Jensen - intelligence

Question 1

Background - Jensen

Answer 1

60% most eminent psychologists

Question 2

Background - civil rights movement

Answer 2

1. 1954 - brown v board of education - ends segregation in education
2. 1957 - little rock central high school - african american students selected for academic achievement, faced harassment
3. 1956-1965 - integration of universities
4. 1964 - civil rights act passed - bans discrimination on race, colour, religion, gender
5. 1968 - Martin Luther King Jr assassinated
6. Differences in academic achievement and cognitive tests on minority groups and socioeconomic status
7. Resulted in president Lyndon Johnson’s great society and war on poverty
8. Head start program - 1965

Question 3

Background - head start program

Answer 3

1. Aims to promote physical and emotional well being in children
2. Create environments that help children develop strong cognitive skills
3. Focuses on early childhood education, health, nutrition and parental assistance to low income children and families
4. Positive responses early on
   Optimism started to fade by 1969

Question 4

Background - IQ

Answer 4

1. Used as proxy for intelligence
2. Debate on whether it actually measures intelligence
3. Gener Boring - intelligence is what is measured by intelligence tests, cognitive performance on the test
4. Weschlet - aggregate or global capacity o the individual to act purposefully, think rationally and deal with environment
5. Generally - intelligence correlated with G factor, present in different subsets
6. Measurements of IQ - varies, focuses on verbal, non verbal, culture, culture free
7. Performance on intelligence tests are compared to a population distribution

Question 5

Early studies

Answer 5

1. Jensen 1968 - paired association task, serial learning task, if it differs depending on SES, measure on IQ
2. results : low SES children with low IQ measures, outperformed middle/upper SES children
3. IQ highly correlated to learning scores in mid/high SES
4. Low (non significant) correlation in low SES children
5. Discrepancy due to IQ test often including items which assess cultural learning, therefore environment may affect learning
6. ‘Culture free tests’ e.g Raven’s progressive metrices, test that uses patterns so doesn’t rely on cultural context, results were large differences between group correlations in RPM
7. If not cultural differences - inherent differences
8. Jensen shifts focus to genetics - genetic differences manifest virtually all anatomical, physiological and biochemical comparisons to date (1969 this was blood constituents), geographical/social isolation increases genetic differences
9. Heritability = the proportion of variation in a trait in a population that can be attributed to genetic differences, not the proportion of a trait for an individual caused by genotype

Question 6

Heritability

Answer 6

1. Genetic and environmental influences should not be considered independent of each other
   2, Heritability can vary substantially from one environment to another
2. Environmental differences between higher SES European-Americans and lower SES african americans was large
3. Heritability is a population statistic and does not apply to individuals
4. Level of heritability in one group does not mean its level will be the same in all other groups
5. Heritability in one group cannot be used to attribute mean differences between groups to genetic differences
6. High heritability does not mean that a trait is immutable

Question 7

Main study

Answer 7

1. Aim - to understand the discrepancy between IQ and achievement in low/high SES
2. Approach - open up genetics as a potential avenue of research into IQ differences
   3, Procedure - 123 page review of recent research and debate
   Results:
3. African American IQ distribution is 15 IQ points below the IQ distribution of European americans
4. African american variance in IQ is smaller than european american variance
5. The partial genetic influence on these differences had been strongly denounced but not contradicted or discredited empirically
6. Jensen went on to review the evidence with reference to education in a biased way with indirect and inconclusive evidence

Question 8

Debate and controversy

Answer 8

1. Article published with 9 commentaries all against the study
2. Next edition of HER had 5 more rebuttals
3. All offered limitations of the argument but overlooked data
4. Created Jensenism
5. Consequences for Jensen - death threats, protests, asked to testify before congress, emotional rebuttals with little empirical support
6. Jensen - talks of scientific truth
7. Research is important in all circumstances, jensen claimed perceptions of findings as socially inappropriate stopped scientific research
8. Scientific truth is important to preserve

Question 9

Flynn effect

Answer 9

1. 1987 - worldwide intelligence test scores rise by 3 points a decade
2. Even with different test types and in different world regions, slowing in high income countries, speeding up in MLICs, regular restandardisation of scores
3. Genetic changes of this magnitude are extremely unlikely at this pace
4. Suggests cultural /environmental influence in test scores

Question 10

Culture free intelligence tests

Answer 10

1. If Raven’s progressive matrices are ‘culture free’ then why do some cultures/SES groups consistently outperform others
2. Raven test scores have shown some of the largest gains over time
3. Original progressive matrices are now only used for children
4. Undermines Jensen’s reasons for assuming genetics

Question 11

Stereotype threat

Answer 11

1. Stereotypes associated with identity can affect performance
2. Reminding women about their gender before a maths test leads to lower maths performance
   3, Reminding african americans about their ethnic background leads to lower performance on intelligence tests

Question 12

Genetics then vs now

Answer 12

1. Some genetic influence on behavioural traits accepted
   However, gene action is very complicated
2. Now genetic research is done on a huge scale - whole genome, millions of genetic markers, thousands of individuals
3. IQ is complex and highly polygenic
4. Many potential loci but small effects and rarely replicate - individual gene expression, environmental influence, genetic propensity towards traits
5. Our current understanding of genetics makes it difficult to conclude that high heritability of traits indicate mean differences in group performance

Question 13

Impact and legacy

Answer 13

1. Interventions - Jensen’s paper focused on SES not just race, interventions did boost short term IQ, gains faded to non significance
2. Intelligence testing - research on IQ and genetics hindered, evidence that cognitive ability effects performance