Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Gifted or Not?

Bingo.
This is so patiently obvious when it comes to eating lead paint chips, but I wonder that people don't get it when it comes to less dramatic situations. There is also the question of converting giftedness into a product that can be recognized and societally valued. I just watched a TV show "Shameless" where there is also a significant thread of giftedness floating through.(We don't get Showtime, but were at a friend's house for dinner - everyone was over 18, thank goodness!) One young man in the TV show makes pocket change to feed his sibling by taking the SATs for his classmates. At least in this example the Giftedness is pretty obvious, but still not a societally acceptable way to use it. The hallmark of human beings is that they adapt to their environment more than any other mammal I can thing of, so my guess is that lots of poor gifted kids find ways to use their giftedness that go under the radar.

Anyway, my guess it that this thread is probably not really going to go anywhere productive, and it's time to start posting recipes on it. I'm making short-ribs in the crock pot for dinner tonight. What is for dinner at your house?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

How can we have an honest discussion about something when people shout others down just for bringing up the idea?


This was an Acknowledgement for advice on "psychometrics and testing." It was in a list of other names. Dozens of people were named in the Acknowledgements section. The "leading scholar" note was in a different part of the book and referred to a review Lynn wrote on IQ in Asia.

See, this is what I mean about shouting. The guy who wrote the Scientific American article was distorting the truth.


The Bell Curve has ~1,000 references. Exactly 24 of them are Lynn's. Chapter 13 is the first/main chapter on race/IQ differences. It includes references to critiques of Lynn's work (e.g ref #s 3, 4, possibly 1). It makes 24 references to Lynn's work and 126 to other papers. Half (12) of the Lynn references refer to a single point. There is also a very, very big discussion about difference of opinion on the subject and the importance of environment. More distortion.

The Bell Curve is a dry scholarly work that cites the literature every time a claim is made. It says that "the first thing to remember is that the differences among individuals are far greater than differences between groups. If all the ethnic differences in intelligence evaporated overnight, most of the intellectual variation in America would endure." (p. 271.) The Preface indicates that many of our social problems come from failure to acknowledge that some individuals just aren't as smart as others. I submit that encouraging everyone to go to college is one example of a bad way to try to solve a social problem.

I'd like to toss out some thoughts in a very gentle way.

Folks here complain regularly about teachers who don't believe that HG+ kids are as capable as they are --- almost as though such a thing as reading by age 3 is simply not possible. Many of us have also complained about the damage caused by those who are uninformed about giftedness and ideas such as "all children are gifted." It's as though people use these ideas to deny the reality of HG+ kids. Perhaps the truth of a self-taught toddler-reader makes people very, very uncomfortable. This can't be.

I would like to submit to the group that the data in The Bell Curve also makes people very, very uncomfortable. This can't be.

Well, why not? No one disputes that other differences between races/ethnic groups exist (skin color, height, eye color, hair color, ability to win marathons, ability to jump, etc. etc. etc.). Why not IQ? This is not a judgment of anyone's relative worth, nor does it claim that everyone in a group has a certain IQ. Individual differences exist.

I believe that pretending they don't creates barriers to solving problems, just like pretending that everyone evens out by third grade creates a barrier to educating gifted kids.

I admit to being baffled by this statement, even though IANASANPTBO. (Requests by PM to explain this standard acronym will be satisfied with alacrity.) I would think that if adoptive homes did tend to be similar, it still wouldn't show the upper limit of how much heredity can contribute because that's in tension with the unknown quantity of how much the environment can contribute. I guess I don't buy the idea that environment matters only up to a sufficiency level at or below that of the average adoptive home, or, if you like, that the average adoptive home is ideal.

Val, I get what you are saying. Yes, there should be a place for uncomfortable discussions to happen in a respectful way. But when the IQ data based on race is presented as if it is univerally accepted fact (which it is not), I strongly object.

I agree with what you say here (sorry don't know how to do the quote thing):

"The Preface indicates that many of our social problems come from failure to acknowledge that some individuals just aren't as smart as others. I submit that encouraging everyone to go to college is one example of a bad way to try to solve a social problem."

But to me the following is crucial:
From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/opinion/09nisbett.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
"Nearly all the evidence suggesting a genetic basis for the I.Q. differential is indirect...In fact, we know that the I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped to 9.5 points from 15 points in the last 30 years � a period that was more favorable for blacks in many ways than the preceding era. Black progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows equivalent gains. Reading and math improvement has been modest for whites but substantial for blacks.

Most important, we know that interventions at every age from infancy to college can reduce racial gaps in both I.Q. and academic achievement, sometimes by substantial amounts in surprisingly little time. This mutability is further evidence that the I.Q. difference has environmental, not genetic, causes. And it should encourage us, as a society, to see that all children receive ample opportunity to develop their minds."

You've got a point, with our current educational system, where I believe we still have some graduating high school seniors who read poorly or not at all. Those people should be encouraged to become garbage collectors, unless we actually care about them. But if the elementary and high schools everywhere were "optimal", I think anyone with average or better biological attributes would be well-prepared for college-- even, if their interests so lay, for tensor calculus.

I agree wholeheartedly that we shouldn't be afraid to discuss racial (and class) differences. I see any racial genetic differences in intelligence potential to be small potatoes compared to educational problems today, though. This is especially true since here in the US, certain minorities and social classes are educationally disadvantaged, with effects far stronger than those from any biological differences.

I agree, and would add that any conclusions based on physical differences in the brain are bound to be problematic, because of how the environment affects the brain (London cabbie effect and scads of other evidence), even in utero (subpar nutrition of poor mothers, who of course are disproportionately minorities, can affect birth and brain weight).

I would also expect the Flynn effect to be working overtime for less-disadvantaged-all-the-time minorities, as long as they haven't reached the plateau.

Charles Murray has addressed these issues as well (e.g. see Real Education. Again, he cited sources for every claim he made.

He presented pretty convincing evidence that adoption at birth has a lasting, positive influence on IQ (a pretty very strong argument for an environmental influence). He argued that black improvement on IQ and other tests was environmental.

No one is arguing that children at both ends of the IQ scale shouldn't have "ample opportunity to develop their minds." This is another misconception that's thrown at The Bell Curve. "Differences exist" is simply a statement of fact, not a prescription for how to educate.

Pulling this out:


You're implying that genetics plays no role in IQ. If this is true, why do so many HG+ kids here have at least one HG+ parent and/or other HG+ family member?

It's universally accepted that genetics plays a role in hair color, skin color, susceptibility to breast cancer, height, and so on. I don't understand why people pretend that it can't play a role in IQ. The argument doesn't make sense.

Obviously, environment has a role. Heavy cigarette smoking during pregnancy can depress IQ, just like smoking
can increase the risk of developing lung cancer. I'm not talking in absolutes. Biology is very complex and there are no simple answers. But I just don't see how anyone can deny that there is a role for genetics in IQ.

I'll explain my thinking here, if you like, since I think it relates to the concepts under discussion.

The thing I'd caution, though, is that if one believes that environment is the ONLY limiting factor in cognitive development, then any evidence that is suggestive of another causative mechanism is likely to be rationalized away.

The problem that I see with twin studies in their attempts to tease apart nature versus nurture is the flip side of the economic disadvantage coin. That is, adoptive homes are probably more like one ANOTHER than they are as different as two homes from the full range of the socio-economic spectrum.

Therefore, the argument that adoption studies of siblings or twins can represent the influence of "environment" is highly suspect to start with, in my estimation. It's a sampling problem. Adoptive homes cannot POSSIBLY represent the various extremes of environment that exist in biological childrens' homes-- or the adoptions wouldn't have ever been approved in the first place, at the low 'enrichment' end of things. Does that make sense?

So if a 'terrible' environment is a zero and one which is the stuff of fantasy is a ten, then most adoptive homes are probably between a 4 and an 8. For the same reasons that I'd speculate that children born of fertility treatments enjoy an environmental advantage-- because adoption or fertility treatment both suggest a particular environment. One that is advantageous to children-- that is, those are going to be home environments where children are: a) treasured, b) prepared for in every imaginable way, and c) relatively affluent (since adoption of "normal" newborns or fertility treatment is pretty expensive).

Perhaps more useful and objective would be data from homes in which some children are biological and others adopted (provided that one knew the biological parents' IQs)-- are there meaningful differences in cognition between the two categories of children in that kind of home? I'm not aware of any studies on the subject, but they may well exist.

deacongirl's quoted statement, with a bit more context, was:


At least at that point, by adopting that statement, she wasn't trying to say that genetics plays no role in IQ, but that any racial difference in IQ in her opinion has no genetic causes.

I guess an adoption study, dealing with IQ traits of minority and/or lower-class kids raised by non-minority and/or upper-class parents, would seem to control for a lot of racially- or class-aligned environmental differences. Of course, originally socially disadvantaged adoptees might have been environmentally challenged in the womb, and not by genetics. It's an interesting debate.

- Your referee-friend, who will have to read "The Bell Curve" for himself one of these months.

To quote, "press the quote button at the bottom of the post. �That simple."
Eta: if you'd like to quote just a short quote from a long post:
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Note: just make sure the thing you're quoting stays between these brackets
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HtH lol bff's