Originally Posted by indigo
Originally Posted by madeinuk
This

Quote
Dr. Fagan (who died last August) and Dr. Holland revisited infants they had tested in the 1980s, and found that the Fagan scores were predictive of the I.Q. and academic achievement two decades later when these babies turned 21.
Seems to be at odds with this

Quote
Dr. Fagan wrote, “A parsimonious explanation for the findings is that later differences in I.Q. between different racial-ethnic groups may spring from differences in cultural exposure to information past infancy, not from group differences in the basic ability to process information.”
... Am I missing something here?
In reading the full article, the results are described as being predictive in aggregate, not at an individual level.

The article was a 25-year retrospective on a 2-part test:
1- test of novelty for babies
2- follow-up IQ test at age 21

The results were:
1- The article described that "babies from widely different cultural backgrounds performed equally well on his test."
2- The results of the follow-up IQ test at age 21 describes that results were consistent in aggregate, not at an individual level.

His thoughts penned in 2011 seemed to contemplate why the follow-up test was predictive in aggregate and not at an individual level.

Just my 2 cents.


Also note that the original quote refers only to IQ differences based on ethnic and racial background NOT differences based on SES. The journalist added "rich or poor" after "white and black". This is not actually the same thing. They may have controlled for parental SES and found that there is no ethnic-racial difference in infancy. There may be one even after controlling for parental SES at the age of 21 because there is a vast difference in other environmental SES factors apart from parental status for children of different ethnicities, such as school SES, neighbourhood SES and group culture.

Last edited by Tigerle; 10/04/14 09:45 AM.