Here are two recent research articles
highlighting the ongoing relentlessness of the Flynn effect:
The appearance of these articles is in
no way surprising: reports such as these have been popping up on a
regular basis for nearly thirty years now. Of course, it was all the
rage around ten years ago to proclaim the Flynn effect had been just
a twentieth-century anomaly and now was coming to an end. I guess
someone must have forgotten to tell the Saudi Arabian deaf children.
I guess someone must have forgotten to tell the Chinese. I guess
someone must have forgotten to tell just about everyone.
So let's make the current status of the
Flynn effect a little more explicit, shall we: the Flynn effect is
an ongoing phenomenon within the human population and all its
subpopulations. That is, the Flynn effect is both active and
ubiquitous. But I can go much further than that, because of course
every piece of evidence from human history insists we must go
further. Eschewing the narrowness of modern scientific vision, I
insist we add a clause: the Flynn effect is an ongoing phenomenon
within the human population and all its subpopulations, and has been
so for at least the last ten thousand years, probably much longer
than that. That is, the Flynn effect has been active, ubiquitous
and relentless ever since man first displayed signs of intelligence
and began scattering off the savannas. Far from being just a
twentieth-century anomaly, the Flynn effect has become a deeply
ingrained aspect of the human condition, and holds the key to
intelligence itself and its significant non-neuronal component.
At the present time, no intelligence
researcher recognizes the depth and breadth of the Flynn effect. Even
James Flynn, who probably comes the nearest to understanding we are
dealing with an ideal measure of human modernity, insists nonetheless
on limiting the temporal range of that insight to mostly the last
century alone, and certainly no further back than the industrial
revolution. Such limited perspective is an unnecessary mistake.
Limited perspectives engender limited explanations, and limited
explanations are a priori inadequate, because the Flynn effect
shows no evidence of being a limited phenomenon.
The latest Flynn effect explanatory fad
has the Flynn effect being produced by greater guessing on
standardized tests, a perfectly suitable hypothesis I would say, as
long as the theory's authors are willing to boldly and courageously
step forward and insist the entire human population is currently
engaged in greater guessing on standardized tests and has been doing
so for at least the last ten thousand years. However, if the theory's
authors are for some reason hesitant to make such a claim, then I am
going to insist on dismissing their puny hypothesis as entirely
inadequate to the task, a dismissal they need not feel all that bad
about, since of course they will have plenty of company.
Liu,
J. & Lynn, R. (2013). An increase of intelligence in China
1986–2012. Intelligence, 40, 139–144.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2013.06.017
Bakhiet, S., Barakat, S. & Lynn, R.
(2014). A Flynn
effect among deaf boys in Saudi Arabia. Intelligence,
44, 75–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.03.003
Armstrong,
E. & Woodley, M. A. (2013). The rule-dependence model explains
the commonalities between the Flynn effect and IQ gains via
retesting. Learning and
Individual Differences,
29, 41–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2013.10.009
Friday, April 4, 2014
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