[tt] [technoliberation] Saletan and Flynn

Mon Nov 26 15:54:40 UTC 2007

----- Forwarded message from "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu> -----

From: "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:50:26 -0500
To: technoliberation at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [technoliberation] Saletan and Flynn
Reply-To: technoliberation at yahoogroups.com

Looks like you can add Flynn's new book to the argument against Saletan:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/au07/flynn-restak.html

Nurtural Intelligence

The discoverer of the Flynn effect claims
that genes control IQ less than you'd expect

A review of

What Is Intelligence?
Beyond the Flynn Effect by James R. Flynn
(Cambridge University Press, $22)

By Richard Restak

During the past hundred years, an impressive increase in IQ scores has
occurred in the world's industrialized countries. In What Is
Intelligence? James R. Flynn, the discoverer and chronicler of this
phenomenon (dubbed the "Flynn Effect"), suggests that we should not
facilely equate IQ gains with intelligence gains. He says that it's
necessary to "dissect 'intelligence'" into its component parts: "solving
mathematical problems, interpreting the great works of literature,
finding on-the-spot solutions, assimilating the scientific worldview,
critical acumen and wisdom." When this dissection is carried out,
several paradoxes emerge, which Flynn in this engaging book attempts to
reconcile.

In the period from 1947 to 2002, Americans gained 24 points on testing
for similarities ("In what ways are dogs and rabbits alike?") but only
four points on vocabulary and two points on arithmetic. This is
explained, according to Flynn, by our ability to use our intelligence in
new ways. "More formal schooling and the nature of our leisure
activities have altered the balance between the abstract and the
concrete." As a consequence of this "liberation of the human mind,"
which separates us from mindsets of our predecessors of only a century
ago, we are "in the habit of reasoning beyond the concrete."

Flynn's most intriguing and controversial claim concerns the
preponderant influence of the environment over genetic inheritance in
determining intelligence. The direct effect of genes on IQ accounts for
only 36 percent of IQ variance, Flynn tells us, with 64 percent
resulting from the indirect effect of genes plus environmental
differences uncorrelated with genes. Yet this cheeky claim would seem to
be contradicted by the fact that identical twins separated at birth and
raised apart end up with very similar IQs, presumably because of their
identical genes. Not so, says Flynn, who buttresses his argument by
drawing on an analogy from basketball.

If on the basis of their genetic inheritance, separated-twin pairs are
tall, quick, and athletically inclined, both members are likely to be
interested in basketball, practice assiduously, play better, and
eventually attract the attention of basketball coaches capable of
transforming them into world-class competitors. Other twin pairs, in
contrast, endowed with shared genes that predispose them to be shorter
and stodgier than average will display little aptitude or enthusiasm for
playing basketball and will end up as spectators rather than as players.

"Genetic advantages that may have been quite modest at birth have a huge
effect on eventual basketball skills by getting matched with better
environments," Flynn writes. He suggests a similar environmental
influence on genetic inheritance in regard to IQ: Twins with even a
slight genetic IQ advantage are more likely to be drawn toward learning,
perform better during their primary and secondary education, and thereby
gain acceptance into top-tier universities. In the process, their IQ
levels are likely to increase even further.

According to Flynn, the environment will always be the principal
determinant of whether or not a particular genetic predisposition gets
to be fully expressed. "There is a strong tendency for a genetic
advantage or disadvantage to get more and more matched to a
corresponding environment," he writes.

But if IQ can be increased by environmental conditions, then it must be
possible- for Flynn's hypothesis to be correct- for IQ scores to
decrease in response to unfavorable environments. Flynn provides the
experience of second-generation Chinese Americans as an example.

Chinese-American entrants to Berkeley in 1966 had an IQ threshold seven
points below their Caucasian classmates. This held true whether the
students were born in the United States or in China. Yet by 1980 55
percent of the Chinese members of the 1966 class occupied managerial,
professional, or technical occupations compared to only 34 percent of
their Caucasian classmates. Flynn attributes this unexpected result (in
terms of their lower IQ scores) to a parentally instilled passion for
intellectual achievement. He noted that "Chinese Americans are an ethnic
group for whom high achievement preceded high IQ rather than the
reverse."

Not surprisingly Chinese Americans in the highly successful class of
1966 provided their own children with an even more enriched cognitive
environment than they themselves had enjoyed. Their children, as a
result, by age six had a mean IQ nine points above Caucasian students.
But as the children matured further, a surprising finding emerged. By
age 10 the IQ differential had fallen four points. By age 18 IQ had
declined further to only a three-point advantage. The reason for this IQ
drop? According to Flynn, "Much of their advantage was lost when school
began to dilute parental influence."

Flynn balances this criticism of our educational system with the hopeful
note that even modest intellectual endowment can be overcome at any
stage of life by an enriched cognitive environment buttressed by
ambition and sustained, focused individual effort. When these components
aren't present, IQ levels fall.

"It might be that IQ drops three points because a larger number of
affluent middle-class children prefer wandering around shopping malls to
profiting from schooling. It might be that a larger number of children
are raised in solo-parent homes and that such an environment lowers IQ
by three points. Then the enhanced social problem would have caused the
IQ loss and not the reverse."

Will IQ gains continue in the 21st century? While Flynn sees no reason
to believe that IQ gains in developed countries will "go on forever," he
doesn't look upon this development as totally negative. "If IQ gains
were to cease throughout the developed world during the 21st century,
this could give the developing world a chance to catch up."

Richard Restak, a neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, is the author of 18
books, including most recently The Naked Brain: How the Emerging
Neurosociety Is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love.

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