Re: Cortical development and IQ

"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:e0f0ju
$1r0d$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Editor's Summary
Nature - 30 March 2006

Here's a subject guaranteed to cause controversy: the
relationship between intelligence, measured by IQ tests,
and physical brain development in children and adolescents.

There was a discussion of this result on NPR today. One thing noted was
that it is not clear how much of the changes in development are due to
genetics and how much are due to environment.



My comment: 'Guaranteed to cause controversy' only because
some people believe that the phenomenon being studied (IQ)
doesn't exist, and if it does exist, should not be studied.

No that's not the only reason. The other side of the coin is that some
people use differences in IQ as an excuse for racism, and in doing so
have consistently confused heritability as a measurement with the concept
of genetic determinism. Height is clearly heritable - but if your mother
is tall, and your father is tall, and you are undernourished you will
still be short, even though you will be taller than a similarly
undernourished person whose mother and father were short.

And the third side of the coin - dang it's hard to make choices with
these three sided coins :-) - is the rather strange attitude of modern
society towards high perceived intelligence. High perceived intelligence
is clearly a very mixed blessing if you are female. High perceived
intelligence is a much more positive trait if you are male - except if it
is too high, in which case you are a geek, except if you go to an Ivy
League (or equivalent) college, in which case you are a success story.


Yours,

Bill Morse

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