Why Our IQ Levels Are Higher Than Our Grandparents

 Intelligence  

The Flynn effect is the substantial increase in average scores on intelligence tests all over the world over the last century. In a recent TED Talk, the discoverer of the effect, James Flynn talks about how changes in the way we think have had surprising (and not always positive) consequences.

The Flynn effect — the fact that each generation scores higher on an IQ test than the generation before it. Are we actually getting smarter, or just thinking differently? In a fast-paced spin through the cognitive history of the 20th century, moral philosopher James Flynn suggests that changes in the way we think have had surprising (and not always positive) consequences.

IQ tests are updated periodically. For example, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), originally developed in 1949, was updated in 1974 and 1991. The revised versions are standardized to 100 using new standardization samples.

In ordinary use IQ tests are scored with respect to those standardization samples. The only way to compare the difficulty of two versions of a test is to conduct a separate study in which the same subjects take both versions. Doing so confirms IQ gains over time.

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The average rate of increase seems to be about three IQ points per decade in the US on tests such as the WISC. The increasing raw scores appear on every major test, in every age range and in every modern industrialized country although not necessarily at the same rate as in the US using the WISC.

The increase has been continuous and roughly linear from the earliest days of testing to the present. Though the effect is most associated with IQ increases, a similar effect has been found with increases of semantic and episodic memory.

Flynn is a  New Zealand-based researcher who discovered the effect of intelligence changes, believes that environmental factors play a greater role in intelligence than genetics does.

His latest findings, discussed in his 2012 book Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century, also suggest that women are not only as intelligent as men, but superior when it comes to executive function. “Women, when exposed to modernity, do equal men for IQ,” Flynn said to TV ONE’s Greg Boyed. “But in the formal educational setting where they apply their intelligence, they’re outperforming men all hollow.”

Flynn, a retired university professor, has written extensively about the connection between ongoing equality and IQ gains, democracy and human rights. He also wrote a compelling book about books, The Torchlight List, in which he lists 200 must-reads.

Flynn also has researched how to improve intelligence. Each day our minds experience a deluge of conversation, lectures, newspapers, TV, the Internet, and more. But what should we really be paying attention to? Flynn poses the most challenging question of all: Who is to be the master of all this information – you or the modern world? It is you, he claims, who must be the gatekeeper that filters out what is worth remembering. Otherwise you may find yourself at the mercy of a life that you can only manage day by day.

His book, How To Improve Your Mind offers great insights into how to become an information master in the age of information overload.


SOURCE  TED

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