In 1950, the average score on an IQ test was ~100. In 2020, the average score on an IQ test was ~100.
Nothing, it seems, had changed.
Those facts, however, disguise a surprising truth.
IQ tests are based on scaled scores. That is: the student’s raw test score is translated into an IQ score according to a formula. And — here’s the key part — that formula is readjusted every ten years.
So: the reason that average IQ scores haven’t changed is that the formula has changed to keep the average at 100. A lot. Raw scores on the underlying test have gone considerably over the history over the test.
If our grandparents’ raw scores were translated according to today’s formula, their average would be about 70. If our scores were translated according to our grandparents’ formula, the average would be about 130.
What’s going on here?
Are we really that much smarter than our grandparents?
James Flynn, who first noted this astonishing increase, has a different way of thinking about this question.
He, instead, pointed to differences in schooling. For instance:
Children today, on average, get LOTS more schooling than did children when the IQ test was first developed.
Today’s schooling tends to focus more on abstract and hypothetical thinking than did school 100 years ago.
Flynn’s argument, of course, includes many more details and insights.
Even people who don’t care much for IQ as a way to measure intelligence admire the way Flynn has prompted us to think differently and deeply about the history of intelligence: how we measure it, how we develop it, how we understand it.
James Flynn died last week in New Zealand, where he had been a professor for decades.
He’s being remembered not only as a giant in the field of intelligence research, but also as an unusual combination of intelligence and kindness.
Over on Twitter, Richard Haier — editor of the journal Intelligence — tweeted:
Jim Flynn became famous for showing a global secular rise in IQ scores but he was admired even more for engaging with critics as a gentleman. In a field raked with controversy and not without personal attacks, Jim sought out contrary opinions and engaged intellectually.
We have learned from Flynn’s insights into human cognition. We can also learn from his example on conversing with people we disagree with.
As the school year begins, we all want our students to learn more stuff.
We want them to learn phonics rules, or multiplication tables, or Boyle’s law, or the importance of the 13th amendment.
We also might want them to learn more general skills.
We’d like them to learn how to learn. Or, how to manage their emotions. Or, how to focus on one thing at a time.
Must we accomplish our goals by teaching each of those topics specifically? Or, can we teach students one basic skill to help them learn everything else?
“Brain Fitness”? Cognitive Training?
For example: almost all athletes need to have a strong core and high levels of aerobic fitness. If, as a coach, I focus my work there, I help my players get better in almost all sports simultaneously.
Is there a brain analogue for “core strength and aerobic fitness”?
We’ve got lots of research showing that chess players score better on IQ and working memory tests than the general population.
Does it follow then that chess training increases general intelligence? If yes, then chess lessons would help students learn to read, and solve quadratic equations, and understand mitosis.
The research giveth…
In the short term, the answer is: “just maybe yes!”
These results may be considered “cautiously promising.” In fact, they are not. The size of the effects was inversely related to the quality of the experimental design. Specifically, when the experimental groups were compared with active control groups — … to rule out possible placebo effects… [or] the excitement induced by a novel activity — the overall effect sizes were minimal or null.
In other words: the better the research, the less likely it was to show any benefit. Almost certainly, general cognitive training led to improvement only because participants believed it would.
Practical Implications
The bad news: we just don’t have good evidence that chess, or working memory training, or music lessons improve other cognitive abilities.
(Of course, chess lessons make people better at chess. Oboe lessons make people better at playing the oboe.)
The good news: school works. When we want our students to learn how to analyze a poem, we can teach them to do so: one beautiful poem at a time.
the neuronal circuitry associated with higher intelligence is organized in a sparse and efficient manner, fostering more directed information processing and less cortical activity during reasoning.
Intelligent brains are characterized by a slim but efficient network of their neurons. This makes it possible to achieve a high level of thinking with the least possible neural activity.
So: despite our cultural preferences, more isn’t necessarily better. Sometimes, a “slimmer” neural network works better than a more complex one.
Slim Neural Networks: “Blooming and Pruning”
When neuroscientists talk about the neural network development, they often talk with gardening terminology: “blooming” and “pruning.”
Networks “bloom” when neurons join together to create a memory or facilitate a particular function.
The “prune” when the brain simplifies those networks.
Sometimes pruning happens because of disuse. If you learned to juggle when you were younger, you have to keep practicing. If not, that network will start to thin.
Sometimes pruning happens because of expertise. If you keep practicing your juggling, you’ll use fewer neurons than when you started.
As teachers, therefore, we’re working to help brains simultaneously bloom and prune.
We want our students to develop new skills and acquire new information.
And, as they develop their expertise, we want those networks to prune.
The best teaching/gardening, in other words, requires both seeds and clippers.
For more thoughts on the relative size of brain regions, click here.
Do students benefit more from a high IQ or from high levels of intrinsic motivation?
Over at Quartz, Rebecca Haggerty argues for the importance of motivation. To make this argument, she draws on the research of Adele and Allen Gottfried. By gathering data on a group of children for decades, they conclude:
Kids who scored higher on measures of academic intrinsic motivation at a young age—meaning that they enjoyed learning for its own sake—performed better in school, took more challenging courses, and earned more advanced degrees than their peers. They were more likely to be leaders and more self-confident about schoolwork. Teachers saw them as learning more and working harder. As young adults, they continued to seek out challenges and leadership opportunities.
Even more than a high IQ, intrinsic motivation points students toward a fulfilling life.
Parenting to Promote Motivation
According to the Gottfrieds, how can parents encourage this trait?
Unsurprisingly, parental behavior can influence child development. Inquisitive parents foster inquisitiveness. Parents who read to their children promote a love of reading.
No matter how many parenting books say it’s okay, paying children for grades squashes a love of learning for its own sake.
In any case, the examples we set early on endure. In one of the Gottfrieds’ findings, children encouraged to be curious when they were eight took more science classes years later in high school. That’s parenting for the long haul.
(For some thoughts on teaching strategies to promote intrinsic motivation, click here.)
Motivation vs. IQ: A Caveat and Two Puzzles
A caveat:
Whenever thinking about the “motivation vs. IQ” question, we should pause to remember its complexity. It might be tempting to discount IQ completely. And yet, we know that something like intelligence exists, and that it’s good to have.
Two points in Haggerty’s article strike me as puzzling.
First, the Gottfrieds speak of children being “motivationally gifted.” However, we know from Dweck’s research that such praise demotivates students.
We should stop praising children for who they are (“gifted, talented, a natural”) and focus on praising them for what they do (“detailed and imaginative work”).
Second, a detail. Haggerty writes that 19% of the Gottfrieds’ subjects have an IQ of higher than 130. That’s an astonishingly high number.
In a typical population, just over 2% of people have an IQ in that range.
In raw numbers: 25 of their subjects have “genius-level” IQ, and we would expect than number to be about 3.
If Haggerty got that number right, then we should be hesitant to extrapolate to the general population from this remarkable sample.
“Spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices may actually change the brain’s structure and hurt one’s ability to remember and learn.”
That’s a fascinating — and potentially alarming — research finding. At a minimum, it seems to have important implications for classroom design.
Here’s a key detail to remember: this study was done on Nile grass rats.
No, really. Rats. (I assume rats that live in Nile grass.)
Teachers Should Read Research Skeptically
Rat research is essential for neuroscientists. A great deal of our neuro-knowledge comes from animal studies.
So, too, in psychology. Watching primate behavior (and even pigeon behavior) helps us understand human behavior.
But, here’s the key point to remember: your students are not rats. (Depending on the grade you teach, they might occasionally remind you of rats. But, they’re really not.)
Teachers should pay close attention to neuroscience and psychology research done on people. However, you should NEVER change your teaching practice based on research into non-human animals.
Once More, with Feeling…
I want to go back to the quotation I cited above:
“Spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices may actually change the brain’s structure and hurt one’s ability to remember and learn.”
In your experience, how much time do rats spend in their offices?
According to Wikipedia, the natural habitats of the African rat are “dry savanna, moist savanna, subtropical or tropical moist shrubland, arable land, pastureland, rural gardens, urban areas, irrigated land, and seasonally flooded agricultural land.”
There’s no indication that rats ever go to the office.
Clearly, someone has already extrapolated the conclusions of this research to assume it applies to people. Until it has, in fact, been tested on people, you should not make the same mistake.
I live in Boston. I’m a Tom Brady fan. But, good heavens, his Brain Training program looks like snake oil.
The website (and, no, I’m not providing a link) uses all the right buzzwords: “brain plasticity,” “personalize,” “money-back guarantee!”
Some of the claims have a surface plausibility. You can, in fact, train your ability to track objects in space. Video games can do that for you, too.
But the idea that all of this comes together to promote “brain speed” and “intelligence” seems laughable. (I don’t know what “brain speed” even means.)
The Recent History of “Brain Training”
Always remember: Lumosity was fined $2,000,000 for making false claims sounding like these. I suppose it’s possible that Brady’s Brain Team has cracked a code that no one else has. But, it seems mightily unlikely.
I’m so vexed that I’m tempted to make a joke about Deflate-gate. For a Patriots fan, that’s as bad as it gets.
You doubtless know that Mindset Theory has been increasingly doubted–and increasingly defended–in the last two years or so.
(In this post, for example, the author updates his earlier criticism of Mindset Theory and largely ends up defending Dweck–or, at least, criticizing her critic. His back-n-forth on this question helpfully represents the nature of the current debate.)
Today’s News
A recently published study looks carefully at a specific set of claims often advanced in Mindset world:
First: that girls and women have a fixed mindset more often than boys and men, and
Second: the smarter the girls and women, the likelier they are to have fixed mindsets.
In other words, for Mindset
First: gender matters, and
Second: for girls and women, intelligence matters.
What Did The Researchers Find?
Nope, and nope.
In their research, which included not only college students but also adults in the population at large, Macnamara and Rupani found no consistent patterns in either direction.
That is: in their research, there was no consistent gender split on Mindset. And, for men as well as women, intelligence level didn’t consistently influence Mindset; nor did a Growth Mindset predict academic accomplishment.
In truth, as you’ll see if you look at the graphs, they got quite a complex muddle of results. It’s genuinely difficult to pick out meaningful patterns in all their data.
What Next?
In my experience, Dweck tends to be quite open and responsive to thoughtful critique. Unlike some researchers who refuse to recognize those who disagree with their work, she is remarkably comfortable acknowledging debate and rethinking her own research.
So: I’ll be curious to see if and how she responds to this study.
There is, by the way, a broader message here as well. Although Mindset Theory is quite well established in the field of education, it is still up for discussion in the field of psychology.
Those of us who shape our classrooms and our schools with such theories in mind should be sure to check back in and see if they are holding up over time.
In movies and on television, chess skill symbolizes “pure intelligence.” Characters who can outwit others on the chessboard are–obviously–just smarter than everyone else. (On The West Wing, President Bartlet routinely schools his staff on the nuances of the game.)
By implication, people who get better at chess seem to be getting smarter. So, if I can give you a drug that improves your chess score, you might conclude that this drug is making you more intelligent.
This approach, of course, has a controversial history. We have developed drugs (such as methylphenidate and modafinil) that benefit people who struggle during cognitive tasks. Will those same drugs benefit those who don’t typically struggle? If they do, is that benefit somehow unfair?
The Study: Setup
German researchers worked with 40 mid-level chess players. Following a remarkably detailed and precise research regimen, these players spent 4 days playing games against a chess program that had been matched to play at their level.
On each day, these chess players took either methylphenidate (Ritalin/Concerta), modafinil (Provigil), caffeine (yum), or a placebo. The schedule of these 4 drugs was varied among the group, to be sure that the order didn’t matter.
The Study: Results
How did they do? It’s bit complicated…
Compared to the games when they took a placebo, they players slowed down when they took all three drugs. On average, they added nearly 2 minutes to the time they took (9:13 vs 7:17 per game); that’s a slowdown of 25%.
When they took more time, these players often ran up against the time limit that had been set for each game. As a result, they lost lots of games by running out of time.
But, what happens when we look at the games when they didn’t run out of time?
They got better. It’s a little tricky to describe improvement in chess terms. You might say they had a 5% increased chance of winning. Or, you might say–as the lead researcher said:
If we correct for the slowest players, then the effect would be the equivalent of moving a player from say, number 5000 in the world ranking, to number 3500 in the world ranking. In a single game, the effect is the equivalent of having the white pieces, every time.
That’s quite the improvement.
The Study: Implications
So, what do we do with this information? Should we all rush right out and add some methylphenidate to our daily vitamins?
In my view, not yet.
First, this study looked at people playing chess. Although we associate chess with “intelligence in general,” we can’t be sure–based on this study alone–that the effects of these drugs will generalize to other cognitive activities.
Second, the study worked with an unusual subgroup of the population: the average IQ among the players was 125. (Of course, IQ isn’t the only–or necessarily the best–way to measure human cognitive capacity. But, it’s not meaningless.)
An IQ of 125 is more than 1 standard deviation above average. This is, in other words, a select–even atypical–group of thinkers.
For these reasons, I wouldn’t do anything differently just yet.
And third: I stumbled across this study after I had completed this blog entry. The headline is that non-prescription use of Ritalin can muddle the dopamine system–at least in rats.
When I say “muddle,” I’m summarizing the following passage:
These changes in brain chemistry were associated with serious concerns such as risk-taking behaviors, disruptions in the sleep/wake cycle and problematic weight loss, as well as resulting in increased activity and anti-anxiety and antidepressive effects.
In other words, if these effects are true for humans as well as rats, that’s some serious muddling right there.
At the same time, I must tell you that this chess study gives me pause. In grad school, the orthodoxy about these drugs was that “they help people who struggle think more like typical learners, but they don’t help typical learners think like more extraordinary learners.”
(You might think of them as a mental knee brace. The brace helps you if you’re injured, but isn’t particularly beneficial if you’re not.)
This study, however, suggests that–for this atypical group of people doing this atypical thing–such drugs do provide a cognitive benefit.
An alternate explanation
I’m intrigued by the fact that chess players taking methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine slowed down.
Perhaps the reason they played better is not that the drugs helped them think better, but that they gave the players more time to think.
Could we get the same benefit by deliberately forcing ourselves to take more time with our thoughts? This study doesn’t answer that question. But, the possibility seems worth exploring.
A final note, unrelated to the content of this study. In looking over the specifics of the research paradigm, I note that the team began work on this study in July of 2011, and that it was published only in 2017. That’s right: they’ve been working on this for over 6 years.
Debates about the meaning and value of IQ have long raged; doubtless, they will continue to do so.
This article, by a scholar steeped in the field, argues that — even for those who see real benefit in focusing on IQ — it is essential to distinguish between fluid intelligence (the ability to solve new problems) and crystallized intelligence (knowledge already stored in long-term memory).
If you’ve read Todd Rose’s bookThe End of Average, you will remember that “talent is always jagged.” That is: two people who have the same IQ might nonetheless be very different thinkers — in part because their score might result from dramatically different combinations of fluid and crystallized subscores.
In short: even advocates for IQ see potential perils in misusing this well-known metric.
It is common knowledge that parents play a vital role in their children’s development. However, we are slowly coming to understand just how vital this role is.
Teachers understand this connection better than anyone; we interact with our students’ parents, and we also see how parents interact with their children. We teachers in turn are able to make anecdotal connections between parenting styles and how children carry themselves in and out of school.
Research is catching up to what teachers have known since the earliest days of the profession. Scientists have begun to tease out certain traits that help children do well in school and in life, and are going one step further to investigate how these traits are developed, including the role that caretakers might play.
One recent example of this growing body of research examines the development of a child’s intelligence mindset–the belief about whether intelligence is fixed or malleable–which has been found to influence motivation and learning. When faced with obstacles or difficulties, those with a growth mindset, who believe that their intelligence can be improved through effort, tend to persevere [1,2]. They do not view obstacles as discouraging, but rather, as informative and motivating [3].
Those with a fixed mindset, on the other hand, do not belief that intelligence can be improved with effort. Thus, those with a fixed mindset tend to be discouraged–not informed and motivated–by obstacles.
How, though, might parents instill a growth mindset in their children? In a paper published this spring, Kyla Haimovitz and Carol Dweck seek to investigate just that [4]. They hypothesize that it is in fact not the parents’ intelligence mindset that influences that of the child; an adult’s intelligence mindset is all but invisible and thus not readily adopted by the child. Rather, it is a parent’s failure mindset–their view of failure as being either enhancing or debilitating–that becomes visible to a child through interactions, and which thus plays a larger role in shaping children’s belief about their intelligence.
Parents’ Intelligence Mindset Isn’t Visible
The series of studies presented in the paper show some important correlations. To begin with, the researchers found no significant correlation between parents’ reports of their own intelligence mindsets and the children’s perception of their parent’s intelligence mindsets; children could not accurately perceive whether or not their parents viewed intelligence as something that is fixed or as something that can be improved. Just as the authors had previously guessed, parents’ intelligence mindsets are invisible to their children.
Additional findings from these studies provide some insight into why parents’ intelligence mindsets might not be seen by their children. When presented with the hypothetical situation of their children bringing home a failing grade, parents were given options to respond in two primary ways: to show concern over their children’s poor performance, or instead, to show concern over how their children could use the failing grade as a learning opportunity (the latter of which would be more in-line with a growth mindset). These studies found that parents’ view of intelligence did not predict how they would respond.
Even if parents believe that intelligence can be improved through effort, they still may respond to the performance of their children in ways that are not representative of this outlook. This is a fundamental concept for this paper; children do not see and are thus not influenced by their parents’ beliefs, only by their actions.
Parents’ Failure Mindset Is Visible
If not their intelligence mindset, how might parents influence their children’s view on intelligence? The authors suggest it is the parents’ failure mindset–their view of failure as being either debilitating or enhancing–which is visible to their children, and which thus plays a larger role in forming children’s beliefs about intelligence. Unlike parents’ intelligence mindsets, children were in fact able to predict what their parents thought about failure.
Parents’ Failure Mindset Predicts Their Response
Presumably, parents make their failure mindset visible to their children through their reactions and responses in various situations. More precisely, the studies found that parents’ failure mindset predicts how they respond to their children in situations where their children have done poorly. The more that parents believe that failure is debilitating, the more likely they are to react with concerns of their child’s performance or ability, perhaps by pitying their children, doubting their ability, and/or comforting them. On the other hand, parents with a failure-is-enhancing perspective are more likely to respond to their children’s failure with support for improvement, discussing with them what they could have learned from the experience and how they can get better.
Consider the message that these reactions send to a child. Might these reactions play a role in shaping what children think about their own abilities? Haimovitz and Dweck’s findings support this hypothesis. Of the variables measured, the strongest predictor of children’s intelligence mindset was parents’ response to their failure: either focusing on the children’s performance or on how their children could improve.
While a parent’s failure mindset is also a strong predictor of a child’s intelligence mindset, parents’ failure mindset is an even stronger predictor of how they tend to react in these scenarios, which then goes on to most strongly predict the child’s intelligence mindset.
Parent’s Failure Mindset
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Parent’s Response to Child’s Failure
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Child’s Intelligence Mindset
Why is it that a parent’s response is such a strong predictor of the child’s intelligence mindset?
The studies reveal that when parents place such a strong emphasis on their children’s performance, children tend to believe that this is how their parents want them to prove their abilities: through their performance. The researchers suggest it is this perception of their parents’ beliefs that leads children to believe that intelligence is fixed. Parents’ strong emphasis on their children’s performance leads the children to believe that it is the performance that is most important, and not their learning.
Takeaway 1 – Take On a Learning-Orientation (While Maintaining Expectations)
Parents’ responses to their children’s performances are powerful predictors of the children’s belief about the malleability of intelligence. If we are to interpret these correlations favorably, we ought to use occasions of poor performance as learning opportunities for our children. We should let them know that these scenarios present opportunities to get better.
It is also worth mentioning that, in addition to the importance of maintaining a focus on learning and improvement, studies have found that, academically, parents’ expectations for their children’s performances predict the children’s performances [5].
There is a fine line that parents and teachers need to walk: they must maintain expectations while also conveying the notion that poor performances are not indicators of ability, but rather, opportunities to learn how to improve.
Takeaway 2 – Work through the Parents
While the findings in this paper highlight a specific and important correlation, Haimovitz and Dweck also reference the large body of work that underscores the importance of the role that parents play in their children’s development [6,7,8]. Schools may be able to reinforce what they are doing by more deeply involving parents, encouraging them to strengthen at home various aspects of what the teachers are working on at school.
I envisage a (perhaps utopian) future wherein schools, especially those focusing on early childhood, view building the capacity of caregivers as vital to their work in enabling their students to realize their full potential. Many practitioners might understand why this would be desirable, and I believe that research will continue to highlight the strong influence that caretakers have on children’s developmental trajectories.
Takeaway 3 – The Earliest Years Matter
After having a few perspective-altering “Aha!” moments on how formative the earliest years of life are, I tend to view most everything through this lens. This is especially the case here. The average age of the children from the studies in this paper was about ten years old. By that age, children have already developed a belief about whether or not their intelligence is fixed or malleable, and this mindset in turn has already had an effect on their learning.
It is doubtful that children develop this belief overnight. In fact, I would argue that they begin to formulate their beliefs as early as they can understand, which occurs well before they can speak, and is then shaped through the daily interactions they have with others. It has been shown that the first years lay a crucial foundation for development across the lifespan, and it is during this time that we must also be deliberate about what we convey to our children about many things–including how to handle failure.
Conclusion
Future research will continue to underscore what many practitioners already know: in order to best enable children to reach their full potential, parents must be made a part of the equation. The paper presented in this article sheds some light on one aspect of parenting, however small, yet greatly formative. If these findings are at all indicative of the potential that lies in the interactions that caretakers have with their children, supporting parents in supporting their children from day one shows immense promise in improving children’s outcomes.
References
Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, 78, 246–263.
Robins, R. W., & Pals, J. L. (2002). Implicit self-theories in the academic domain: Implications for goal orientation, attributions, affect, and self-esteem change. Self and Identity, 1, 313–336.
Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95, 256–273.
Haimovitz, K., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). What predicts children’s fixed and growth intelligence mindsets? Not their parents’ views of intelligence but their parents’ views of failure. Psychological science, p.1-11. doi:10.1177/0956797616639727
Lane, K. L., Wehby, J. H., & Cooley, C. (2006). Teacher expectations of students’ classroom behavior across the grade span: Which social skills are necessary for success?. Exceptional Children, 72(2), 153-167.
Hill, N. E., & Taylor, L. C. (2004). Parental school involvement and children’s academic achievement: Pragmatics and issues. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 161–164.
Pomerantz, E. M., Grolnick, W. S., & Price, C. E. (2005). The role of parents in how children approach achievement: A dynamic process perspective. In A. J. Elliot & C. S. Dweck (Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 259– 278). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
