We may be getting dumber in some respects

real_aurgathor · 2025-04-27T18:27:56+00:00

From the 1930’s up until the mid 90’s or so, americans’ IQ scores were steadily increasing, and that was called a Flynn effect. However, lately, the opposite is true – IQ scores are now on the decline in three key respects. A Northwestern University study shows a decline in three key intelligence testing categories—a tangible example of what is called the Reverse Flynn Effect. Leading up to the 1990s, IQ scores were consistently going up, but in recent years, that trend seems to have flipped. The reasons for both the increase and the decline are sill very much up for debate. Scores in verbal reasoning, matrix reasoning, and letter and number series all declined but, interestingly, scores in spatial reasoning went up. Americans’ IQ scores are trending in a downward direction. In fact, they’ve been falling for over a decade. According to a press release, in studying intelligence testing data from 2006 to 2018, Northwestern University researchers noticed that test scores in three out of four “cognitive domains” were going down. This is the first time we’ve seen a consistent negative slope for these testing categories, providing tangible evidence of what is known as the “Reverse Flynn Effect.” In a 1984 study, James Flynn noticed that intelligence test scores had steadily increased since the early 1930s. We call that steady rise the Flynn Effect. Considering that overall intelligence seemed to be increasing faster than could be explained by evolution, the reason increase became a source of debate, with many attributing the change to various environmental factors. But now, it seems that a Reverse Flynn Effect is, well, in effect. The study, published in the journal Intelligence, used an online, survey-style personality test called the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project to analyze nearly 400,000 Americans. The researchers recorded responses from 2006 and 2018, in order to examine if and how cognitive ability scores were changing over time within the country. The data showed drops in logic and vocabulary (known as verbal reasoning), visual problem solving and analogies (known as matrix reasoning), and computational and mathematical abilities (known as letter and number series). On the flip side, however, scores in spatial reasoning (known as 3D rotation) followed the opposite pattern, trending upward over the 12-year period. “There’s a debate about what’s causing it, but not every domain is going down; one of them is going up,” Elizabeth Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, says in a news release. “If all the scores were going in the same direction, you could make a nice little narrative about it, but that’s not the case. We need to do more to dig into it.” Article: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/ Personally, I find this finding somewhat unexpected, although I think there is a definite association with certain changes that happened in the last several decades – one of them being social media and the internet, but the others are OT. 😧 A few other hypotheses have been put forth to try and explain the reverse Flynn Effect, such as falling nutritional standards, the worsening of school systems, social media, increased air pollution, or the idea that people just be less interested in portions of the SPAP Project personality survey. 4. Concluding remarks This study set out to investigate if a Flynn effect or a reverse Flynn effect was a phenomenon in a large United States sample recruited between 2006 and 2018. Regardless of education, gender, and age, lower annual scores were observed for composite cognitive ability measured by 35 items, and the matrix reasoning and letter and number series scores measured across the 13 years of assessment. These differences were replicated across the 60-item composite ability scores from 2011 to 2018, however, three-dimensional rotation scores measured during this 8-year period showed evidence of a Flynn effect of varying magnitudes across 18- to 60-year-olds. The largest differences in mean ability scores were often observed for participants between the ages of 18 to 22. Beyond age, a reverse Flynn effect was also present across all levels of educational attainment, with the rate of decreasing scores being steeper for those with less than a 4-year college degree. While additional work needs to be done to further incorporate other demographic measures from the SAPA Project, the current study indicates that the Flynn effect and its associated reversal may no longer generalize across all ages or levels of education. It also underlines the need for further research using large adult samples to understand if the Flynn effect or if its reversal is a phenomenon in the United States during the twenty-first century. Study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156

Dks01

dave And yet here I am, reading your words :-)

Thank you. I think. 🙂

ElQuintron

This has run its course.

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