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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.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:44PM
Not certain.
E.g., it's not the length of generations that matters, but the rate at which viable mutations persist in the population. If the rate of mutation is unchanged, and the percentage of survival of variants per unit of time is unchanged, then the accumulation of variants in the population will be unchanged.
What seems to be happening is that selection pressure has been reduced. This means that more variants persist. But this is only half of evolution. You don't get the full aspect until selection pressure is imposed. And you don't know ahead of time how that's going to work out. Right now, if I were to guess, I would guess that the ability to work well with others was the thing most strongly being selected for. (And I say this as someone who isn't that good at that task. I failed as a supervisor because I just wanted to program.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.