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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the tv-and-video-games-cause-brain-rot dept.

A Norwegian study published Monday found a seven-point dip in IQ test scores per generation among men born from 1962 to 1991. The results suggest a reversal in the Flynn effect, an observed increase in IQ scores throughout the 20th century in developed countries.

Coverage from The Week adds:

The reasons for the Flynn effect and its apparent reversal are disputed. "Scientists have put the rise in IQ down to better teaching, nutrition, healthcare and even artificial lighting," says The Times.

But "it is also possible that the nature of intelligence is changing in the digital age and cannot be captured with traditional IQ tests", adds the newspaper.

"Take 14-year-olds in Britain. What 25% could do back in 1994, now only 5% can do," Shayer added, citing maths and science tests.

More from The Daily Mail:

Two British studies suggested that the fall was between 2.5 and 4.3 points every ten years.

But due to limited research, their results were not widely accepted.

In the latest study Ole Rogeburg and Bernt Bratsberg, of the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Oslo, found that Norwegian men's IQs are lower than the scores of their fathers when they were the same age.

The pair analysed the scores from a standard IQ test of over 730,000 men – who reported for national service between 1970 and 2009.


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:51PM (4 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:51PM (#693044) Journal

    You're addressing a real point, but I don't think you understand it. Different environments develop different skills. The skills used in accessing the internet are not the same as those used in living within driving distance of a library, and those aren't the same as where you needed to harness a horse to plow the field. People adapt to the skill-set used in their culture. IQ tests measure one particular portion of the skills used. When what they measure are not the skills valued by the culture, the scores are lower. To this point it's worth noting that not all IQ tests are the same, and some have valued demonstrably incorrect answers for decades. (I don't know that those particular tests are still in use, but mistakes happen everywhere, and IQ tests don't have a good QA team.)

    The standard IQ test is a reasonable test of certain basic skills, and of the ability to focus on a task, and a few other things, many of which are expected to be generally useful. They don't attend to other skills, like ability to get along with people or ability to detect and identify particular scents that are quite useful and more demanded by some other situations. The internet environment is largely similar to prior Western European history, but differs in certain major ways, e.g. short bursts of attention are more favored. This may well explain the small change in scores.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:12PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:12PM (#693062)

    the ability to focus on a task

    There's an interesting variable to track over the past 4 decades...

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:19PM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:19PM (#693071)

    the small change in scores

    Nearly half of a standard deviation [quora.com] per generation is pretty big. To paraphrase the Brits and George Carlin: Think of someone you knew back in the 70s who had an IQ of 100, now: realize that over 80% of people today are dumber than them.

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 15 2018, @12:53AM (1 child)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 15 2018, @12:53AM (#693278) Journal

      Rephrase....have an IQ lower than them. It's not really the same thing as dumber, though there sure is an overlap.

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