cheesecake4all
16-01-2012, 10:39 PM
Source: Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments, Jan 2012 (http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Nisbett-et-al.-2012.pdf)
(emphasis added. A generalization might be that your generation is about 9 IQ points smarter than your parents' generation, assuming that they were at least 30 years old when you were born :) )
For nations that were fully modern by the beginning of the 20th century, IQ gains have been on the order of 3 points per decade (Flynn, 2007).
It seems likely that the ultimate cause of IQ gains is the Industrial Revolution, which produced a need for increased intellectual skills that modern societies somehow rose to meet. The intermediate causes of IQ gains may include such factors as a more favorable ratio of adults to children, better schooling, more cognitively demanding jobs, and more cognitively challenging leisure.
Flynn (2009c) has argued that one proximate cause is the adoption of a scientific approach to reasoning with an attendant emphasis on classification and logical analysis.
Blair and colleagues (Blair, Gamson, Thorne, & Baker, 2005) have shown that the teaching of mathematics, beginning very early in school, has shifted from instruction in mere counting and arithmetical operations to presentation of highly visual forms of objects and geometrical figures with patterns children have to figure out.
Such instruction seems a plausible explanation for at least part of the gain in fluid intelligence of the kind measured by Raven's Progressive Matrices.
(emphasis added. A generalization might be that your generation is about 9 IQ points smarter than your parents' generation, assuming that they were at least 30 years old when you were born :) )
For nations that were fully modern by the beginning of the 20th century, IQ gains have been on the order of 3 points per decade (Flynn, 2007).
It seems likely that the ultimate cause of IQ gains is the Industrial Revolution, which produced a need for increased intellectual skills that modern societies somehow rose to meet. The intermediate causes of IQ gains may include such factors as a more favorable ratio of adults to children, better schooling, more cognitively demanding jobs, and more cognitively challenging leisure.
Flynn (2009c) has argued that one proximate cause is the adoption of a scientific approach to reasoning with an attendant emphasis on classification and logical analysis.
Blair and colleagues (Blair, Gamson, Thorne, & Baker, 2005) have shown that the teaching of mathematics, beginning very early in school, has shifted from instruction in mere counting and arithmetical operations to presentation of highly visual forms of objects and geometrical figures with patterns children have to figure out.
Such instruction seems a plausible explanation for at least part of the gain in fluid intelligence of the kind measured by Raven's Progressive Matrices.