are-more-likely-to-lose.html

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Intelligence IQ Religiosity Religion

in one study they did measure IQ, and IQ was indeed correlated with 'thinking style' test scores. That means that cleverer people were more likely to get the answer right.

However, even after adjusting for their higher IQ, deep-thinkers were still more likely to be atheists, and to have lost their childhood religion.

Aug

4

2011

Are Smart People Getting Smarter? | Wired Science | Wired.com

The Flynn effect has always been tinged with mystery. First popularized by the political scientist James Flynn, the effect refers to the widespread increase in IQ scores over time. Some measures of intelligence — such as performance on Raven’s Progressive Matrices in Des Moines and Scotland — have been increasing for at least 100 years. What’s most peculiar is how scores have increased:

1) Scores have increased the most on the problem-solving portion of intelligence tests.
2) Verbal intelligence has remained relatively flat, while non-verbal scores continue to rise.
3) Performance gains have occurred across all age groups.
4) The rise in scores exists primarily on those tests with content that does not appear to be easily learned.

www.wired.com/...e-smart-people-getting-smarter

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IQ Intelligence Test Measurement

While one might assume that IQ scores could increase over time in terms of crystallized intelligence — the part of the test that measures particular kinds of knowledge, such as being able to count or vocabulary words — it’s actually increased on measures of fluid intelligence, which is the ability to solve abstract problems. This has led some psychologists, such as Ian Dreary, to conclude that “large differences in scores [between generations] are demonstrated in just those situations where similarity would be expected.” Flynn, meanwhile, marveled at the magical constancy of the effect: “It’s as if some unseen hand is propelling scores upward,” he wrote.
. In recent years, many psychologists have embraced the “multiplicity hypothesis” which argues that the Flynn effect is explained by a long list of factors, such as improvements in early education (especially for girls), removal of lead paint, increased sophistication of tests, better test taking attitudes and adequate nutrition.
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- What makes this mystery particularly noteworthy is that many of the explanations for the Flynn effect seem particularly relevant to the left side of the bell curve, or those with below average scores. This suggests that most of the intelligence gains have come from solving low hanging fruit, fixing those glaring societal inequalities that meant millions of children lacked access to adequate food, education and medical care. Since we’ve made progress on these problems, one might suppose that the Flynn effect would start to fade, at least in developed nations. (All the low hanging fruit is gone, as Tyler Cowen might say.) Sure enough, some studies have concluded that the Flynn effect has begun to disappear in Denmark, Norway and Britain.
- the Flynn effect doesn’t appear to be solely caused by rising scores among the lowest quartile. Rather, it seems to be just as prevalent among the top 5 percent. The smartest are getting smarter.
- What might be causing this aspect of the Flynn effect? Obviously, it’s harder to explain using the low hanging fruit hypothesis, since these students (even in 1981) were probably well fed and had access to math education. This leads the scientists to focus on new forms of “environmental stimulation” as a likely explanation:
  
  Rowe and Rodgers (2002) noted that “If the rising mean were driven by the smart getting smarter, then the change might reflect the introduction of some qualitatively novel form of environmental stimulation. If the overall distribution increased in pace, the cause would lie in processes that affected everyone equally.” We find the rising mean of the entire distribution is partly driven by the smart getting smarter. This suggests some form of environmental stimulation may be at work in the right tail.

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How intelligent is the average IQ test designer? - SkepticReport

Epiphenom: Deep thinkers are more likely to lose their faith

Are Smart People Getting Smarter? | Wired Science | Wired.com

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