The Genius in All of Us

What is I.Q.? (An IQ FAQ)

In his January 16, 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Charles Murray badly distorts the meaning and implications of I.Q. tests and scores. Let's more scrupulously review what I.Q. is, and what it tells us.

What is I.Q.?
I.Q. is a largely effective method of ranking people according to their analytic, or "academic," intelligence. I.Q. scores are highly predictive of how well children will do throughout their school career, and how they will score on other academic tests. The scores also correlate moderately well with future social status and income (Jencks, 1979; APA, 1995).

What do I.Q. tests measure? 
I.Q. tests measure a collection of abilities collectively known as "symbolic logic." The most well known test, Stanford-Binet 5, specifically measures Fluid Reasoning, Knowledge, Quantitative Reasoning, Visual-Spatial Processing, and Working Memory. All I.Q. tests are restricted to pencil-and-paper and do not measure creativity, or what some psychologists call "emotional intelligence" or "practical intelligence."

What is the specific meaning of an I.Q. score?
An I.Q. score reveals how an individual's test performance compares to the rest of his/her age group. Scores are weighted so that the average results always equal 100.

- An I.Q. score of 100 means that 50% of the people in your age group scored better, and 50% scored worse.
- An I.Q. score of 85 means that 84.13% of the people in your age group scored better, and 15.87% scored worse.
- An I.Q. score of 130 means that 2.28% of the people in your age group scored better, and 97.72% scored worse.

What does it mean that I.Q. scores are impressively stable?
Most individuals' I.Q. scores will change little over time (Moffitt et al, 1993), indicating that the test has managed to pinpoint some aspects of a person's "fixed" intelligence -- mind-brain abilities that are inherently a part of that individual and are unlikely to be significantly improved or degraded over time. These basic skills include apprehending, scanning, retrieving and responding to stimuli. The faster one's brain can perform these tasks, the higher one's I.Q. score will be (APA, 1995). Further, a significant portion of these abilities seem to be inherited, as demonstrated by studies of twins separated at birth (Bouchard et al, 1990).

Does I.Q. stability mean that people cannot become smarter and wiser over time?
Far from it. I.Q. stability merely means that, among children who are exposed to roughly equal educational resources, overall rankings of academic intelligence (and academic success) are unlikely to change much over time. If we rank 100 people in 3rd grade according to academic performance, and then wait eight years and rank that same group in 11th grade, the rankings won't be exactly the same but will strongly resemble one another. (Consider: should this be much of a surprise -- that people by and large tend to remain in the same intellectual pecking order as they grow up?)

Fortunately, several powerful trends undercut the significance of the above trend:

1. Almost all human beings, of course, learn tremendously and grow in their skills over time, even if their academic ranking doesn't much change. From a 1995 task force report issued by the American Psychological Association:

"It is important to understand [that] a child whose IQ score remains the same from age 6 to age 18 does not exhibit the same performance throughout that period. On the contrary, steady gains in general knowledge vocabulary, reasoning ability, etc. will be apparent. What does not change is his or her score in comparison to that of other individuals of the same age."

2. Nothing about I.Q. implies any sort of inherent limit, or "ceiling," on the human ability to learn. I.Q simply shows that, as groups grow intellectually, they tend to grow at the same rates. There is plenty of evidence, for example, that schooling raises overall academic intelligence (Ceci, 1990; Darlington, 1995). There is also evidence that most human beings are not reaching their cognitive or academic potential. (Ericsson, 2003; Bartlett and Byrd, 1980). Better schools can raise the level of learning for nearly all students.

3. Any individual can buck a trend, and individuals' I.Q. scores have been known to change as much as 18 points over time (Jones & Bayley, 1941). It is important that we do not confuse "heritability" with "heredity." Scientists have shown that genetics accounts for some portion of the variation of intelligence throughout the human population -- but that is not remotely the same thing as showing that people inherit certain genes that trap them in a certain level of intelligence.

4. Most importantly, perhaps, I.Q. only measures academic intelligence, missing entirely other types of intelligence.

What do I.Q. tests miss?
(How much time do you have?)

Harvard's Howard Gardner: "The tasks featured in the I.Q. test are decidedly microscopic, are often unrelated to one another, and . . . are remote, in many cases, from everyday life. They rely heavily upon language and upon a person's skill in defining words, in knowing fact about the world, in finding connections (and differences) among verbal concepts . . . . An individual can lose his entire frontal lobes, in the process becoming a radically different person, unable to display any initiative or to solve new problems -- and yet may continue to exhibit an I.Q. close to genius level. Moreover, the intelligence test reveals little about an indivdual's potential for further growth." (Frames of Mind, p. 18).

Yale's Robert Sternberg, on the domain of "practical intelligence" not measured by intelligence tests: I.Q. tests "tend to (a) have been formulated by other people, (b) be clearly defined, (c) come with all the information needed to solve them, (d) have only a single right answer, which can be reached by only a single method, (e) be disembodied from ordinary experience, and (f) have little or no intrinsic interest. Practical problems, in contrast, tend to (a) require problem recognition and formulation, (b) be poorly defined, (c) require information seeking, (d) have various acceptable solutions, (e) be embedded in and require prior everyday experience, and (f) require motivation and personal involvement." (1995 APA report).

Also:
- I.Q. scores have a weak correlation with nonacademic intelligence and with performance in everyday tasks in other cultures. (Miller, p. 292).
- I.Q. scores do not identify the most successful and creative artists or scientists (Taylor, 1975, pp.1-36).
- Brazilian street children who have failed math in school can still be savvy in street trades -- they use  methods altogether different from pencil-and-paper math. (Carraher, Carraher, and Schliemann, 1985). (Similar results with California shoppers (Lave, 1988) and harness race wagerers (Ceci and Liker, 1986)
- I.Q. does not distinguish the best chess players from others... (Doll & Mayr, 1987)

***

In his op-ed, Murray equates "I.Q." with "intelligence," which is strongly misleading. He then asserts:
- "Our ability to improve the academic accomplishment of students in the lower half of the distribution of intelligence is severely limited. It is a matter of ceilings."
- "We can hope to raise [the grade of a boy with an I.Q. slightly below 100]. But teaching him more vocabulary words or drilling him on the parts of speech will not open up new vistas for him. It is not within his power to follow an exposition written beyond a limited level of complexity...[he is] not smart enough."
- "Even the best schools under the best conditions cannot repeal the limits on achievement set by limits on intelligence."

Each of these statements is demonstrably false and spreads a dramatically simplified and distorted view of human intelligence. Policy goals aside, it is critical that we present as complete a picture as the current evidence allows.

My (current) bias

What I've read so far, combined with my personal experience, tells me that we are born with some important biological distinctions, but that their influence often pales in comparison to the dramatic variety of stimuli we experience from the first moment of our lives. I'm particularly fascinated by the 1995 Hart/Risley study on parental language and encouragement (more on their book here), and by the study's interpretations (solidly pro-environment here and here; somewhat equivocal here).

Effort and desire are obviously paramount, and while I'm open to gene-driven personality factors that would make someone intensely motivated, it's always seemed to me that desire has a big psychological component.

Before I gave it up for the guitar years ago, people used to call me a "talented" violin player, which made me laugh because it had taken me so long to make a non-ear-splitting sound. I went from deranged-sounding to award-winning, but that took years and gobs of practice. Same thing with writing. I don't compare my abilities to Albert Einstein's, but his quote about success does resonate strongly with my experience: "It's not that I'm so smart. It's just that I stay with problems longer."

I also know the opposite feeling. Being mediocre to poor at most things, I know that, in a million years, I could never be a stupendous soccer player or painter or mathematician. But my experience with how long and hard it has taken to get good at other stuff tells me that these things look impossible mostly because they're so far away.

Here is the strangest and most enticing thing about this subject: the invisibility factor. We see people being good at stuff -- we don't see them becoming good. I want to try to make the process visible.

Best intentions and slippery questions

Welcome to our many new readers, including quite a few with considerable knowledge on the subject. Already, there are many terrific comments (I'm still trying to catch up). A little bit more about what this blog/book intends to do:

- consider all the evidence (with citations when possible)
- define our terms ("gifted," "talent," "greatness," "genius," "intelligence," etc.)
- avoid extreme statements
- correct mistakes and misimpressions
- acknowledge personal bias

I do invite as much participation as possible, and ask participants to be follow the same principles (to the extent that time allows). This is one of the trickiest subjects in science. There's a lot of data, and much of it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. What may appear at first to be a slam-dunk piece of data can turn out to be surprisingly slippery, raising lots of questions. For instance:

* Motivation has emerged as a critical ingredient. Is motivation rooted largely in psychology and formed during childhood (sometimes later), or is it rooted in a snippet of DNA? OR is it always a combination, Could it work in two completely different ways, with some people being born with the "rage to master" and others driven by a psychological need? Assuming a psychological component, does it follow that parents can consciously tap into that and create such a desire, or is out of parents' reach?

* Are savants proof that innate biology drives ability (usually the first instinctive conclusion of outsiders), or that extraordinary drive and focus can lead straight to extraordinary skill? Or again, is it a combination? Can ambitious people rewire their own brains in savant-like ways, tapping into what Darold Treffert and Gregory Wallace call "islands of savant intelligence"?

* What does I.Q. really measure? Why have scores shifted in recent decades? Is there a significant distinction (and independent relationship) between general intelligence and specialized intelligence? If twin studies prove that some general level of intelligence is largely heritable, what does that mean in practical terms when we have seen that even extremely heritable traits like height can be substantially altered by the environment? (Ceci et al, p. 304). Shoud we pay more attention to levels of performance (actualized genetic potential), or to evidence that seems to point to a large amount of unrealized potential (unactualized genetic potential)?

Overall, I hope to widen minds on this subject (including my own), bringing the naturists over more to the side of the emerging science of nurture, and vice-versa. And perhaps most importanty, I want to understand the new science of genetic expression and how the apparently constant interaction between nature and nuture defines every facet of this issue.

On Musical Talent

How can we explain the vast differences in musical ability? How can one species produce Paul Simon and William Hung? Are we born with musical talent, or do we develop it? Let's sort through the research:

* Primitive musicality is, without question, built into our DNA
- Two-day old infants show a preference for some music over others (N. Masataka, 1999).
- Nearly all infants babble with melody and intonation (Gardner, 1997, p. 251).
- At 1, children can often match pitch (Kessen, Levine & Peindich, 1978).
- At 1 1/2, children engage in spontaneous song (Kessen, Levine & Peindich, 1978)
- At 2 1/2, children show extended awareness of songs by others (Davidson, 1994, in R. Aiello)

While these early developments can be influenced by outside events, they clearly unfold according to a genetic blueprint.

We cannot say the same for the next phase of development:

* Beyond primitive ability, even basic musical development requires some modicum of encouragement and teaching.
- "Musical development continues beyond the age of 7 or so only in an environment that provides some sort of tutelage." (Gardner, 1997, p. 253; Gardner, 1973; Winner, 1982)
- Absolute ("perfect") pitch is not a genetic accident or random occurrence, but is developed in young childhood under specific external conditions (D. Deutsch, 2004; Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993).

Then, to take it to the next level, aspiring musicians need true instruction and a work ethic:

* Advanced musicianship requires methodical training and "deliberate practice"
- "Talent proves of no avail in the absence of thousands of hours of practice distributed over a decade or more, as the youngster gains facility in various first- and second-order musical symbol systems. (Gardner, 1997, p. 256).
- The very best professional musicians practice the most and the smartest compared to the next best group of professional musicians, who in turn practice more and better than the third-best group (Ericsson et al, 1993). Top musicians consistently require about ten years and 10,000 hours of practice to achieve the height of their virtuoso skill-level.
- Among student musicians, the best ones also practice more than the next-best, who practice more and better than the ones who eventually drop out (Sloboda, Davidson, Howe, and Moore, 1996).
- "Deliberate practice" is qualitatively different from ordinary experience. In ordinary experience, an individual is exposed to certain task demands, spends time attaining proficiency at that task and then plateaus, more or less satisfied with his/her level of competence. Under these passive circumstances, more time spent with the same task after the plateau will not significantly increase skill-level. The skill level becomes autonomous and stable. In contrast, under a regime of deliberate practice, the individual is never quite satisfied and is always pushing a little bit beyond his/her capability, actively and incrementally expanding that capability. (Ericsson, 2006, chapter 38).
- Francis Galton, the father of eugenics and theories of innate talent, suggested that individuals pursuing a skill naturally rise to an innate limit of their capability. The work of Ericsson and others suggests that this is nonsense -- that in many if not most cases these limits are not innate but connected to the quantity and quality of training, and to an individual's level of ambition/determination.

* Musical training physically alters the brain. Accomplished musicians have key differences in their brains -- not from birth but as a direct result of training.
- Right-handers not trained in music show typical right-hemisphere processing, while right-handers trained in music show left-hemisphered dominance (Bever & Chiarello, 1974)
- Cortical representations of fingers of the left hands of string players get significantly enlarged compared to non-musicians -- and moreso for those who train earlier in life. (Elbert et al, 1995)

None of this, of course, rules out the possibility of innate talent. What it does do, though, is paint a rich, descriptive picture of musicianship being largely in the realm of development. After a thorough review of the research, Lehmann & Gruber state: "Taken together, it is difficult to obtain clear evidence on the role of innate abilities, despite the fact that giftedness features prominently in everyday discourse. On the other hand, much evidence exists that practice and other environmental factors have a large impact on changes in many variables related to musical performance." (p. 458.)

Can anyone be a great musician? No -- there are all sorts of limitations. Some are severely physically disabled, others intellectually disabled. Others don't have the childhood resources of encouragement and training. Others never develop the intense desire, for whatever reason. There are lots of obstacles out there. The point that I think shines through in all this research is that we need to sweep aside this old notion that most people simply don't have IT. The IT -- the greatness -- is something you acquire, not something you are given or are not given. Some may face too many obstacles to acquire IT but few are born with limitations so severe that the acquisition is inherently impossible.

"Welcome to Hollywood"

I've been watching some of the American Idol season openers, curious to see if any meaningful lessons about talent shine through the soap opera hysterics. There is some real food for thought here, but first you need to wade through the truly grotesque exploitation of the emotionally-needy.

For those who haven't seen the show, the season begins with open auditions drawing literally thousands of people in each of several different cities, and the producers make it a point to devote about half the air time to "not even close" wannabees -- narcissists who have no clue of their mediocrity, or lonely, celebrity-obsessed creeps, or even a number of people who seem intellectually crippled in some way.

The TV payoff of these going-nowhere auditions is either a vitriolic joust-with-Simon or the simpler voyeurism of watching a clueless person being informed that they were "awful," and not to "waste your money" on singing lessons. You don't have it -- don't bother wanting it.

And then there are the people who make it through the first cut and get to go to Hollywood for the second round. Conveniently, most of them have not only rich voices, but also a compelling personal narrative. The guy who slept in garbage in order to audition; the attractive brother and sister with a healthy -- but maybe not that healthy -- competitive spirit, the girl who lied to her Dad about auditioning but desperately wants his approval, etc.

From these opening episodes, the viewer is left with the impression that most of the country has no singing talent, and no hope of acquiring any; but, randomly, a few people in every thousand do have IT. With a little coaching, some luck and a lot of heart, one of the lucky few might become a superstar.

It's a compelling message, and terrifyingly self-fulfilling. Most viewers will quickly and quietly decide that they don't have IT either, thank the Lord that they have the good sense not to tangle with Simon, and wonder idly if their kids will perhaps show some sign of having IT one day.

Few will realize the much more complex truth: all of these "gifted" singers had early and sustained musical exposure and encouragement, developed a healthy emotional attachment to practicing and performing, and at some point in their lives buckled down and worked hard -- and received some sort of mentorship -- on their technique. Talent is not a gift, but a process.

Springsteen (inadvertently) weighs in on my last post...

Ok, this is a little eerie. Just a few hours after writing the previous post, I found myself on the exercise bike watching an old TV interview with Bruce Springsteen. (For me, that's as riveting as any Sopranos episode.) I was startled when Bruce came out with this:

"I wasn't quite suited for the educational system. One problem with the way the educational system is set up is that it only recognizes a certain type of intelligence, and it's incredibly restrictive -- very, very restrictive. There's so many types of intelligence, and people who would be at their best outside of that structure [get lost]. Most of the schools, they're aiming to build you up and get you into the machine."

(He goes on to say a lot about what drove him early on, and what fueled his drive to become better and better and better at what he does. All very relevent to this project. I'll draw on those statements another time.)

Am I so utterly obsessed with Springsteen that when I heard him talk fleetingly about this stuff several years ago, I unconsciously decided to write a book about it, then followed through on that promise years later and -- on the precise day that I was exploring this one particular facet -- somehow unconsciously prodded myself to rummage through my old VHS tapes for the old interview so I could again stumble upon these words? If you know me and my family, you're nodding yes.

"Gifted and Talented" School Programs, Part 1

The Florida Department of Education is considering a plan to redefine "giftedness." As of now, your Floridian child isn't officially gifted unless he/she scores at least 130 on an I.Q. test. The new plan would lower that threshold to 120, expanding the giftedness pool from 3% to perhaps 10% of schoolkids.

Lots of issues here: What does "gifted" mean? Do these tests really identified the most promising students? Are "gifted" programs worthwhile? Are they fair?

Let's begin with what I.Q. tests measure and what they mean.

I.Q. tests are about a century old and are intended to measure a person's "general intelligence" as compared to other people in his/her age. The tests are calibrated so that a person of supposedly average intelligence will score 100.

Specifically I.Q. tests measure symbolic logic -- a person's ability to understand and manipulate symbols ranging from words to numbers to shapes. These tests do not measure emotional intelligence -- the ability to read and respond to one's emotions or the emotions of others. Nor do they measure  musical/rhythmic intelligence, body/kinesthetic intelligence, categorical intelligence (ability to distinguish between different categories and classifications), or existential/big-picture intelligence. You might say that I.Q. measures "book smart," but not "people smart" or "culture smart."

In many ways, I.Q. is an anachronism, but it persists for two main reasons. One is that cognitive scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists still find it a useful gauge of general intelligence, which seems to be by far the most heritable type of intelligence.

Secondly, it has proven to be a good predictor of overall life success -- who will do reasonably well in school and society, who will get and hold a good job, make a good amount of money, stay out of trouble, and so on. (Of course these are just population studies and percentages. It doesn't tell us for sure whether any particular individual with an I.Q. of 80 or 140 will do well or poorly in life.)

The great irony, though, is that I.Q. does not identify most "talents" or special abilities -- and absolutely does not enable us to predict who will grow up to become extraordinary scientists, musicians, teachers, leaders, or athletes. It predicts general success, but not greatness.

Does it make sense for schools to pay special attention to kids who are already generally on the right track? On the one hand, yes: As a society, we want to encourage general success, to help nudge along people who will be contributing the most as a class to our society and economy.

On the other hand, an I.Q.-based gifted program is problematic in two important ways. First, a program focused on the top 10% I.Q. scorers diverts resources from the people who need it most -- the 90% who aren't as likely to succeed and therefore could benefit the most from extra help.

Second, if we want our schools to truly nurture talent -- encourage great achievement from those with special potential, I.Q. is not the place to start. In fact, it may be the worst possible place.

How Beckham Bends It (Soccer, Part 1)

Beckham is coming to America, albeit somewhat past his prime. Scientists, meanwhile, are still trying to figure out how he did what he did in his prime. [Check out this YouTube compilation.] How did he bend it like that?

In a Mechanical Engineering article, engineers at Yamagata University and University of Sheffield describe how, in his legendary 2002 goal against Greece, Beckham "accelerated the ball to 80 miles per hour, after hitting it about 8 centimeters to the right of its center with the instep of his right foot. The ball spun counterclockwise at about eight revolutions per second and started swerving to the left. The ball rose into the air as if it would soar over the goal's crossbar. Then it slowed to 40 mph, curved further to the left, and dropped into the top left corner for the goal."

Got that, kids?

After studying a soccer ball in a wind tunnel, the engineers deduced this explanation for Beckham's magic kick: The initial spin creates a subtle leftward movement of the ball, which suddenly becomes a severe leftward movement when the speed of the ball drops below 23 miles per hour. That's because the airflow around the ball suddenly changes character at that speed, with the drag immediately increasing by 150 percent. In an instant, the soaring ball drops and curves, as if willed by an invisible force.

The physics are impressive, but nothing compared to the computations taking place inside Beckham's brain in the instant leading up to the kick. "Their brains must be computing some very detailed trajectory calculations in a few seconds purely from instinct and practice," says University of Sheffield's Matt Carré. "Our computers take a few hours to do the same thing."

So how does Beckham's brain make such computations. Was he born with such skill or did he acquire it? If acquired, how?

A new 901-page book, The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, documents several decades of research into answering such questions. After several thousand years of "whoa -- how did he do that?" this book and these researchers mark the first rigorous attempt to understand what makes certain people great at what they do. I'm still digesting this research myself, but a few basic findings leap out of these pages right away:

1. Greatness is highly-specific. The exquisite suite of skills required to cross and curl a soccer ball is one specific set of software instructions working with specially-adapted neural hardware; a ballet dancer uses different software and has a different neural network; a violinist a third.

2. Greatness takes time, and requires thousands upon thousands of hours of practice -- and it has to be just the right kind of practice.

3. While any number (and perhaps nearly all) of us are born with the tools to develop a specific brand of greatness, no one is born with the developed tools. And in no case do they develop on their own. Later on, we'll get into the genetics of greatness, which turns out to be virtually the opposite of what we were taught. Genes don't drive us so much as we drive our genes.

Untapped potential

Interesting article in the Times yesterday, passing on the mildly-comforting news that children's lives in the U.S. have improved marginally over the last ten years. More kids are doing better at school, and watching less television.

What a survey like this can't possibly reveal, though, is how much better kids could be doing. That's what researchers studying talent and high-achievement have been looking into over the past two decades. Amazingly, they can't find any built-in limits. For example, in a 2003 study, University of Florida's K. Anders Ericsson,

was unable to find any reproducible evidence that would limit the ability of motivated and healthy adults to achieve exceptional levels of memory performance given access to instruction and supportive training environments. [Abstract of study here].

This followed a separate study (from 2002) showing that profound memory abilities could not be explained by any structural difference in the brain, nor by any measurable innate intelligence. The advanced capabilities seemed entirely due to specific, learnable strategies. Given enough time and resources, anyone could do it. [Study here.]

For a hundred years, we have assumed that we are all subject to strict genetic limits on our  intelligence, creativity, and agility -- limits that define who we are and how well we succeed. Now evidence is mounting that these limits simply do not exist.

The Narrowness of Greatness

A few months ago, I published a book on the history and influence of chess. One of that book's consistent themes is that even young, not-very-accomplished chess players enjoy a nice fringe benefit of improved general thinking skills that they can apply in a wide variety of non-chess tasks. Studies show that chess "can enhance concentration, patience, and perseverance," according to the University of Sydney's Peter Dauvergne. Memphis State University's Dianne Horgan has shown that chess can sharpen evaluation skills, enhance "process feedback," and improve "calibration" -- a person's self-perception of his or her own ability.

But there's a surprising corollary to this point. When researchers look closely at what makes truly great chess players great, they don't find a similar carry-over into other tasks. Chess masters can remember thousands of positions and hundreds of games perfectly, and can even follow intricate games blindfolded, but they don't have an extraordinary memory for anything else. On all other subjects, their recall is rather ordinary.

According to the cognitive scientists who have studied this matter intensively over the last several decades, the same goes with chemists, political scientists, surgeons, athletes, and musicians.

This has proven to be one of the most enduring findings in the study of expertise...There is little transfer from high-level proficiency in one domain to proficiency in other domains - even when the domains seem, intuitively, very similar. [Paul Feltovich et al., 2006].

In short, it seems you can't be truly great at something without developing a phenomenal memory, but that phenomenal memory is always limited in context and content.

Talent researchers have a number of names for this phenomenon. One is "specificity in expertise." The phrase may come off as clinical and unexciting, but for cognitive scientists discovering it in the 1970s and early '80s, it was both revolutionary and profoundly instructive. Before, they had assumed that skills were skills, and that specific knowledge was just the stuff you plugged into a working brain. If you had a great memory, you had a great memory. If you were highly verbal, you were highly verbal. Seen in that generic light, one could plausibly assume that abilities were natural-born. "He's got a head for figures."

But the discovery of intensive domain specificity blew that idea away, and helped clear the road for a more sophisticated understanding of where extraordinary abilities -- and ordinary abilities, and everything in between -- come from.

Much more on this to come . . .