If the effect were present, and as large as implied, you’d expect low IQ test results in ultra-polluted Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. And yet... http://www.city-data.com/forum/world/2348902-china-iq-map-pr...
The people living in those cities form a so-called "self-selecting" sample. They are probably, on average better educated, and they recognize the value of education much better. They already would score higher than the others, that's why they moved to the city.
It might just as well be that the same people would score far higher in a non-polluted city.
Why wouldn't IQ tests be great for studying short term cognitive effects? I would trust their values for these type of studies the most: how does lack of sleep, being drunk, after exercise, etc affect your ability to solve abstract problems.
It has far fewer variables to account for than predicting someone's long term success.
IQ testing is designed to test for intelligent behaviour, which is largely based on long-term neurological development. The connections in the brain, densities of neurons, and long-term potentiations don't change greatly on a short-term basis. Measures which fluctuate based on spot-performance factors are typically deemed unreliable for the purpose of IQ testing.
Cognitive deficits caused by exposure to drugs and other substances tend to impact functioning of the neurons, and are detrimental to measures of intelligence, but are more appropriately measured by more specific tests, which focus on factors such as reaction time, or motor accuracy. Consider the cognitive tests performed by police when driving under the influence of alcohol is expected, for instance. Such cognitive tests also help provide a clearer picture of how a substance affects the brain.
In addition, to me, it sounds that you are arguing that a test on which you do worse when tired, sleepy, hungry etc. is not an appropriate test because it fluctuates depending on your state of mind. I don't get that.
I meant behaviour in the general psychological / cognitive sense; how an actor responds to stimuli.
Current popular IQ tests are designed to test many facets of intelligent behaviour -- verbal comprehension, arithmetic, working memory, symbol searching, etc. Abstract problem solving is only one category of testing.
I'm arguing that to study short-term cognitive deficits, it makes more sense to use other measures of cognition. It appears this is actually what was done, but this was incorrectly re-reported as "IQ".
IQ tests can't be standardized across cultures. Even something like Raven's Progressive Matrices has a cultural component. https://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligence
Also China has some issues with the way they report scholastic achievement that make their results appear higher than they should. China is very selective about which students take standardized tests that are used for global comparisons--they aren't random samples.
not sure where hilarity comes into play ... it has well defined statistical properties
perhaps you mean that the results of IQ tests can be, and often are grossly misinterpreted, that is not related to standardization
Very few adults are comfortable with the idea that any substantial group of people are objectively more intelligent than themselves, because admitting that comes uncomfortably close to relinquishing autonomy, at least in contemporary Western understanding that says the more intelligent should rule.
European history throughout the 20th century shows the horrifying, depraved danger in capitulating to a ruling intelligentsia. We should earnestly hope that no group allows their self-interest, protected by native instinct, to be overridden by the despotic, unfeeling ideologies of "intelligent" rulership. That philosophy has shown itself over and over again to be a quick route to starvation, genocide, and widespread desolation.
Nevertheless, IQ is the most general/objective measurement we have, and it seems to be a reasonably good approximation on aggregate.
If you're referring to communism and national socialism here, those were rabidly anti-intellectual (the later particularly so).
The median IQ should be 100, with a standard deviation of 15.
If the median IQ is not 100 over the population, the test is flawed.
They use raw IQ score data.
If you can't accurately quantify the cultural component, then yes it does.
>Claims that basic pattern recognition is somehow not a valid means of assessment across cultures are dubious at best.
Basic pattern recognition isn't the only thing that's being measured--that's the problem. Even something as simple as how often a student has been exposed to a matrix of rows and columns has an impact on performance. Repeated exposure to similar tests also increases performance.
Wrong information is often worse than no information.
That's one of the problems with PISA results. Policy makers look at other countries with higher scores and try to emulate them without understanding why their scores are higher. In that case it's just cargo culting education.
This doesn't mean that standardized testing is completely useless, but you have to know the limitations, and comparing results between cultures is one of the limitations.
Looks like that map is from 2005.