Are Humans Getting Smarter or Dumber?

 

The question troubling them many researchers: the intelligence of the human species increases or decreases over time? The answer for many of them surprising.
Increase human intelligence ... and decreases at the same time, I think many scientists. How to explain this paradox?
Although scores on tests measuring intelligence quotient (IQ) kept growing, even in a fast paced genetic potential underlying intelligence of the human species may already be in decline, suggests a recent study.
At least after one of the ways of measuring intelligence, the British Victorian, for example, were more intelligent than their compatriots today.
Findings are controversial, some researchers wondering whether the measurement methods used to reveal the true intelligence.
In any case, the study highlights the difficulty - there is always - to measure intelligence. It is very complex and depends on the context: the traits that make a person prove intelligent African savannah would be almost useless in the financial centers of Hong Kong, for example.
"It's not just to determine whether increases or decreases intelligence," says Michael Woodley, a psychologist at the University of Umea in Sweden. "Different sides of intelligence can be modified in many different ways."
Of course, there is evidence that modern humans have advanced from this point of view, from their predecessors: smartphones, heart transplants, understanding that microbes can cause disease are aspects of this evolution of intelligence.
There is, then, the so-called Flynn effect (named after the man who described James Flynn, profersor the University of Otago, New Zealand).
Measuring IQ tests using modern and the ancient intelligence tests, Flynn and his colleagues concluded that future generations obtain higher scores on intelligence tests than their predecessors. The increase depends on the area in which they come from, but in general, tend to be approx. Three IQ points per decade.
Flynn and many other researchers suspect that this increase reflects improving living environment in modern times.
IQ is partly inherited, partly influenced by the environment, whether rich living environment of UUI child with opportunities to learn, he will have a higher coefficient of intelligence later in life. Better nutrition, increasing duration of schooling and richer stimulation may also explain the Flynn effect.
However, with these results, there are contrary view: many experts argue that people do not become smarter, quite the contrary.
In November 2012, Gerald Crabtree, d Faculty of Medicine, Stanford University, published in the journal Trends in Genetics two articles suggesting that the intelligence of the human species peaked in the past, now lying in a period of 2000-6000 years.
Crabtree's statements are based on genetics. He estimated that human intelligence is controlled by genes 2000-5000. The rate at which mutations accumulate, the researcher has calculated that in the last 3,000 years, the human species has undergone at least two harmful mutations of these genes in the intelligence (and will suffer in the next few 3000 years.)
Not every mutation can be harmful because the genes present as a pair, and one of the genes affected by the mutation can be balanced by the other gene in the pair, the gene remained "healthy". But after Crabtree's calculations, it seems that intelligence is more fragile than it looks.
Moreover, says he, intelligence is no longer so important in evolutionary terms, for people today as it was back when people lived as hunter-gatherers and the intelligence was a key element in the survival of the individual and transmit its genes to offspring. Today, people are rarely faced with such life and death situations.
According to another theory, the genetic capacity to support human intelligence is in decline due to a phenomenon called dysgenic mating. Since the mid-nineteenth century, there is a negative correlation between IQ and reproduction, many studies show me. More bluntly said, most intelligent people have fewer children. And because intelligence is partially genetically determined, some researchers believe that because of this phenomenon, IQ should decrease.
However, increased IQ scores - a paradox if we look from the perspective of dysgenic mating.
Now, Woodley and his colleagues believe they have found an explanation for this paradox. But the news is not good.
To estimate the intelligence in the past, researchers have resorted to not IQ tests, but the reaction time. This simple parameter (the time required for the body to react to a stimulus) is correlated with IQ, says Woodley, and is not so sensitive to cultural influences such as IQ tests. The idea is that human reaction time reflects the ability to engage in basic cognitive processes, basic, explained the researchers.
In 1880, English scientist Sir Francis Galton measured the response time of 2,522 young men and 888 young women from different strata of society. The finding that the average response time was 183 ms men and women of 187 milliseconds.
12 other similar studies conducted after 1941 showed that timpu reaction medium was 250 ms in men and 277 ms in women - significant endorsement from 1880 slower.
A study to analyze and synthesize these findings was published in 2010, and Woodley and his colleagues have extended the study in 2010, adding new data and comparing the measurement results.
In summary, it appears that significant endorsement slowed reaction time, over decades. Specialştii say that this trend fits with the idea that those components of intelligence that are the most stable, less cultural and more influenced genetically determined slăbeacă rather tend to increase.
All this suggests that although IQ scores increase as a result of improvements have occurred in education and health, the human ability to become smarter diminishes. The Flynn effect could in fact hide a decline which occurs when intelligence is measured by IQ tests. Woodley says that it is like forcing some poor quality seed to grow by high doses of fertilizers.
The causes of this decline are still unknown; possibility ranging from exposure to environmental neurotoxins to natural selection.
But other researchers believe that this study does not fully explains the problem in the future evolution of human intelligence.
Theodore Nettelbeck, a psychologist at the University of Adelaide, Australia, believes response time explains only partially (and able dsetul small) changes in IQ, also he has some doubts about the extent to which old's reaction time tests can be compared to the new ones, because the results are revealing.




James Flynn also believes that the results of measuring the reaction time can be difficult and can interpret a devedere misleading because other factors may intervene - neural response speed, and ability to pay attention - that make it difficult to estimate intelligence based on reaction time.



However, even though Woodley and his colleagues are right and the genetic capacity to develop people's intelligence declines, that IQ scores increase all over the world, due to the transformation of the living environment, seems to indicate that we can overcome potential genetic problems related to the evolution of our intelligence.

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