Studying Intelligence In The 20th Century Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Studying Intelligence In The 20th Century - Essay Exampleand each generation scores higher on IQ tests because each is better educatedJames Flynn, a political scientist working in New Zealand, disc everywhereed in the 1980s that the scores of different groups of people on standard intelligence tests had consistently augmented over the past decades. Earlier researchers had failed to pay attention to that trend, because IQ scores are always calculated with keep to the average score for the present group. By definition, the average is set to 100. Someone who scores 20% to a greater extent than the average would therefore get an IQ of 120. But if that persons score would be compared with the average for the corresponding group, well-tried one generation earlier, the final score would be about 130. Flynn was the first to systematically make such(prenominal) cross-generational comparisons.Since then, the so-called Flynn effect has been confirmed by numerous studies. The same pattern, an average increase of over triad IQ points per decade, was found for virtually every type of intelligence test, delivered to virtually every type of group. (Sholomskas , 1983)This take up investigated the group and individual broad ability profiles of children with mental retardation (MR) and a matched sample of children with average achieveme