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03/11/10(Thu)01:44 No. 411875 If
IQ tests have nothing to do with environmental influences, why is this
generation scoring an average of 10-20 points higher than the last
generation? Are we genetically superior to our parents too? "If
IQ tests really tap into a fundamental aspect of intelligence, says
Flynn, the implications of this trend are staggering. In the
Netherlands, for instance, the 30-year increase implies that about
one-quarter of the population qualifies as mentally gifted, with IQs of
at least 130. Those with IQs over 150 have increased almost 60-fold
since 1952--a jump that translates into 300,000 potential geniuses. "The
result should be a cultural renaissance too great to be overlooked,'
maintains Flynn. There are, of course, no indications of such a
dramatic leap forward in thought. Instead, as Flynn explains in an
upcoming book (Measurement, Realism and Objectivity, John Forge, Ed.,
Reidel Publishing Co., 1987) and in the March PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLETIN, it
appears that IQ tests measure not intelligence but some form of
abstract problem-solving ability that has little ultimate effect on
intelligence. IQ estimates of this ability have been shown to predict
real-world achievements, such as job status and performance, fairly well
for siblings siblings npl (formal) → frères et sœurs mpl (de mêmes
parents) raised in the same family or people of the same generation who
share the same cultural environment. But Flynn contends that
intelligence test scores cannot bridge the cultural distance that
separates generations in modern industrial societies, or, for that
matter, Americans from Japanese and American whites from American
blacks."