4 ms·

Pupil Size Is a Marker of Intelligence

70 points by davesailer 5y ago

amai 5y ago
Maybe they are not really testing the IQ, but instead they are just testing peripheral vision. IQ is a dubious concept anyway. The definition is as unclear as the definition of physical fitness.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cjlars 5y ago
Doesn't appear to have held up to replication. [1] >However, unlike Tsukuhara et al., we could establish only small to nonexistent associations between cognitive ability and pupil size (r’s -.01 to .06, r with g specifically = .05) In fact, a quick scan down the Scholar results shows other replications have found the opposite effect [2] >The results found that high-Gf adolescents showed smaller tonic pupil size in both tasks [1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emil-O-W-Kirkegaard/publication/341609641_Pupil_Size_and_Intelligence_A_Large-Scale_Replication_Study/links/5eca9375a6fdcc90d696db32/Pupil-Size-and-Intelligence-A-Large-Scale-Replication-Study.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emil-O-W-Kirkegaard/pub... [2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pchj.397 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pchj.397
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  But their paper argues that the null results were due to A)using tasks that do not have the strongest association (i.e. they did not measure fluid intelligence), and B)setting baseline lighting levels too brightly so that pupils began at the minimum possible size. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027721000627?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00100... So we will see going forward.
- Jack566 5y ago
  Emil Kirkegaard the individual who wants to legalise child porn and reduce age of consent to 13 year olds? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_Kirkegaard https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_Kirkegaard
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  If this is a replicable result, they are probably measuring subjects' interest in being in the lab and doing tasks. Some people care, and pay attention and do well. Others are just there for class credit and blow it all off.
hprotagonist 5y ago
pupillometry correlates with bloody everything.
gentleman11 5y ago
Don’t small pupils correlate with stress? If a participant did an iq test and was smart they might be more relaxed than a participant who knew they would do badly.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Confidence and skills do not necessarily correlate, see the Dunning–Kruger effect for instance. Personally, if I enter some kind of contest, I am much more stressed if I know that I can win.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    >Confidence and skills do not necessarily correlate, see the Dunning–Kruger effect for instance. D-K can be summarized roughly as “self-perceived relative skill is directly correlated with actual relative skill, but systematically compressed toward about the 70th percentile”. (For some reason people mistake the finding that those at the bottom of relative skill perceive their relative skill higher than it is, and those at the top perceive theirs lower than it actually is for an inverse relationship, when it involves nothing of the sort.) So, it is not at all an illustration of non-correlation between confidence and skill.
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  No, just the opposite. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eye-opener-why-do-pupils-dialate/#:~:text=Stimulation%20of%20the%20autonomic%20nervous,under%20stress%2C%20induces%20pupil%20dilation https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eye-opener-why-do....
klyrs 5y ago
Retrospective: microdosing LSD is just cargo-culting this study.
aparsons 5y ago
Initially, I misunderstood the title as referring to pupil (as in student) and went, “Weirdly, that makes sense”.
- _asummers 5y ago
  My initial misread was about classroom sizes, and I came to the same conclusion before I thought "huh, that's... not how you reference classroom size".
robwwilliams 5y ago
A genuine disservice to science and Scientific American. Some topics tend to attract correlative dross.
earthboundkid 5y ago
Because children have small eyes.
- wyldfire 5y ago
  Not sure whether they used pupil size as a ratio of the eye size or other size normalizations. But the article states that pupil sizes shrink with age and only after controlling for age did the size correlate with task performance.
ttz 5y ago
Intelligence is a precisely defined and precisely measurable notion, so of course we can precisely correlate it with physical measurements [/sarcasm]
SubiculumCode 5y ago
If this was a programming/deep-learning thread, we'd all feel like we'd better shut up if we didn't have anything actually insightful/knowledgeable to say. But when it comes to neuroscience and psychology threads, everyone here thinks they know a lot and wants to comment. But if there is one thing that the majority of HN know next to nothing about its neuroscience and psychology, but boy do they have opinions. Its like a bloody kegger.
- unishark 5y ago
  Also economics. The database for this message board must contain a million proposals for re-architeching society from scratch.
rdevsrex 5y ago
If this turns out to have merit, I can imagine all sorts of shady uses for this information. Our faces and biometric info are already out there, and this doesn’t take a fancy ML algorithm to use. However, the other comments seem to indicate it’s bunk, but an idea that’s wrong can still have purchase.
- ksaj 5y ago
  I'm interested to see how this compares to other examples of profiling, such as carding. The government, police, advertisers, etc. are all already doing it to varying degrees. Pupil size is yet another metric by which to classify individuals in the masses. "Bright eyes to the front of the bus!"
alexshendi 5y ago
I think Phrenology was preferable.
tenfourwookie 5y ago
21st century phrenology.
daprof 5y ago
"The diameter of the pupil in normal conditions varies within the limits of 2.7-4.8 mm in the dark (22.5-40% of iris diameter), an average of 3.5 mm (approximately 29% of iris diameter). In newborns, pupils are physiologically narrowed (2.32±0.05 mm, that is 19-20% of iris diameter). From the second month, the pupils increase in size gradually an average of 64% up to the sixth month, and more by 8.6 % to the first year of age. This process takes place within the tenth to the eleventh years for a child. Between 10 to 14 years of age, the opposite dynamics are observed, which can be subdivided into three periods. During the first period (15 to 24 years), pupil dimensions are decreased considerably by 17-19%. In the course of the second period (25 to 50 years), narrowing is going less intensively (on average by 6-9% every five years). During the third period (50 to 80 years), the pupils are relatively narrow (2.63±0.06 mm – approximately 22 % of iris diameter) undergoing a smaller decrease in diameter, which is 3-4% every ten years.": Source: https://pupilanalysis.com/pupillary-dimensions/ https://pupilanalysis.com/pupillary-dimensions/
mbrodersen 5y ago
Not believing this is true is a marker of intelligent.

70 points by davesailer 5y ago

amai 5y ago

Maybe they are not really testing the IQ, but instead they are just testing peripheral vision. IQ is a dubious concept anyway. The definition is as unclear as the definition of physical fitness.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cjlars 5y ago

Doesn't appear to have held up to replication. [1] >However, unlike Tsukuhara et al., we could establish only small to nonexistent associations between cognitive ability and pupil size (r’s -.01 to .06, r with g specifically = .05) In fact, a quick scan down the Scholar results shows other replications have found the opposite effect [2] >The results found that high-Gf adolescents showed smaller tonic pupil size in both tasks [1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emil-O-W-Kirkegaard/publication/341609641_Pupil_Size_and_Intelligence_A_Large-Scale_Replication_Study/links/5eca9375a6fdcc90d696db32/Pupil-Size-and-Intelligence-A-Large-Scale-Replication-Study.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emil-O-W-Kirkegaard/pub... [2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pchj.397 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pchj.397

SubiculumCode 5y ago
But their paper argues that the null results were due to A)using tasks that do not have the strongest association (i.e. they did not measure fluid intelligence), and B)setting baseline lighting levels too brightly so that pupils began at the minimum possible size. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027721000627?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00100... So we will see going forward.
Jack566 5y ago
Emil Kirkegaard the individual who wants to legalise child porn and reduce age of consent to 13 year olds? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_Kirkegaard https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_Kirkegaard
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
If this is a replicable result, they are probably measuring subjects' interest in being in the lab and doing tasks. Some people care, and pay attention and do well. Others are just there for class credit and blow it all off.

hprotagonist 5y ago

pupillometry correlates with bloody everything.

gentleman11 5y ago

Don’t small pupils correlate with stress? If a participant did an iq test and was smart they might be more relaxed than a participant who knew they would do badly.

GuB-42 5y ago
Confidence and skills do not necessarily correlate, see the Dunning–Kruger effect for instance. Personally, if I enter some kind of contest, I am much more stressed if I know that I can win.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  >Confidence and skills do not necessarily correlate, see the Dunning–Kruger effect for instance. D-K can be summarized roughly as “self-perceived relative skill is directly correlated with actual relative skill, but systematically compressed toward about the 70th percentile”. (For some reason people mistake the finding that those at the bottom of relative skill perceive their relative skill higher than it is, and those at the top perceive theirs lower than it actually is for an inverse relationship, when it involves nothing of the sort.) So, it is not at all an illustration of non-correlation between confidence and skill.
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
No, just the opposite. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eye-opener-why-do-pupils-dialate/#:~:text=Stimulation%20of%20the%20autonomic%20nervous,under%20stress%2C%20induces%20pupil%20dilation https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eye-opener-why-do....

klyrs 5y ago

Retrospective: microdosing LSD is just cargo-culting this study.

aparsons 5y ago

Initially, I misunderstood the title as referring to pupil (as in student) and went, “Weirdly, that makes sense”.

_asummers 5y ago
My initial misread was about classroom sizes, and I came to the same conclusion before I thought "huh, that's... not how you reference classroom size".

robwwilliams 5y ago

A genuine disservice to science and Scientific American. Some topics tend to attract correlative dross.

earthboundkid 5y ago

Because children have small eyes.

wyldfire 5y ago
Not sure whether they used pupil size as a ratio of the eye size or other size normalizations. But the article states that pupil sizes shrink with age and only after controlling for age did the size correlate with task performance.

ttz 5y ago

Intelligence is a precisely defined and precisely measurable notion, so of course we can precisely correlate it with physical measurements [/sarcasm]

SubiculumCode 5y ago

If this was a programming/deep-learning thread, we'd all feel like we'd better shut up if we didn't have anything actually insightful/knowledgeable to say. But when it comes to neuroscience and psychology threads, everyone here thinks they know a lot and wants to comment. But if there is one thing that the majority of HN know next to nothing about its neuroscience and psychology, but boy do they have opinions. Its like a bloody kegger.

unishark 5y ago
Also economics. The database for this message board must contain a million proposals for re-architeching society from scratch.

rdevsrex 5y ago

If this turns out to have merit, I can imagine all sorts of shady uses for this information. Our faces and biometric info are already out there, and this doesn’t take a fancy ML algorithm to use. However, the other comments seem to indicate it’s bunk, but an idea that’s wrong can still have purchase.

ksaj 5y ago
I'm interested to see how this compares to other examples of profiling, such as carding. The government, police, advertisers, etc. are all already doing it to varying degrees. Pupil size is yet another metric by which to classify individuals in the masses. "Bright eyes to the front of the bus!"

alexshendi 5y ago

I think Phrenology was preferable.

tenfourwookie 5y ago

21st century phrenology.

daprof 5y ago

"The diameter of the pupil in normal conditions varies within the limits of 2.7-4.8 mm in the dark (22.5-40% of iris diameter), an average of 3.5 mm (approximately 29% of iris diameter). In newborns, pupils are physiologically narrowed (2.32±0.05 mm, that is 19-20% of iris diameter). From the second month, the pupils increase in size gradually an average of 64% up to the sixth month, and more by 8.6 % to the first year of age. This process takes place within the tenth to the eleventh years for a child. Between 10 to 14 years of age, the opposite dynamics are observed, which can be subdivided into three periods. During the first period (15 to 24 years), pupil dimensions are decreased considerably by 17-19%. In the course of the second period (25 to 50 years), narrowing is going less intensively (on average by 6-9% every five years). During the third period (50 to 80 years), the pupils are relatively narrow (2.63±0.06 mm – approximately 22 % of iris diameter) undergoing a smaller decrease in diameter, which is 3-4% every ten years.": Source: https://pupilanalysis.com/pupillary-dimensions/ https://pupilanalysis.com/pupillary-dimensions/

mbrodersen 5y ago

Not believing this is true is a marker of intelligent.