Group A, those who obtain advanced (e.g., graduate) education and achieve exceptional career success as scientists, professionals or business leaders, and
Group C, another group that end up in less (intellectually) challenging jobs and with much less formal education (often no more than a high school diploma).
On the re-tests of these adults, did Group A outperform Group C relative to their childhood scores? No.
What does this mean? Enrichment is again seen as unlikely to drastically alter cognitive ability. An 1150 SAT kid is not going to become a 1460 or 1600 kid as a result of their college education. Yes, those funny little tests are measuring something real and relatively stable.
These results have been known for many years, thanks to the Terman study of 1,538 gifted individuals (see here and here). Note that overall the "Termites" tended to be very successful in life; we focus on the most and least successful outliers (Groups A and C) to test the effect of enrichment on cognitive ability.
Terman Study, volume 5: ... Perhaps the most direct way of determining whether the higher and lower occupational groups differed in the way they changed from childhood to young adulthood and then to middle age is to compare the average rank order of [each group] ... at these three stages of life. There was no difference in the amount of change in intellectual performance (IQ) to young or middle adulthood or in Concept Mastery score over the decade from early to later middle age. We must conclude that ... there was no tendency for the lower-level group to slip downwards during their careers.
Stanford alumni magazine: ... the 100 most successful and 100 least successful men in the group, defining success as holding jobs that required their intellectual gifts. The successes, predictably, included professors, scientists, doctors and lawyers. The non-successes included electronics technicians, police, carpenters and pool cleaners, plus a smattering of failed lawyers, doctors and academics. But here's the catch: the successes and non-successes barely differed in average IQ. [All Termites had high childhood IQs as a consequence of the selection process.] The big differences turned out to be in confidence, persistence and early parental encouragement.
10,000 hours of practice won't make you a genius, but being good at something might make you more likely to pursue it for 10,000 hours!
The high IQ scores of eminent scientists (measured late in life) were probably not caused by their scientific activities. Rather, their high cognitive ability aided their scientific success. This ability, while necessary for success, is clearly not by itself sufficient.
7 comments:
Why are "electronics technicians, police, carpenters" considered non-successes? I know that wasn't part of your writing, but it's the only thing I had a problem with.
These outcomes for people with potential for more is a tragedy. My guess is that family background accounts for 90% of it.
Also, these outcomes are only possible in the US and Canada, both of which have educational systems favoring pushiness over IQ.
Enrichment of a sort has increased IQ scores over the last 100 years.
"... defining success as holding jobs that required their intellectual gifts."
Using this definition the Stanford article doesn't seem too unfair.
"Enrichment of a sort has increased IQ scores over the last 100 years."
Good point, although there is quite a lot of debate among the experts as to whether the Flynn Effect is really g-loaded.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/01/psychometrics-links.html
Enrichment of a sort has increased IQ scores over time for everyone, for the Africaners, and, pace the disingenuous Pinker, for the Ashkenazim.
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Base on my own observation regarding this matter, I could really have to say that advance education will be very helpful for every individual for having the wide forms of knowledge in every individuals and it can make every learner's to become more smarter than ever as we could expect.
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