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Comment on C. M. Clark, L. Lawlor-Savage, & v. M. Goghari

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Title: Comment on C. M. Clark, L. Lawlor-Savage, & v. M. Goghari
Language: English
Authors: Hiscock, Merrill
Source: Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives. 2016 14(2):64-66.
Availability: Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 3
Publication Date: 2016
Document Type: Journal Articles
Opinion Papers
Reports - Evaluative
Descriptors: Intelligence Quotient, Change, Generational Differences, Ability, Intelligence, Individual Development
DOI: 10.1080/15366367.2016.1172909
ISSN: 1536-6367
Abstract: Merrill Hiscock presents two criticisms of Clark's analysis of the Flynn effect. The first is that the authors worry too much about general ability and pay too little attention to multifactorial concepts of intelligence. The second applies not only to the Clark et al. paper but to the Flynn effect literature in general--namely, neglect of the developmental dimension.
Abstractor: ERIC
Number of References: 13
Entry Date: 2016
Accession Number: EJ1100108
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0116270266;p6i01apr.16;2019Mar14.13:54;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0116270266-1">Comment on C. M. Clark, L. Lawlor-Savage, & V. M. Goghari. </title> <p>The reality of the Flynn effect is no longer a matter of active debate. As Clark et al. put it, "Flynn's findings are quantitatively quite simple and relatively uncontroversial." IQ appears to have been rising for at least a century, and evidence of IQ increase has been found almost everywhere that investigators have looked. Although the calculated rate of change varies from one study to another, and sometimes from one place to another, there is no compelling reason to believe that the increase is either accelerating or decelerating over time. There is even less reason to believe that the increase is genetically based.</p> <p>When the discussion moves on to causes and implications, the situation becomes much more complicated. We have been observing not merely a rise in numbers but a rise in numbers that are thought to represent some underlying individual attribute or attributes. James Flynn quickly recognized the paradox at the core of the phenomenon of rising scores. Our average IQ is substantially higher than that of our predecessors, but neither common sense nor the historical record supports the inference that we have become geniuses or that our ancestors were dullards. Clark et al. plunge into this conundrum, summarize much of the relevant evidence, and leave us with the reasonable conclusion that IQ increase is nothing other than an index of our more or less successful adaptation to the demands of modern life.</p> <p>This culture-based explanation for rising scores will come as no surprise to psychologists who are familiar with the cultural-historical psychology of Michael Cole (e.g., Cole, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref1">2</reflink>]). A measure of intelligence is meaningful only within a particular cultural context. From this perspective, it is easy to appreciate the wisdom of Wechsler's concept of "deviation IQ," which allows an individual's ability to be quantified according to his or her position within a normal distribution. Whereas the entire distribution may move upward (or perhaps downward) over time—and vary across socioeconomic levels, age groups, ethnic groups, cultures, and nations—an individual's score continues to mark the position of that person within his or her group. Thus, a person's IQ can remain a strong predictor of academic and occupational outcomes despite ambiguity concerning the proper interpretation of differences among IQ distributions for various groups.</p> <p>I have two criticisms of Clark et al.'s thoughtful analysis of the Flynn effect. The first is that the authors worry too much about general ability (<emph>g</emph>) and pay too little attention to multifactorial concepts of intelligence. Admittedly, intelligence theory and IQ testing have been greatly influenced by Galton and Spearman, who gave us the "British" concept of intelligence in which general ability (<emph>g</emph>) is primary and intercorrelated group factors and special abilities are less important. This differs from the "American" concept of Thurstone, in which special abilities are considered to be primary even though a general factor can be derived from those special abilities. The respective viewpoints can be reconciled and even dismissed as by-products of divergent methodologies. Nevertheless, emphasis on special abilities is an important part of the history of intelligence theory, and that emphasis is implicit in multifaceted IQ batteries such as the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet. As Clark et al. acknowledge, the Flynn effect manifests itself unevenly across different Wechsler IQ subtests, and the subtests with the highest <emph>g</emph> loadings are not the best markers of the Flynn effect (Flynn, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref2">7</reflink>]). Moreover, scores from other tests, such as the Boston Naming Test and the Trail Making Test, increase significantly from one cohort to the next even though the tests are not ordinarily classified as intelligence tests (Connor, Spiro, Obler, & Albert, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref3">3</reflink>]; Dickinson & Hiscock, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref4">4</reflink>]). If we are to advance a culture-based explanation for the Flynn effect, we probably will benefit from subordinating Spearman's <emph>g</emph>-centric construct of intelligence to a broader and variegated concept of cognitive ability that might include specific human abilities falling outside conventional definitions of IQ. Considering a diverse set of tests will facilitate identifying the specific skills that are most susceptible to the Flynn effect.</p> <p>The <emph>g</emph>-saturated Raven's matrices test has yielded some of the largest increases across cohorts (e.g., Neisser, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref5">9</reflink>]), but there are limits to what we can learn about cultural influences from this "culture-reduced" test. Clark et al. attribute IQ gains to improved "abstract, decontextualized, and relational problem solving skills," and that might be a satisfactory explanation for gains in Raven's matrices scores. For Wechsler tests and other multitest IQ batteries, however, along with tests that do not purport to measure IQ, the Flynn effect appears to reflect increased performance in some but not all content-specific domains. Trying to fit the Flynn effect into our <emph>g</emph>-centric preconceptions about intelligence becomes especially problematic in these instances. We might do better if we remained agnostic about the "true" nature of intelligence and allowed the Flynn effect data to inform us about the nature of intelligence—or at least the nature of whatever is rising across cohorts. That seems to be a primary objective of Flynn's more recent work (e.g., Flynn, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref6">7</reflink>]).</p> <p>My second criticism applies not only to the Clark et al. paper but to the Flynn effect literature in general—namely, neglect of the developmental dimension. Clark et al. cite a large-scale meta-analysis by Trahan, Stuebing, Fletcher, and Hiscock ([<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref7">13</reflink>]) in which the Flynn effect was found to be comparable in magnitude, across average age, for 378 samples ranging from 2.5 to 86 years. This finding confirms and elaborates Flynn's ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref8">6</reflink>]) discovery that the IQ increase for children of various ages is similar to the increase for adults. The early appearance of a full-blown Flynn effect is surprising, even astonishing. It implies, in the words of Agbayani and Hiscock ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref9">1</reflink>]), "that each new cohort of children receives a one-time 'gift' of environmental enrichment that exceeds the gift received by the preceding cohort but falls short of the gift received by the cohort that follows it." (p. 9). But what kind of environmental influence might bestow such a gift and then fail to increment the gift in subsequent years of life? What elements of culture would benefit today's young adults, relative to young adults of the past, no more than it benefits today's preschoolers, relative to preschoolers of the past? This early-gift model appears to run counter to everything that we know about life-span cognitive development.</p> <p>Salthouse ([<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref10">11</reflink>]) has pointed out the implausibility of a cohort effect that is attributable solely to early environment, and he has outlined an alternative model that incorporates environmental influences that continue throughout the life span. In fact, a growing body of evidence in the cognitive aging literature confirms the presence of cohort differences in intellectual trajectories of the aged (e.g., Karlsson, Thorvaldsson, Skog, Gudmundsson, & Johansson, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref11">8</reflink>]; Schaie, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref12">12</reflink>]). It is possible, but uncertain at this point, that the cohorts that receive the greatest early benefit from the Flynn effect show the most rapid cognitive declines in old age. On the other hand, the early-gift model is compatible with an expanding corpus of evidence that early (e.g., preschool) individual and group differences in cognitive ability, or school readiness, account for a large proportion of the differences in subsequent academic achievement (e.g., Duncan et al., [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref13">5</reflink>]; Reardon, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref14">10</reflink>]).</p> <p>We are left with yet another Flynn effect paradox. On the one hand, it is likely that early cohort effects, at least at the level of the individual, are modifiable by environmental factors that continue throughout life (and biological factors, in the aging individual). On the other hand, the early-gift interpretation of the Flynn effect is compatible with evidence that a child's readiness for school at the age of 4 or 5 years is a powerful determinant of that child's ultimate academic achievement. If the environmental variables that underlie the Flynn effect are operative during the first few years of life, the benefit conceivably could persist into future development without further amplification by new technologies and other cultural innovations. This speculation is made more plausible by evidence that having affluent parents conveys a large academic achievement advantage to preschoolers, and that advantage remains relatively constant until at least the end of high school (Reardon, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref15">10</reflink>]).</p> <p>Knowing that the Flynn effect manifests itself early in development does not pinpoint the causal factors but it does narrow the search. What influences could be responsible for the elevation of test scores in each successive cohort of preschoolers? Perhaps it is the cultural enrichment of the parents' environment that is critical for transmitting an advantage to the preschool child. The cultural enrichment described by Clark et al. might not increase the IQ of adult cohorts to a measurable degree, but it could elevate the IQ of their preschool children. The cultural changes that the parents have internalized over several decades of their lives would be transmitted in a concentrated form to the next generation. An obvious implication of this possibility is that investigators who want to delineate the sources of the Flynn effect should focus their attention on ways in which children's preschool environment, especially interaction with the parents, has changed and continues to change across cohorts.</p> <ref id="AN0116270266-2"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref9" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Agbayani, K. A., & Hiscock, M. (2013). Age-related change in Wechsler IQ norms after adjustment for the Flynn effect: Estimates from three computational models. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 35, 642–654. doi:10.1080/13803395.2013.806650</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref1" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib3" idref="ref3" type="bt">3</bibl> <bibtext> Connor, L. T., Spiro, A., III, Obler, L. K., & Albert, M. L. (2004). Change in object naming ability during adulthood. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 59, PP203–P209. doi:10.1093/geronb/59.5.P203</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib4" idref="ref4" type="bt">4</bibl> <bibtext> Dickinson, M. D., & Hiscock, M. (2011). The Flynn effect in neuropsychological assessment. Applied Neuropsychology, 18(2), 136–142. doi:10.1080/09084282.2010.547785</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib5" idref="ref13" type="bt">5</bibl> <bibtext> Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P. ... Japel, C. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43(6), 1428–1446. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.43.6.1428</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib6" idref="ref8" type="bt">6</bibl> <bibtext> Flynn, J. R. (1987). Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure. Psychological Bulletin, 101(2), 171–191. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.101.2.171</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib7" idref="ref2" type="bt">7</bibl> <bibtext> Flynn, J. R. (2007). What is intelligence? Beyond the Flynn effect. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib8" idref="ref11" type="bt">8</bibl> <bibtext> Karlsson, P., Thorvaldsson, V., Skoog, I., Gudmundsson, P., & Johansson, B. (2015). Birth cohort differences in fluid cognition in old age: Comparisons of trends in levels and change trajectories over 30 years in three population-based samples. Psychology and Aging, 30(1), 83–94. doi:10.1037/a0038643</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib9" idref="ref5" type="bt">9</bibl> <bibtext> Neisser, U. (1998). Introduction: Rising test scores and what they mean. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The rising curve: Long-term gains in IQ and related measures (pp. 3–22). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening academic-achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murname (Eds.), Wither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and children's life chances (pp. 91–115). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Salthouse, T. A. (2010). Major issues in cognitive aging. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Schaie, K. W. (2005). What can we learn from longitudinal studies of adult development? Research in Human Development, 2, 133–158. doi:10.1207/s15427617rhd0203_4</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Trahan, L. H., Stuebing, K. K., Fletcher, J. M., & Hiscock, M. (2014). The Flynn effect: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(5), 1332–1360. doi:10.1037/a0037173</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Merrill Hiscock</p> <p>Reported by Author</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref10"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref12"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref14"></nolink>
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  Data: Merrill Hiscock presents two criticisms of Clark's analysis of the Flynn effect. The first is that the authors worry too much about general ability and pay too little attention to multifactorial concepts of intelligence. The second applies not only to the Clark et al. paper but to the Flynn effect literature in general--namely, neglect of the developmental dimension.
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