Cognitive abilities of 11-years-olds are up to three years behind where they were in 1975. | Hacker News Reader

Cognitive abilities of 11-years-olds are up to three years behind where they were in 1975.

uk.news.yahoo.com

17 pointsnickb26 comments

"The tests - designed to assess grasp of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight - found far fewer youngsters hit top scores than in 1976."

Maybe kids just get outside less?

To be clear, I'm not convinced this is actually true. It sure sounds like someone is pushing an anti-standardized-test agenda (not that I disagree with that).

But if it is true, note that they're testing highly-gifted kids, who might very well be getting fewer teaching resources now that they would have in the early 70's. American public education at any rate seems to be a bit of a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-oil environment, where if you're not failing tests you don't need any special treatment.

Do gifted children have the same resources today that they did 33 years ago? Not that I think children with developmental needs should be shortchanged, it is a tragedy that gifted and talented programs have fallen out of style.

But then again, when I was in middle school, a parent sued the school district because their kid didn't get int the G&T program, so they shut down the whole thing.

Does this take into account immigration to England? If not, it's as worthless as studies saying American students aren't on a par with students abroad. The question is, which American students we're talking about: the black ones or the white ones? The distribution of IQ among white students is on a par with that of other white kids in other places. The distribution of IQ among black students is less favorable. (This does not mean they are inferior; biology is about trade-offs, and if you don't live in a city, it does not make sense to trade muscle for brains; there's a mountain of evidence that proves there are differences between these two groups, just as there would be between any two groups that spent over 100 generations in very different places).

Averaging the two groups is not very meaningful. After all, it only takes a few smart dudes to get to an IPO or win a Nobel prize, although a critical mass of smart people often proves essential.

Regarding the downmodding... discussing biological differences in the races is one of those Things You Can't Say (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html). It's been discussed here before and it never goes anywhere. I would recommend letting it go.

I am inclined to agree with you that this study is just as worthless as the ones comparing American students to foreign ones, but for different reasons. It's just about what is being tested -- kids may do worse on some measures, but on average, in the age of Google, everyone is a great deal smarter than 30 years ago.

You can discuss biological differences, but you have to do it carefully and extremely intelligently. Eugenics have been used by bad and tremendously ignorant people to do terrible things, and people are rightfully wary about entering the "biological difference between races," territory.

In any case, we're talking about the exceptional students, so racial averages are irrelevant to the conversation.

>In any case, we're talking about the exceptional students, so racial averages are irrelevant to the conversation.

Nonsense. Assume intellect is normally distributed, with equal sigma to simplify things (1). Assume a racial difference in mean of 0.5 sigma, then 2.2% of the higher intellect group will be 2sigma beyond the (high intellect) mean, while 0.6% of the lower intellect group will reach this level.

This difference grows exponentially when we consider more exceptional people (2).

(1) Between males and females, sigma is not equal. Men have higher sigma, as Larry Summers famously hypothesized.

(2) To see this, write out the CDF for a normal distribution and use the asymptotic expansion for erf. The rate of growth is (smarter group's mean - dumber group's mean)/sigma^2.

Assume intelligence is distributed proportionately to time spent thinking on hard problems, starting in childhood, which assumption is borne out by the biographies of many exceptionally gifted individuals, and things start looking very different, don't they?

kids may do worse on some measures, but on average, in the age of Google, everyone is a great deal smarter than 30 years ago.

Statistics?

I see your point, but one must intellectually curious to make use of the vast pool of resources that is available. Google also allows mis-information to be more readily disseminated.

Love and affection boosts a child's IQ level

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/dec/21iq.htm

I would argue that lots of white/black differences in America are actually due to distinct differences in the environment people of both groups were raised in. The only factor that makes it racial is the fact that in America, there are very clear and distinct subcultures that seperate whites and blacks if they so choose to be a part of those subcultures, and the socioeconomic properties / scoring on tests of their members are probably more indicative of the subculture's values rather than the quality of their genes.

This is a topic near and dear to me. I believe cognitive abilities are falling, but not for the reasons this article talks about. I believe vaccination may have a strong role to play, and the number of vaccine shots kids get (let's say by the age of 4) has gone up 5-10 fold in the last 25 years.

I have talked to a couple of immunology professors and they aren't really very comfortable with this mad rush to have a vaccine fix for everything.

This is a huge topic, but if any of you are planning to have kids, research this topic of vaccines. Do not blindly accept what your pediatrician says - they are not all that well-informed.

That's just the universe getting back into balance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

The raw Raven's APM score that would get you in 1962 1-in-1000 level, would get you only 1-in-10 level in 1993.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_race

You are a product of your environment. --Clement Stone

well part of it, is we don't need to rely on our brain as much any more. When my parents were in school you had to do complicated math in your head. Nowadays you get a calculator.

Same for spelling, in 1975 you needed to be a walking dictionary. Nowadays we have spell checker.

As far as kids are concerned, a lot more of their time is now "wasted" on TV and video games.

You still need to be able to do the maths in your head, otherwise how can you interpret what the calculator is telling you? Maybe your whole calculation is an order of magnitude out, for example. A calculator saves time, not understanding. The same is true of a spellchecker. Doesn't matter if every word is correct if no meaning is communicated.

And even if it were true for the general population it wouldn't be true of the HN crowd... We are the toolmakers.

And math eventually becomes too abstract to calculate manually.

I agree that time on TV is a waste. Time on video games, not necessarily.

Because all problems in math and engineering have already been solved, and are programmed as calculator functions.

Flawed tests.

this is what fluoridated tap water gets you... and aspartame

As far as I know, all fluor (and chlorine) does to water is keep it as free as bacteria as possible, and make your teeth stonger.

Is there any evidence of undesired effects?

http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/brain/

be very afraid

You mean: be well informed.

Fear may motivate you to get informed, nothing else.

Idiocracy anyone? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

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