Number 2 Pencil

Gives new meaning to the complaint, "My brain is full."

Big brains = High IQ's?

People with bigger brains are smarter than their smaller-brained counterparts, according to a study conducted by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher published in the journal “Intelligence.”

The study, published on line June 16, could settle a long-standing scientific debate about the relationship between brain size and intelligence. Ever since German anatomist and physiologist Frederick Tiedmann wrote in 1836 that there exists “an indisputable connection between the size of the brain and the mental energy displayed by the individual man,” scientists have been searching for biological evidence to prove his claim.

“For all age and sex groups, it is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are related,” said lead researcher Michael A. McDaniel, Ph.D...McDaniel, a professor in management in VCU’s School of Business, found that, on average, intelligence increases with increasing brain volume. Intelligence was measured with standardized intelligence tests, which have important consequences on peoples' lives, such as where they’ll go to college or what kind of job they get. Critics have called the tests inaccurate or irrelevant to the real world, he said.

“But when intelligence is correlated with a biological reality such as brain volume, it becomes harder to argue that human intelligence can’t be measured or that the scores do not reflect something meaningful,” said McDaniel.

Yes, but what I - an admitted pinhead - want to know is, can bigger brains exist in smaller heads?

Souped-up hogs meet souped-up brains

Eggheads try to convince the public that being super-smart isn't mutually exclusive with being cool:

Avery is an egghead who isn't your stereotypical blockhead. Which explains why Avery, who rides a '59 red-and-white Harley and is blessed with an IQ between 134 and 150 — that's higher than 98 percent of the population — wants to break the notion that hog lovers and intellectuals are mutually exclusive beings.

On Saturday, members of Mensa will square off against easy riders who belong to the Estero River Chapter of ABATE, a motorcycle rights group, in the Ninth Annual Brainers vs. Bikers trivia contest. "It's a cross between 'Jeopardy!' and 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'" says Avery, the 42-year-old owner of Hurricane Cycle bike shop in San Carlos Park and president of the Southwest Florida Mensa chapter.

A question of intelligence

I've posted before about what a bad idea it is to tie IQ scores to death penalties. Not only is it absurd to rely on one test score in making a life-or-death decision, but it's hard to imagine that there won't be cheating by both inmate and psychologist:

Are the inmates in the 20 states that currently do not have laws against executing the mentally retarded going to clamor for retests, or will their current IQ scores stand? The potential for abuse is astounding here, and I wouldn't want to be the clinician in charge of testing individuals, knowing that a difference of a few points is indeed a matter of life and death.

IQ scores are not absolute, they're not error-free, and they're not invariant within examinees. It certainly would be easy to fake a low score if the alternative is the gas chamber; a judgment of mental retardation based on such data would be fraught with error. What's more, an inmate could genuinely get smarter over time if the prison had a helpful education program - or if his lawyer helped him learn.( For some criminals of deprived backgrounds, prison is the most instructive and structured environment they've ever known.) If that were to happen, which IQ score should be used when assigning punishment? Should an inmate essentially be punished for improving his mind in prison?

It's not a hypothetical question any more, folks:

Three years ago, in the case of a Virginia man named Daryl R. Atkins, the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. But Mr. Atkins's recent test scores could eliminate him from that group. His scores have shot up, a defense expert said, thanks to the mental workout his participation in years of litigation gave him. The Supreme Court, which did not decide whether Mr. Atkins was retarded, noted that he scored 59 on an I.Q. test in 1998. The cutoff for retardation in Virginia is 70.

A defense expert who retested Mr. Atkins last year found that his I.Q. was 74. In court here on Thursday, prosecutors said their expert's latest test yielded 76.

Those scores really don't mean anything unless we're given some idea of the variability of those scores in the population and the standard error of measurement (or SEM). How many SEMs away from 70 is 74? How many SEMs separate 59 and 70? What's the reliability of this exam? Heck, the NYT doesn't even find it necessary to identify which IQ test is being used here, although I'd assume it's the WAIS-R (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Revised) or the WAIS-III. The WAIS-III shows a reliability of .96 and an SEM of 2.3; the WAIS-R, a reliability of .97.

(Update: Yes, it was the WAIS-III. Via Chris, who has more, and who catches an error in the NYTimes article.)

The SEM - which is the standard deviation times the square root of one minus the reliability, if you're interested in knowing - can be understood as follows: If an examinee were to take the same IQ test repeatedly, with no change in the level of intelligence, it is possible that some of the resulting observed scores would be higher or lower than the score that precisely reflects the examinee's actual intelligence level (i.e., the true score). The difference between an examinee's true score and his highest or lowest hypothetical score is the SEM. The bigger the SEM, the more the observed scores can vary from the true score, and the less reliable the exam (i.e., the more random error there is in the scores). Thus, the SEM tells us how precise an estimate the IQ observed score is for what we think of as a "true" IQ score (and all psychological test scores are exactly that - estimates).

Atkins' jump of 59 to 74 is far outside the range of what is to be expected by chance (assuming he took the WAIS-III). In a bell-shaped curve, there's a 99% probability that the true score lies within 3 SEMs on either side of the observed score. A score of 74 is over 6.5 SEMs away from 59, which suggests the new score really is due to an increase in intelligence, and not an indication of mere measurement error.

Why am I telling you all this? Because the NYT didn't. Sure, I know that reporters rarely delve into the mysteries of reliability within a news article, but how are readers supposed to understand a topic that revolves around test scores unless they are exposed to the statistical bits and pieces that clarify the results?

Mr. Atkins, a slight, balding 27-year-old in an orange jumpsuit, sat slumped with his chin on his hand as lawyers argued about whether his intelligence was low enough to spare him from execution. In 1996, he and another man abducted Eric Nesbitt, 21, an airman from Langley Air Force Base, forced him to withdraw money from an A.T.M. and then shot him eight times, killing him. He will be one of the first death row inmates to have a jury trial on the question of whether he is retarded. The jury's decision will determine whether his life will be spared...

"I don't believe the truly mentally retarded commit these kinds of crimes," she said last year. She did not respond to recent messages seeking comment.

There's what everyone perceives as the meat of the matter, of course - even if the tests say he is retarded, does it matter, when he's demonstrated both the willingness and the ability to use a gun on an innocent person?

This is the first time I've seen an explicit statement court mental retardation judgments (although they differ from state to state):

... Seven states have passed new laws, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. They have adopted essentially the same definition of mental retardation, requiring defendants to prove three things: that their I.Q. is below 70 or 75, that they lack fundamental social and practical skills, and that both conditions existed before they turned 18.

Mr. Atkins was never tested as a youth, and so the jury will have to consider how to look back using his test scores as a young adult.

Nice of them to specify that the mental retardation has to be demonstrated in adolescence, but anyone not tested during that time gets to take the test as an adult and will be judged on that. Atkins may be at a disadvantage for not having youthful IQ scores. Where are all those testing opponents who are normally featured in the papers, insisting that tests are biased against minorities and indicative of nothing? Where are the critics who usually insist that people cannot be judged by one test score alone? Lord knows, they'd actually be of some use here.

Jurors in Mr. Atkins's case, which will be tried this spring or summer, will probably hear from mental health experts, teachers, family members, classmates and, perhaps, victims of some of the 16 other felonies that Mr. Atkins committed when he was 18 in what Dr. Nelson called a four-month crime spree. He dropped out of high school that year, his third attempt to pass the tenth grade.

Not much there to indicate that Atkins is very smart. There's also little to indicate that he should ever again be released into society.

There is apparently research to suggest that the mentally retarded may be more likely to confess to crimes they did not commit. To me, that suggests making life-in-prison and death penalties contingent on more than confessions, not making them contingent on high IQ scores. Despite the high reliabilities of IQ tests such as the WAIS-III, I still oppose the idea of setting an IQ score standard as a "Get Out of The Chair Free" card. The test was never intended to be used in such situations, and the possibility of cheating, abuse - and thorny questions such as what to do when IQ changes - arise.

Update: A roundup of opinions on Atkins, mostly the original court decision; I'll update with more recent posts as I find them.
Jenny D says this is good news for education, if not for Atkins.
Chris Correa: "...measurement error is a real issue and there is a problem with high-stakes testing in the courtroom."
ThreeDogBlog discusses the aspect of letting the jury decide on Atkins' intelligence level.
Boots And Sabers think we'll soon see an outbreak of mental retardation among defendants.
Gut Rumbles wonders when dumb stopped being a correlate of violent crime and started being a defense.

Men vs. women

You've probably all heard about Harvard President Lawrence Summer's provocative statement that innate differences may help explain why women lag behind men in succeeding in math- and science-based careers. The NYT takes a closer look at the research:

Researchers who have explored the subject of sex differences from every conceivable angle and organ say that yes, there are a host of discrepancies between men and women - in their average scores on tests of quantitative skills, in their attitudes toward math and science, in the architecture of their brains, in the way they metabolize medications, including those that affect the brain.

What such discrepancies may or may not mean is anyone's conjecture.

I have to admit, what I find fascinating about the whole thing is not so much the science behind it as the public reaction to any mention of this topic. Summers was essentially vilified for speaking about an area that has some solid research behind it. Meanwhile, we were treated to the spectacle of female audience members having to leave lest they "throw up" at his remarks, which doesn't exactly support the image of women being tough enough to handle intellectual debate.

I tend to agree with Linda Chavez on the topic:

...as uncomfortable as it might make feminists, the empirical evidence points to small but important differences in scientific and mathematical abilities between men and women.

On average, women perform better on verbal tests, while men demonstrate greater visual-spatial capabilities, and these differences are more striking at both the lower and upper extremes of intellectual ability. Boys outnumber girls in remedial reading classes — by large ratios, in most studies — but they are even likelier to outnumber girls among the most gifted in math and science. In one Johns Hopkins University study of gifted pre-adolescent students, boys outperformed girls among the top scoring students on math by 13-to-1.

One thing the media tends to downplay whenever discussions of intellectual ability arise is the fact that men tend to be further out on both tails of the intelligence spectrum. It's silly to complain about the "unfairness" of the relative proponderance of male geniuses when developmentally-delayed children are more likely to be males.

For example (from the NYT article):

Among college-bound seniors who took the math portion of the SAT in 2001, for example, nearly twice as many boys as girls scored over 700, and the ratio skews ever more male the closer one gets to 800, the top tally. Boys are also likelier than girls to get nearly all the answers wrong.

Something you don't often hear when people are whining about the "unfairness" SAT score disparities.

Back to Chavez:

For years, feminists have tried to explain away these achievement differences by suggesting girls are not encouraged properly to pursue math and science. Lately, some have even started blaming how these subjects are taught: too much emphasis on competition and being "right," too little on collaborative learning and nurturing self-esteem.

A strategy, by the way, that's guaranteed to get women who make it to the math programs laughed out of them. If there's one thing that any person, male or female, needs to succeed in the hard sciences, it's a burning desire to get things "right."

I do believe socialization can play a big part in the effort to guide more women towards math- and science-based careers; it's just that those "feminists" who believe in dumbing down the topics and focusing on "nurturing" are going about it all wrong. Any child, male or female, who is interested in science should be encouraged to be a tough, competitive, confident little know-it-all, and should be required to not only understand the importance of research but also to know how to use it to back up their claims.

When I was 4, my parents bought me the full set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica's Young Children's Encyclopedia - and encouraged me to be a total smartass with it. I still remember with glee the day I won a bet with my sister - who was then in high school - because I knew that a chicken's eyes were on the sides of its head, not the front.

Hey, it wasn't much, but it was a start. Without that encouragement, I daresay my career - and this blog - might not have ever gotten off the ground.

Finally, proof that teenagers really DON'T know better

Wonder how long until someone uses this as an excuse for why teenagers shouldn't be put in high-stakes academic situations?

Government researchers found in a recent study that the last areas of the brain to mature in humans appear to be those responsible for reasoning, problem-solving and other sophisticated functions. This doesn't happen until sometime between ages 18 and 21...

The new images [generated by the study] are important because "no one had actually shown that . . . simple areas would develop first and mature first, and complex areas would have to wait until simple areas mature," said lead study author Dr. Nitin Gogtay, a psychiatrist with the National Institute of Mental Health.

I have to admit, this does explain the lightbulb-going-off-above-the-head effect that hits most ex-party-animals in their mid-twenties, when they wonder how they could have been so insane as to do lots of drugs and unprotected sex when they were younger.

For some, though, that lightbulb never really appears, does it?

Redefining "gifted"

The controversies involved in using an IQ test to select kids for gifted and talented programs:

Amir Diego Howard is one of the brightest third-graders at Sierra Vista, an elementary school surrounded by some of Reno’s poorest neighborhoods...Amir easily passed the first two requirements for entry — his teacher’s assessment and scoring in the 96th percentile of a national criteria reference test.

Many minority students share Amir’s plight. Testing for G-T placement discriminates against English language learners plus children from bilingual homes or poor households, school officials from poorer schools said.

But if being able to read English at that level is necessary to succeed in the program, why is it discrimination?

“We could waive a test score or lower a test score for these students,” [Jo Garret, Washoe’s G-T curriculum coordinator] said. “The problem I see with this is that if you place an ESL student in a program that is highly English-language based, without any modifications, they will be frustrated and drop out of the program.”

She said the district needs modified testing and to change the program for such students to make it educationally appropriate.

Many states are modifying their G-T entrance requirements to be "non-language" oriented:

The district plans to draw more disadvantaged students into its improved middle school program that debuts next fall by allowing alternative ways of admission.

“We lowered the criteria for the Title I students to qualify,” Vanderploeg said. “We started in October and we have increased the number of minorities students in the program by 15 percent.”

Diversity is at the heart of the matter. And administrators are not ashamed to say that they are lowering standards just to get a more "diverse" G-T crowd in. But no one in the article answers the question - is it beneficial to admit more students with a "non-language" test if language skills are necessary to benefit from the G-T programs? Is this really a method of identifying students who will do well, given the chance, or is it a way for administrators to feel better about not having such a "white" group of gifted students?

The bottom line is, the students admitted under the new standards should be able to do the work and benefit from it. If that turns out to be the case, great. But if that doesn't happen, I hope states that modified their standards will admit it.

Minnesota Mensans

If you're near Duluth, Minnesota, and you're itching to join Mensa, here's your chance:

A group of 17 people is reviving a Twin Ports chapter of the international organization. The local chapter began in January. They've met three times now, most recently at the Chester Creek Cafe on Ninth Street in the East Hillside...

While Mensa may have an elitist or exclusive reputation to many, local members said they try to make it inclusive and don't care for pretentious attitudes.

Problem is, political correctness being what it is, just supporting the use of intelligence tests is often considered pretentious (and bigoted) in and of itself.

You Duluthians can go here to test for Mensa, or you can peruse the list of acceptable scores on outside standardized tests on the Mensa US site.

In case you're wondering, I was a member of Mensa in my early twenties (my WAIS-R, GRE, and SAT scores all qualified; I'm nothing if not consistent). Those were the days before everyone had email, and I was looking to expand my penpal circle. And I got some very interesting letters from very, um, interesting people, not all of whom were men, and not all of whom were incarcerated (yeeks). Let's just say that I've since found it more entertaining and fulfilling to converse with people of all intelligence levels who have interests, goals, and life experiences similar to mine, than with people who are very smart, but often are disillusioned and unhappy underachievers.

A matter of life and death

What stands between convicted murderer Michael Rosales and the electric chair? The reliability evidence surrounding a standardized test:

The court in New Orleans delayed the execution based on claims by Rosales' lawyers that he is mentally retarded. The case will be sent back to a federal district court in Lubbock, where his defense attorneys will file a petition asking that the issue of his mental retardation be investigated further...

An intelligence test given to Rosales in January put his IQ at 73 and other tests determined he is mildly retarded, according to his appeal. An IQ of 70 is considered the threshold for retardation. Considering a five-point error rate on standardized intelligence scales, Rosales' appeal said the test results could put him at that threshold, and noted the Texas appeals court had halted an execution and allowed additional investigation for another inmate who had an IQ of 72.

I've written about this before. While I understand the compassion that motivates society not to want to put this kind of person to death, who among us believes that any further investigation of his intelligence will be unaffected by the fact that, if he is judged not to be mentally retarded, he's going to be put to death? It's hard to believe further investigation of his mental capacities will be unbiased, in that sense.

IQ tests were never meant to be used to save someone from the electric chair, and in these types of situations, the test is essentially a "Get Out of The Chair Free" card. Talk about high-stakes testing. What's more, it's my impression that activists who oppose testing in schools are quite in favor of using IQ tests to save murderers from a date with the executioner.

As I said before:

After all, researchers who use IQ scores to predict certain variables or who suggest that IQ scores should be used to make policy decisions (especially if their viewpoints are not particularly politically correct) often hear cries of outrage that such tests do not predict the whole person, that such tests don't tell you anything about motivation, or desire, or ambition, or potential, or "true" intelligence. So, why can't a prosecutor claim that when someone with an IQ of 65 murders another human, their actions speak louder than their test scores, and they should be judged on those actions?

An apple a day (and high intelligence) keeps the doctor away

One social phenomenon that is hard to ignore is that wealth and health tend to go hand in hand. Those with more money often enjoy better health, and conventional wisdom says that this is mainly, or only, because in our society, those with more money have better access to healthcare. But one researcher is suggesting that intelligence is the third factor that is connected to both wealth and health:

In two recent scientific papers, researcher Linda Gottfredson proposes that rather than poverty causing ill health (and, generally, lower IQ scores) among lower social classes, intelligence disparities may underlie class differences both in wealth and health.

Regarding health, general intelligence may be a major cause of that difference, she contends. While so far it's unproven, "I think it's a stronger candidate than anything else that's been produced so far."

Her theories about this are fascinating:

Dr. Gottfredson, however, sees abundant evidence suggesting that intelligence differences may explain the puzzling gap – which exists, she notes, across different time periods, nations, health-care systems and even diseases. For instance, she says, the higher people are on the socioeconomic ladder, the higher they tend to score on tests of general intelligence, or g – a mental agility that includes skills such as reasoning and learning in all sorts of situations.

Dr. Gottfredson argues that taking care of one's health can be viewed as an increasingly complex, lifelong job...Even if all patients had the same medical care and resources, some would exploit them better than others to guard their health, she says. "The reason is that people differ in their ability to learn information, to understand the information that's provided to them, and their inclination and ability to go seek out information, understand what's relevant," she says.

In other words, even if people with little money had unlimited access to healthcare, they would still be limited to the degree that low intelligence lowered their ability to navigate the health-care system, decide how to best care for themselves, make judgments about health-care issues, and create a lifelong plan for good health. Those with higher intelligence may be more likely to work at less-risky jobs, but they're also more likely to quit smoking. And regular observers of shows like Cops have always known there's a link between intelligence and accident prevention. (Joanne Jacobs provides a link to a prime example of bad health being directly attibutable to stupid decisions. Money may cover healthcare costs in this case, but it certainly won't stop someone from making this kind of decision in the future.)

Throwing more money at the problem isn't necessarily the solution. And when one study has shown that forty-two percent of patients surveyed didn't understand the directions for taking medication on an empty stomach, the suggestion that "health literacy" is as connected to intelligence as "reading literacy" makes sense.

Read the entire article - there's more data to suggest a link between intelligence and health, an explanation of the "correlation does not mean causation" concept (hoorah!), and a few suggestions, included changing the health care structure so that doctors would have more information about patient intelligence before giving medications and creating healthcare plans.

Nature, nurture, and IQ

Various bloggers are all over some recent research on the Head Start program which suggests that, at the low end of the income scale, IQ is less determined by inheritability than environment, as compared to the higher end, where inheritability plays a larger part. Here's a summary of the report and various comments:

"Genes' sway over IQ may vary with class" (Washington Post)
"Environment, IQ, and Head Start" (Mark Kleiman)
"Nature vs nurture, part 4578..." (Calpundit)
"Plug" (Jane Galt)
"Liberals for the Status Quo" (Joanne Jacobs)

What do I think? I think most of the blogosphere's got it absolutely right (Calpundit, on the other hand, is wrong in believing that Bush wants to "gut" the program by increasing the academic challenge and decreasing the federal control). These findings call not for a preservation of status quo, but for introducing changes into Head Start - and into the public K-12 system - that focus on intensifying the cognitive atmosphere surrounding minority youth. As one of Joanne's commenters put it, in the 1970's social workers became afraid to shove "middle-class ethics" down the throats of minority clients, and now we're seeing the inevitable end result.

All fears that kids are going to be pushed beyond their "readiness" level should be put aside, especially when the kids are coming from poor homes. Disadvantaged kids should not be coddled, nor saddled with the "bigotry of low expectations"; instead, they should be getting more stimulation, more exposure to facts, more intensive education - because they're not getting it at home.

I'm not going to get involved in the topics of federal vs. state spending or programs; I'll just say that this is yet another piece of evidence suggesting that lower standards in academic environments, from ineffective Head Start programs to bad schools to grade inflation to all the way up to AA in college admissions, disproportionately hurt those at the lower end of the SES scale who need help the most.