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Adrian II
11-30-2007, 10:30
Thanks to the excellent Arts & Letters website I hit upon this review (http://www.theamericanscholar.org/au07/flynn-restak.html) of a new book by James R. Flynn, of the 'Flynn effect' in IQ studies.

The interesting part is where Flynn asserts that a person's genetic make-up has a sort of multiplier effect in that it 'seeks out' a stimulating environment:


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.


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.”

Rodion Romanovich
11-30-2007, 11:41
Interesting, apart from the fact that IQ is an incredibly poor measure of intelligence, and that it's essentially impossible to reliably separate genes from nurture when it comes to finding the causes of both IQ and intelligence, yet he makes very exact numerical claims about it...

KukriKhan
11-30-2007, 13:47
Let the experts argue the relative numbers in the nature vs. nurture debate, as far as I'm concerned.

This bit caught my interest:


“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.”
(my bolding)

I wonder if that's true. It seems to hold in looking at, and comparing, the mindsets of my own family from my 1890's-era grandfather, through 4 generations to my 5 year old grandson.

Vladimir
11-30-2007, 14:43
Interesting. It's good to see he stressed the importance of parental influence. :2thumbsup:

Adrian II
11-30-2007, 15:28
It's the innovative thinking I like best. His notion that genes aren't passive bearers of human characteristics, but that they 'seek out' certain environments that, in turn, enable the maximization of said characteristics, represents the kind of dynamic thinking that leads to scientific break-throughs.

Consider the static nineteenth-century thinking on the nervous system. Doctors used to think of the animal nervous system as divided into two functionally distinct parts, the central and the autonomous nervous system. The latter could -- by definition -- not be consciously influenced by the person since it controlled visceral and other 'involuntary' body functions. Hence no individual was ever enabled and encouraged to consciously control those functions.

However, in the course of the twentieth century neurologists and psychiatrists proposed that parts of the 'autonomous' nervous system could be consciously influenced and were not autonomous after all. That is how we came to understand psychosomatic disorders, and various ways for the individual to (help) control them.

I don't care much for his precise nature/nurture percentages (the article calls them 'cheeky') as long as they are used as approximations based on sound research. It is Flynn's concept of the surprising ways in which they may interact that counts.

Vladimir
11-30-2007, 16:04
Many monastic orders have proven (to my mind) that you can control or influence these autonomous functions. It’s western culture’s reliance on the scientific method which created this short term ignorance. As science and methods improve, we are able to understand ourselves better than even the most devout monk.

The entire point of evolution is that nurture (external influence) is responsible for our natural (internal) makeup. Sexual reproduction increases the chance that beneficial changes endure. Since many genes lay dormant because our environment has changed it’s only natural to conclude that they can be reawakened by our surroundings. How we interact with our surroundings is largely affected by our basic genetic traits*. Since life is a huge series and combination of simple, supporting reactions these reactions would seek out information to support themselves (and maximize said maximization). Nice, logical, and linear.

Many breakthroughs occur due to the physiological composition of our brain. Left-brain thinkers can do a lot but once the information drifts toward the right, more innovative and imaginative answers are revealed. It also takes time for the neuropathways to be constructed.


*I don't mean to imply predetermination, only increased probability.

Louis VI the Fat
11-30-2007, 19:28
I don't see anything particularly new in Flynn's reasoning? I thought it was commonly understood that there is a direct relationship between nature and nurture. That the old question of which percentage is owing to which is a false question.
Maybe Flynn is exploring this insight to eleborate on the Flynn effect, which, I assume, could be new.

Two things struck me as peculiar. The first:

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.

“There is a strong tendency for a genetic advantage or disadvantage to get more and more matched to a corresponding environment,” he writes.
The whole basis, the claim of novelty, of this work by Flynn is to make clear that there is no such thing as an X% nature and an Y% nurture element of IQ. He seeks to explain that their relationship is not one of simple addition, but of multiplication. Then why this return to outdated set percentages?
In different situations, the relationship differs. One man's IQ is 80-20 nature/nurture, another one's 30-70.
Are Flynn's percentages a simplification? Is he simply being your typical social scientist, believing that there is no such thing as science unless the end result is stated in numbers?

If you are genetically disposed to be tall, you excel at basketball, hence you enjoy it more, practice it more often, get rewarded for it more and thus you enjoy and practice it more etc. The slight genetic difference is multiplied by nurture.

Hence, the second peculiarity:

the discoverer of the Flynn effect claims that genes control IQ less than you’d expectOne could say, I would say, that by Flynn's reasoning, genes often control IQ even more than expected. Genetic differences are nurturally multiplied by his reasoning. So even a slight genetic difference can have far reaching consequences.

Fragony
11-30-2007, 19:50
I don't see anything particularly new in Flynn's reasoning? I thought it was commonly understood that there is a direct relationship between nature and nurture.

Thought it was me. The existance of different types of intelligence isn't new either, there are 5 types, we even invented eq as a cautious sixth to please the ladies.

Rodion Romanovich
11-30-2007, 20:25
It's the innovative thinking I like best. His notion that genes aren't passive bearers of human characteristics, but that they 'seek out' certain environments that, in turn, enable the maximization of said characteristics, represents the kind of dynamic thinking that leads to scientific break-throughs.

Consider the static nineteenth-century thinking on the nervous system. Doctors used to think of the animal nervous system as divided into two functionally distinct parts, the central and the autonomous nervous system. The latter could -- by definition -- not be consciously influenced by the person since it controlled visceral and other 'involuntary' body functions. Hence no individual was ever enabled and encouraged to consciously control those functions.

However, in the course of the twentieth century neurologists and psychiatrists proposed that parts of the 'autonomous' nervous system could be consciously influenced and were not autonomous after all. That is how we came to understand psychosomatic disorders, and various ways for the individual to (help) control them.

I don't care much for his precise nature/nurture percentages (the article calls them 'cheeky') as long as they are used as approximations based on sound research. It is Flynn's concept of the surprising ways in which they may interact that counts.
Yes, that's true, but that's hardly any news afaik. Hasn't that principle been around since at least the mid-20th century?

Adrian II
11-30-2007, 21:37
Yes, that's true, but that's hardly any news afaik. Hasn't that principle been around since at least the mid-20th century?The notion of a quasi-(pro)active gene has been around since Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976), but only in the sense that genes can be described as if they possess a will of their own, and only to the extent that they use the 'host' organism as a vehicle for their own reproduction.

This concept is now applied in a different way by Flynn, who describes genes as if they actively seek environments in which the IQ faculties of the host organism can thrive. He seems to say that one third of IQ is hardwired and the rest is the result of this interaction between genes and environment. The latter process is radically different from the old notion of the environment determining (some part of) IQ, in which the environment alone was thought to be the active component.

EDIT
Fascinating stuff, many implications. I have said it before: if I had the chance to start my life from scratch, I would go for a career in molecular biology.

Rodion Romanovich
11-30-2007, 22:46
Hm, then you're maybe meaning new as in supported by scientifically rigorious experiments. The idea has however been around for a long time afaik. I think I've even been involved in a discussion on this idea here on the .org a while ago, or maybe it was somewhere else... However, this is often the case in science - that scientific proof for a generally believed to be true hypotheses comes long after informal argumentation establishes it to be a reasonable assumption. And the significance of the actual scientific proof isn't worth underestimating, of course. Though, if it is the case that this proof is new or not, I can't tell, since I don't know of the involved publications (primary sources) referred to in the book.

The significance I assign to this, as well as other cases where generally accepted but not yet proven hypotheses later becoming proven, is that it means evolution is such an exact model that it's possible to derive very good hypotheses merely by doing mathematical/economical analyses of benefit. It's of course always necessary to test the hypotheses by the traditional experiments before calling them truths or very reasonable assumptions, but the work of deriving significant and useful hypotheses that are at all worth bothering to do experiments about, can be made efficient - and make the results that the subject can produce far more interesting and with far more significant impact. For instance, the more or less mathematical derivation of altruism which can be seen within the field of game theory, is much later proven to exist among chimps a few decades later (and that particular experiment is perhaps, IMO, the most significant scientific result within the field of molecular biology since Darwin).

Husar
12-01-2007, 00:37
Bollox. :smash:

Adrian II
12-01-2007, 00:47
Bollox. :smash:How drole. :inquisitive:

Ah, but it must be beerholder time at your end. :2thumbsup:

Papewaio
12-01-2007, 01:21
So you can do exercise for the mind, and the more stimulating the environment the 'fitter' the mind.

Fairly obvious when you consider the mental problems that happens to children who grow up in extreme isolation/abusive upbringings... they are often socially and mentally retarded.