echidna

ps418, yes & OK.

echidna

Of course & if you check what’s been posted so far you’d see much discussion already of this “more involved”. In fact the only mention here to brain size as causal to intelligence has been to debunk the notion.

Peer-reviewed scientific data study please, attributing group racial intelligence averages to average gestation times.

If you don’t have a link then that would be the unsubstantiated bit. Not saying you’re wrong, but there are dozens of theories postulating alternative causalities. So far the APA wisely remains agnostic.

Never said it was.

That would be an excellent starter for another thread.

echidna

Afterthought ps418, bear in mind it's even worse for Murray. HM’s model would actually predict a significant fall in average IQ over time. Murray’s dodgy statement never even mention this, and with good reason it would seem.

P1. Lower socio-economic class has lower intelligence (mainly attributable to genetics)
P2. Lower socio-economic class has higher fertility

HM’s implied conclusion : Average intelligence should FALL

But it doesn’t !!!

echidna

ohwilleke. I understand that twin studies show that genetic influence actually increases with age. So as such, behavioural correlation is less strong the younger the individual is. But how this should also influence education policy I am quite unclear.

<a href="http://info.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/plomdevelop/genetics/99jungen.htm" target="_blank">http://info.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/plomdevelop/genetics/99jungen.htm</a>

Amen-Moses

OK, unfortunately I don't have a link as the correlation was something I discovered whilst reading something else, probably "The Naked Ape" or something similar. I did check with my cousin who lectures in midwifery and she confirmed the gestation times bit.

If I have time later I'll try to find some internet sources.

Amen-Moses

echidna

Came across this in my wanderings. Not so much that I use it to reject modern intelligence testing, but as some history to explain why intelligence testing is still viewed with some scepticism, and fear for that matter

Much of the ire in this debate stems from the chequered history of intelligence testing. During the 1910’s & 20’s it was quite extensively used to scientifically justify racist anti-immigrant and anti-nonwhite policies.

From <a href="http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/assignment1/1910leeman.html" target="_blank">http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/assignment1/1910leeman.html</a>

FWIW I’ll accept that modern tests can be created culture-neutral although I’m not utterly convinced of course. But for such a fledgling field it seems agreed that human intelligence is still far from being defined and understood objectively.

This site lists a brief history of intelligence modelling.

<a href="http://137.99.89.70:8001/siegle/espy360/intecrea.htm" target="_blank">http://137.99.89.70:8001/siegle/espy360/intecrea.htm</a>

ohwilleke

General intelligence is a concept that basically means being good at a wide variety of intellectual tasks without much regard to the peculariarties of a particular test. People who perform well on one IQ test have a strong tendency to perform well on just about any other test of intelligence or academic ability you can think of . . . from SATs, the grades in schools, to evaluations of relative intelligence by peers or teachers, to reading habits, etc.

Even in cases where there is evidence that a test or testing context is culturally biased. There is no evidence that people with greater general intelligence within the group that a test is biased against are performing worse on biased IQ tests than people of lower general intelligence within the group with respect to which the test is biased.

Corrolation is not the same as precisely measurement in an absolute sense.

Race is one of those odd traits which is theoretically nearly impossible to define, and operationally not particularly difficult to determine. The vast majority of people have an unambigious opinion about what their race is which is widely shared by the communities that they live in and work with.

There are gray areas, but even then, mostly these gray areas primarily involve what to call large classes of people (race is a simplified way of classifying individual differences, rather than an extrinsic universal reality), rather than doubt about who an particular individual is: What race is someone of Arab or Semetic descent? What race is a mestizo with Native American and Spanish roots? Are African-Americans and recent African immigrants the same group or different? Is there any benefit in your modelling to distinguishing between light skinned and dark skinned African-Americans? How do you classify someone with an Asian parent and a Northern European parent?

Also, even if observed groups of people of different race are different, this does not mean that the observed groups are different because of race.

For example, I would not be at all surprised by a study that showed that Asian-Indians in the United States have a much higher average intelligence than Asian-Indians on the Indian subcontinent. Why? Because Asian-Indian immigration to the United States has taken place almost entirely during a period in which almost all the visas available to Asian-Indians have required the primary immigrant to have an advanced college education as a condition of issuance.

Similarly, one would expect that the African-American population of Cambridge, Massachussetts, home of Harvard College and a number of high tech businesses in what is generally speaking one of the most white major metropolitan areas in the United States (and hence likely to have a population of African-Americans skewed towards students and professors), probably has a higher IQ on average than Biloxi, Mississippi, a city whose residents were not selected on a basis that is likely to be corrolated with especially high intelligence.

MadMordigan

A more fundamental problem with IQ tests is while they are good at preventing false positives (people can't score higher than their ability) they are useless at prevent false negatives (people can easily score lower than their ability). Without some sort of evidence that every testee is 'trying their best', we have no idea what these scores mean.

Happy Wonderer

I agree with you except that I'm not even sure that you can prevent false positives. I tend to score extremely well on intelligence tests but am not arguably smarter than my peers -- my Dad happened to teach psychometrics and I have a lot of experience at taking a wide variety of intelligence test. (Who is the most available kid to practice giving a new test to?) Although I'd like to believe that I'm really smart,
I really don't think that it is true. (Just ask my wife!)

True anecdote (as far as I know) that may also explain my distrust of tests as a good mesasure of IQ. Sometime early in my Dad's tenure he made a bet with a colleague that he could pass the state's Civil Engineering test without knowing anything about engineering. He not only passed, but with the second highest score in the state.

I'm sure he prepped for it somehow, although all I can recall him saying is that the test was very badly designed. This must have been in the 50's and I'm sure tests are better now, but probably not that much better...

O.K., so a small number of people have the expertise or experience to jigger the tests. Big deal, except there is now an entire industry devoted to preparing kids to jigger the SAT and other tests.

HW

echidna

Personally I’ve always described myself as a bitzer.

(bitzer this and bitzer that for those unfamiliar with the term)