Chapter 13: The Sociology of IQ: Enhancing Cognitive Skills

Recent advances in the theory of intelligence stem from attempts to solve two problems. First, the paradox caused by the results of kinship studies (such as identical twins raised apart) versus the implications of IQ trends from one generation to another. The former seem to show that environment has only a feeble effect on IQ compared to genes; the latter seem to reveal environmental factors of enormous potency causing huge IQ gains over time. Second, the paradox caused by analyzing cognitive differences between individuals versus analyzing cognitive differences between generations. The former reveals a general intelligence factor (called g), which suggests that a wide variety of cognitive skills are really an integrated whole; the latter show various cognitive skills increasing at very different rates, which suggests that they are functionally quite independent of one another.