4 ms·

We're getting slower... and more dumberer.

12 points by hownottowrite 13y ago

ireadqrcodes 13y ago
no we are not! We have got more data to consider before reacting! An other example: Children remember things better than adults because they don't need to go through as many connotations that come with information and can focus on the "simple" facts. Adults have got to push all the data trough their experience and brain filters to add it to the bigger picture ... yes reaction is getting slower, intelligence .. no.
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
Maybe the problem is that we don't have open access to published scientific papers.
- JPKab 13y ago
  Touche.
- agravier 13y ago
  You're lucky, I've just found a copy on the floor. On which website should I host it? I don't want to exceed my dropbox bandwidth quota.
  - agravier 13y ago
    Well, no need to bother, I just found it at https://anonfiles.com/file/c9ae38ed613d426f4f5fa7d17b60e977 https://anonfiles.com/file/c9ae38ed613d426f4f5fa7d17b60e977
- jkldotio 13y ago
  I have access to the paper, it's a shame that's still a problem with journals (the journal I am connected to, although I don't work in psychology, is open so the movement is slowly prevailing). So they argue that in the Victorian era people who were more successful had more kids and therefore we, presumably under the welfare state where unsuccessful people can still reproduce, are not as smart. To measure intelligence in those times they get use the literature on the correlation between reaction times (RT) and the g behind IQ. They seem to get around the Flynn effect by just concentrating on genetic heritable intelligence ("genetic g"), i.e. presumably they would therefore concede people are indeed smarter today but only due to non-genetic factors that are said to contribute to the Flynn effect like schooling and nutrition. That alone blows the link-bait headlines out of the water. So the core of the paper is RT -> IQ correlation and then supporting their argument with measurements of RT over time. Let's examine them. A) "Galton's measures indicated a simple visual RT mean of 183 milliseconds (ms) for a large sample of 2522 young adult males (aged between 18 and 30), along with a mean of 187 ms for a sample of 888 equivalently aged females." B) "These means seem to be representative of the period as a 1911 review of various studies conducted in the last 19th and early 20th centuries (Ladd & Woodworth, 1911), which did not include Galton's measures, found an RT range of 151–200 ms (mean 192 ms), using different instrumentation to that employed by Galton (1889). Moreover, Silverman was also able to comprehensively rule out lack of socioeconomic diversity, as Galton's samples were diverse enough to be stratified into seven male and six female occupational groups (Johnson et al., 1985)... Twelve modern (post 1941) simple RT studies by contrast revealed considerably slower RTs for both males (mean 250 ms) and females (mean 277 ms) in a combined sample of 3836." The key problem being "using different instrumentation to that employed by Galton", who they don't reveal, except by citation, was using some pendulum and string contraption to measure reaction time.[1] With a difference of only 67 milliseconds between the males of each group, and 90 milliseconds between the females you'd need to show an equivalence between Galton's method of measuring reaction time and later computer assisted measurement methods, which they don't appear to. They also make some adjustments to the times that they don't seem to detail fully, in favour of the effect they are looking for I think (I am just skimming the paper and doing a quick rebuttal here). After the measurement problem there are other problems of control they don't deal with. They seem to control for occupations, but it's unclear what else they control for. For example one of the modern papers they use is from Australia where only people who responded to an invitation to take the study were included, and 20% or so of contemporary Australians are born overseas (often not from the UK) so it's not exactly directly comparable to 19th century UK. Then, as someone else has pointed out in this thread they don't defend against things that can change reaction time. It seems there can be a significant impact of diet on reaction time, in one caloric restriction study reaction time went down while word recall went up.[2] Circadian phase, hours awake and temperature all seem to also have huge effects.[3] So contrary to the headline not only are people today smarter and we are just talking about "genetic g" there is the potentially huge measurement error, diet, hours awake, circadian phase and temperature, so I think more than enough error to account for the 67-90 milliseconds they are talking about. As we don't have even the beginnings of that kind of data from Galton, let alone even a reliable time measure, it's fairly pointless to try to use such a weak and contested proxy for intelligence in my opinion. [1]http://galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1889-rba-reaction-time.pdf http://galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1889-rba-reaction-... [2] page 18 http://www.uiteigenervaring.nl/Op_dieet/Tenslotte/Calorie_restriction_cognitive_function_in_obese_women.pdf http://www.uiteigenervaring.nl/Op_dieet/Tenslotte/Calorie_re... [3] http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/283/6/R1370.full.pdf+html http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/283/6/R1370.full.pdf+h...
  - jkldotio 13y ago
    I kept reading on the topic, the paper in question quotes papers from a leader in the field, A.R.Jensen, from 1980,1987,1998,2006 and 2011 but decides to skip over a 2002 paper by him, GALTON’S LEGACY TO RESEARCH ON INTELLIGENCE, which says the following. "Reaction time (RT) Quickness of information processing would seem to be an advantage in early hominid survival and hence could be regarded as a Darwinian ‘ﬁtness character’. Galton therefore included it in his battery of tests as another elemental indicator of general ability. But Galton’s own ﬁndings with RT looked unimpressive. Because of technical inadequacies in his method of measuring RT and the lack of any statistical method for determining the signiﬁcance of his ﬁndings, his theory was discredited and abandoned during the ﬁrst three-quarters of the 20th century.Recent research, however, has shown that Galton’s idea was right after all. We now know for sure that measures of reaction time in what are called elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) do in fact reﬂect the g factor (Vernon, 1987; Jensen, 1998a)." So Jensen says the theory of a correlation between IQ and RT was later shown to be right but there are "technical inadequacies in his method of measuring RT", as well as statistical techniques were unavailable. So a leading researcher in the field says that the measurement of those data points suffers "technical inadequacies". I think if you go back to the graph of the reaction times on page 5 of the paper (http://i.imgur.com/8TBnkNF.png http://i.imgur.com/8TBnkNF.png) and remove the 19th century Galton data points there would seem to be no great change over time.
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
Well, if we develop good enough exoskeletons maybe even people born without brain could reach adulthood and reproduce.
JPKab 13y ago
I find it revealing that the authors go from a study which demonstrates (according to them) a general drop in IQ, yet make what appears to be a big jump in pinning the blame for said IQ drop on the societal trend of the less educated having more children than the more educated. I get the feeling this is geared more for press and controversy than a real scientific conclusion.
- 616c 13y ago
  Why have a peer-reviewed journal when we can talk about the documentary? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy Jokes aside, I guess I will have to read the article, would this not been the case from the beginning? How drastic are changes in IQ averages over hundreds of years? Is it possible that there highest IQ holders were not a very slim strata of society, or are we to suppose over time that the margin and spread is getting wider?
hansbo 13y ago
How is the Flynn effect related to this? As I've understood it, the average IQ has, since the turn of the century, risen by around 20 points.
edtechdev 13y ago
These studies measured reaction times. There's only a negative .31 correlation between reaction time and intelligence test scores. Just chewing gum lowers your reaction times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time#Mental_chronometry_and_cognitive_ability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time#Mental_chronometr... Actual intelligence scores have risen each decade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect Also, the "We" in these studies is no longer just a narrow range of middle to upper class white males. If you look at sub-groups, most likely everybody is rising even when the overall average might be declining. This is what happened with SAT scores since the 60s: "SAT scores don’t decline because students get dumber; they go down because more students take them." http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/average_sat_score_declines_as.php http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/average_... So the question is, have reaction times gotten slower because of more people being tested, or other factors? I'd imagine in decades past, participating in a psych experiment was a more "special" occasion warranting heightened attention and performance than it is today.

12 points by hownottowrite 13y ago

no we are not! We have got more data to consider before reacting! An other example: Children remember things better than adults because they don't need to go through as many connotations that come with information and can focus on the "simple" facts. Adults have got to push all the data trough their experience and brain filters to add it to the bigger picture ... yes reaction is getting slower, intelligence .. no.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

Maybe the problem is that we don't have open access to published scientific papers.

JPKab 13y ago
Touche.
agravier 13y ago
You're lucky, I've just found a copy on the floor. On which website should I host it? I don't want to exceed my dropbox bandwidth quota.
- agravier 13y ago
  Well, no need to bother, I just found it at https://anonfiles.com/file/c9ae38ed613d426f4f5fa7d17b60e977 https://anonfiles.com/file/c9ae38ed613d426f4f5fa7d17b60e977
jkldotio 13y ago
I have access to the paper, it's a shame that's still a problem with journals (the journal I am connected to, although I don't work in psychology, is open so the movement is slowly prevailing). So they argue that in the Victorian era people who were more successful had more kids and therefore we, presumably under the welfare state where unsuccessful people can still reproduce, are not as smart. To measure intelligence in those times they get use the literature on the correlation between reaction times (RT) and the g behind IQ. They seem to get around the Flynn effect by just concentrating on genetic heritable intelligence ("genetic g"), i.e. presumably they would therefore concede people are indeed smarter today but only due to non-genetic factors that are said to contribute to the Flynn effect like schooling and nutrition. That alone blows the link-bait headlines out of the water. So the core of the paper is RT -> IQ correlation and then supporting their argument with measurements of RT over time. Let's examine them. A) "Galton's measures indicated a simple visual RT mean of 183 milliseconds (ms) for a large sample of 2522 young adult males (aged between 18 and 30), along with a mean of 187 ms for a sample of 888 equivalently aged females." B) "These means seem to be representative of the period as a 1911 review of various studies conducted in the last 19th and early 20th centuries (Ladd & Woodworth, 1911), which did not include Galton's measures, found an RT range of 151–200 ms (mean 192 ms), using different instrumentation to that employed by Galton (1889). Moreover, Silverman was also able to comprehensively rule out lack of socioeconomic diversity, as Galton's samples were diverse enough to be stratified into seven male and six female occupational groups (Johnson et al., 1985)... Twelve modern (post 1941) simple RT studies by contrast revealed considerably slower RTs for both males (mean 250 ms) and females (mean 277 ms) in a combined sample of 3836." The key problem being "using different instrumentation to that employed by Galton", who they don't reveal, except by citation, was using some pendulum and string contraption to measure reaction time.[1] With a difference of only 67 milliseconds between the males of each group, and 90 milliseconds between the females you'd need to show an equivalence between Galton's method of measuring reaction time and later computer assisted measurement methods, which they don't appear to. They also make some adjustments to the times that they don't seem to detail fully, in favour of the effect they are looking for I think (I am just skimming the paper and doing a quick rebuttal here). After the measurement problem there are other problems of control they don't deal with. They seem to control for occupations, but it's unclear what else they control for. For example one of the modern papers they use is from Australia where only people who responded to an invitation to take the study were included, and 20% or so of contemporary Australians are born overseas (often not from the UK) so it's not exactly directly comparable to 19th century UK. Then, as someone else has pointed out in this thread they don't defend against things that can change reaction time. It seems there can be a significant impact of diet on reaction time, in one caloric restriction study reaction time went down while word recall went up.[2] Circadian phase, hours awake and temperature all seem to also have huge effects.[3] So contrary to the headline not only are people today smarter and we are just talking about "genetic g" there is the potentially huge measurement error, diet, hours awake, circadian phase and temperature, so I think more than enough error to account for the 67-90 milliseconds they are talking about. As we don't have even the beginnings of that kind of data from Galton, let alone even a reliable time measure, it's fairly pointless to try to use such a weak and contested proxy for intelligence in my opinion. [1]http://galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1889-rba-reaction-time.pdf http://galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1889-rba-reaction-... [2] page 18 http://www.uiteigenervaring.nl/Op_dieet/Tenslotte/Calorie_restriction_cognitive_function_in_obese_women.pdf http://www.uiteigenervaring.nl/Op_dieet/Tenslotte/Calorie_re... [3] http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/283/6/R1370.full.pdf+html http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/283/6/R1370.full.pdf+h...
- jkldotio 13y ago
  I kept reading on the topic, the paper in question quotes papers from a leader in the field, A.R.Jensen, from 1980,1987,1998,2006 and 2011 but decides to skip over a 2002 paper by him, GALTON’S LEGACY TO RESEARCH ON INTELLIGENCE, which says the following. "Reaction time (RT) Quickness of information processing would seem to be an advantage in early hominid survival and hence could be regarded as a Darwinian ‘ﬁtness character’. Galton therefore included it in his battery of tests as another elemental indicator of general ability. But Galton’s own ﬁndings with RT looked unimpressive. Because of technical inadequacies in his method of measuring RT and the lack of any statistical method for determining the signiﬁcance of his ﬁndings, his theory was discredited and abandoned during the ﬁrst three-quarters of the 20th century.Recent research, however, has shown that Galton’s idea was right after all. We now know for sure that measures of reaction time in what are called elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) do in fact reﬂect the g factor (Vernon, 1987; Jensen, 1998a)." So Jensen says the theory of a correlation between IQ and RT was later shown to be right but there are "technical inadequacies in his method of measuring RT", as well as statistical techniques were unavailable. So a leading researcher in the field says that the measurement of those data points suffers "technical inadequacies". I think if you go back to the graph of the reaction times on page 5 of the paper (http://i.imgur.com/8TBnkNF.png http://i.imgur.com/8TBnkNF.png) and remove the 19th century Galton data points there would seem to be no great change over time.

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

Well, if we develop good enough exoskeletons maybe even people born without brain could reach adulthood and reproduce.

JPKab 13y ago

I find it revealing that the authors go from a study which demonstrates (according to them) a general drop in IQ, yet make what appears to be a big jump in pinning the blame for said IQ drop on the societal trend of the less educated having more children than the more educated. I get the feeling this is geared more for press and controversy than a real scientific conclusion.

616c 13y ago
Why have a peer-reviewed journal when we can talk about the documentary? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy Jokes aside, I guess I will have to read the article, would this not been the case from the beginning? How drastic are changes in IQ averages over hundreds of years? Is it possible that there highest IQ holders were not a very slim strata of society, or are we to suppose over time that the margin and spread is getting wider?

hansbo 13y ago

How is the Flynn effect related to this? As I've understood it, the average IQ has, since the turn of the century, risen by around 20 points.

edtechdev 13y ago

These studies measured reaction times. There's only a negative .31 correlation between reaction time and intelligence test scores. Just chewing gum lowers your reaction times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time#Mental_chronometry_and_cognitive_ability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time#Mental_chronometr... Actual intelligence scores have risen each decade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect Also, the "We" in these studies is no longer just a narrow range of middle to upper class white males. If you look at sub-groups, most likely everybody is rising even when the overall average might be declining. This is what happened with SAT scores since the 60s: "SAT scores don’t decline because students get dumber; they go down because more students take them." http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/average_sat_score_declines_as.php http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/average_... So the question is, have reaction times gotten slower because of more people being tested, or other factors? I'd imagine in decades past, participating in a psych experiment was a more "special" occasion warranting heightened attention and performance than it is today.