Sunday, June 07, 2009

NYTimes: Rising Above I.Q.

From The New York Times:

OP-ED COLUMNIST: Rising Above I.Q.


Three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html

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Kevin McGrew PhD
Educational/School Psych. 

Sent from KMcGrew iPhone (IQMobile). (If message includes an image-double click on it to make larger-if hard to see) 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

For a detailed response to the many intellectual falsities Nisbett published in his latest book check Rushton's webpage to access his working paper (co-authored with Jensen).

Observer said...

Recent neurological studies show brain regions correlated with intelligence are significantly hereditary.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126993.300-highspeed-brains-are-in-the-genes.html

Personality appears to be significantly determined at birth too according to recent research.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/health/news/article.cfm?c_id=204&objectid=10566320

Also, note that Nisbett omits a number of studies to avoid a Bell Curve type backlash. See this working paper review of the book.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Intelligence%20and%20How%20to%20Get%20It%20(Working%20Paper).pdf

Sandra Scarr, after conducting the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study:

"Within the range of 'humane environments,'variations in family socioeconomic characteristics and in child-rearing practices have little or no effect on IQ measured in adolescence." P. 476

"There is simply no good evidence that social environmental factors have a large effect on IQ, particularly in adolescence and beyond, except in cases of extreme environmental deprivation." P. 476

By adulthood, all of the IQ correlation between biologically related persons is genetic. P. 178 Phenotypic g closely reflects the genetic g, but bears hardly any resemblance to the (shared) environmental g. P. 187

2. From that study the black children adopted by white families matured to have IQs that are consistent with their biological peers; Asian children adopted by white families mature to have IQs that are consistent with their biological peers and which are higher than their adoptive parents.

Also, note more recent twin studies:

"Contrary to "culture" theory, the ethnic academic gaps are almost identical for transracially adopted children, and to the extent they are different they go in the opposite direction predicted by culture theory. The gap between whites and Asians fluctuated from 19 to .09 in the NAEP data while the gap in the adoption data is from 1/3 to 3 times larger. This is consistent with the Sue and Okazaki paper above which showed that contrary to popular anecdotes, the values that lead to higher academic grades are actually found more often in white homes. In other words Asian-Americans perform highly despite their Asian home cultural environment not because of it. And though the sample is meager, I find it interesting that the gap between the black and white adopted children was virtually identical (within just 4-6 points) to the gap between whites and blacks in the general population, just like in the Scarr adoption study."

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004064.html

Kevin McGrew said...

Ben017. Thanks for the excellent comment. You may be interested in post I made after the one you commented on - http://tinyurl.com/luov99

Also, I thought your post was detailed enough that it should be featured as a guest blog post by itself. I just post it at my blog as a guest post.