Steve writes:
RL: “Once again, g means more or less that all of the subtests rise across the board. No across the board rise, no rise on g.
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Steve: I see your point- why doesn’t an increase in one area be considered a legitimate increase in intelligence in that area?Perhaps they think g is a real thing, and it matters, and if g increases, they should increase across the board.
What areas have the increases been in, out of the three main sub areas, verbal, spatial and mathematical?
Has there been a Flynn effect on Raven’s Progressive Matrices? That is supposed to be very g loaded, meaning (I think) it correlates and predicts results on other tests and in multiple areas.”
It’s crazy. Of course the gains on subtests are real gains. We are actually getting smarter in some ways. These Hereditards have made a fetish out of g. They love it because g is heavily genetic. Because they believe IQ is genetic, they say that IQ doesn’t matter, only g matters. But that is not a good theory as they have set this theory up to succeed in advance as you can see.
These guys are basically idiots. They are all hereditarians and they HATE the Flynn Effect because they say IQ is 80% genetic and environment has little influence on it. FE is showing a massive rise that can only be due to environment and not genes, so the Hereditards are freaking out and coming up with all sorts of BS reasons why it’s not a real rise.
I assure you that it is absolutely not a test-taking effect (a fake effect that shows people have gotten better at taking tests).
There has been a good rise on Digit Span. Digit Span is a test of pure neurological efficiency – processing speed.
The gains have been mostly in visuospatial and also in abstract thinking. There have in particular been gains in coming up with a solution for an abstract problem that you have never seen before – coming up with a solution out of the blue for a novel problem.
There have been no gains in math or verbal (crystallized g). Our brains are working better, but we can’t do math or verbal any better than we ever did. However there is a .4 correlation with the Flynn rises and fluid g, while there is no correlation with crystallized g. So it looks like the Flynn Effect is on g in some ways.
The gain on Raven’s is truly massive – it is off the charts. That is why when these Hereditards say the FE is not on g, it really bugs me because Raven’s is totally g-loaded.
We are very scientifically oriented nowadays. Also all of these gadgets are making us a lot smarter in visuospatial. So yes we are smarter.
To give you an example, take the Question: “How is a dog like a rabbit?” 100 years ago, someone would say, “Well, you use a dog to catch a rabbit.” Nowadays we consider that response to be idiotic or even retarded. Now we would say, “Rabbits and dogs are both mammals.” That is a more intelligent response, and that is an example of how we are getting smarter.
