Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id AAA13850 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 18 Aug 2001 00:51:02 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 18:53:51 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Gene-Meme Co-evolution in Reverse? Message-ID: <3B7D683F.21507.AD6B43@localhost> In-reply-to: <3B7DABCC.14C60A8A@pacbell.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 17 Aug 2001, at 16:42, Bill Spight wrote:
You're right, it was the Flynn Effect
> Dear Joe,
>
> From
> http://www.beyond-the-illusion.com/files/New-Files/200101/why_kids_are
> _smarter_than_you.txt
>
> <<
> "The rising-IQ trend is often called the Flynn Effect after New
> Zealand sociologist James Flynn, who first noticed the phenomenon in
> the 1980s. Since 1984, Dr. Flynn has published a series of papers
> showing that IQs in at least 13 developed countries have gained five
> to 25 points in recent decades.
>
> He managed to find what others had missed because he did not look at
> average IQ scores, which rank how people compare with each other at a
> certain point.
>
> Instead, Dr. Flynn looked at the number of questions people
> answered correctly on the intelligence tests over the years and
> found everyone from school children to soldiers was scoring
> progressively better.Interestingly, Dr. Flynn does not
> necessarily believe the Flynn Effect points to a rise in
> intelligence.
>
> "If people, children, were really becoming smarter, teachers
> would be saying, 'My gosh I can't believe how fast kids learn
> today,' and they are not saying that," he said in an interview
> this week.
>
> "If people were really getting as smart as the test scores
> suggest, we should be blinded by brilliance."He suggests that the
> rising-IQ trend tells us more about what society demands of people's
> mental abilities than about their actual intelligence level because
> the gains have been in very specific skills. >>
>
> So the data is misreported. IQ scores have not been rising. And thus
> IQ, whatever the term may mean, if anything, has not been rising. What
> has been increasing is specific knowledge, both declarative and
> procedural. So people today would have scored higher on previous IQ
> tests. The Flynn Effect illustrates the cultural relativity of IQ
> tests, reflecting cultural change over time.
>
> Best,
>
> Bill
>
> Bill
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Aug 18 2001 - 00:56:28 BST