Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Environmental Enrichment and IQ?

I'm mainly a lurker but this forum seems like as good a place as any to ask this question I've often wondered about.

In rodent studies environmental enrichment is related to better performance on learning and memory tasks and larger brain volumes. Everyone also knows intelligence is highly heritable and that factors such as nutrition and environment are also influential.

My question is - what environmental factors do you think positively influence IQ?

I assume that most environmental factors (being read to, use of baby sign language early in life) would have small effects, only increasing IQ a few points and not in a clinically significant way. Abuse and neglect would probably have much larger negative influences on IQ than any single positive influence.

Does a combination of positive environmental factors have an additive effect on IQ or is there an interaction effect of multiple environmental factors?

What are your thoughts?

My first thought is that you'd probably find Flynn's book What Is Intelligence very interesting; I recommend it.

My second is that, especially given the mood on this board in the last couple of days (what is it, something in the water? on second thoughts, don't answer that), a thread trying to answer this old question here is... likely to produce more heat than light.

< backs off slowly >

Google "Flynn effect" to get the expert analysis on environment and IQ. The short version is that new generations grow up in an increasingly stimulating and enriched world, which boosts their overall IQ in comparison with the generations before them.

In my day, television was 7 channels of pablum. Now we have more than 7 channels of history and science alone.

In my day, if you had a question, you had to rely on the leaky memories of adults. For a more definitive answer, you could wait a few days to have access to a library, and take your time reading through a few sources. Today, you can instantly access thousands of sources, and cross-reference them for accuracy.

These are two major reasons why my DD will be way smarter than I am. I get to use this stuff now, but she gets to grow up in this world.

I asked my dh that recently, "Remember when we just didn't know something and that was that?". There is no more wonder in the modern world. It has been replaced by unsubstantiated Wiki-facts.

Is there a neurologist here? This could be a discussion about stimulation Vs apathy re: neuron growth Vs pruning? (Forgive my clumsy terminology)

My husband and I had the same conversation Sunday, Evemomma

If it is about "g", general intelligence and reasoning power then I say an environment that encourages and satisfies curiosity to as large a degree as possible. You want rich and varied content with the ability to test hypotheses. It could just be a patient parent or ton of manipulatives or the internet or whatnot. But if a mind is "turned on" to questing for knowledge and deeper understanding, then tada.

From my point of view, there are some variations in brain wiring that are going to respond better to different types of environments. This essential factor is the basic size and distribution of minicolumns in the cortex. At one end you have larger minicolumns (i.e. more neurons per) that are widely distributed, at the other end you have smaller minicolumns closer together. As the further ends of this distribution correlate to Dyslexia and Autism respectively, they seem to be a source (i.e. largely genetic) contributor.

The larger mincolumns seem to favor breadth of experience and long connections to abstract concepts; sometimes referred to as inductive learning. The smaller minicolumns seem to favor narrower depth focus.

I'm not up on the literature but I've seen the regular rat raising environments, it's a small plastic box with an absorbent material bedding, a wire lid and a water bottle nozzle, nothing else, someone tosses in some rat chow once a day. Possibly able to see blurry images of other rats through the sides of the box. So, about as stimulating as a russian orphanage. Stressful even, for animals that would normally be engaged in activities like exploring and chewing. Makes one wonder if "regular" versus "environmentally enriched" is fair terminology, maybe, "severely neglected" and "has a bit of environmental complexity" would be closer to it.

Which doesn't answer your actual question at all.

Polly