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9.3. The g factor
In asking people to learn the meanings of words did we select a task with little relationship to g, the general factor found in a factor analysis of IQ subtests? We do not think so. Conceptually, the task we employed was one in which the meaning of a novel term had to be acquired by experiencing that term in a linguistic context (e.g., how the new term was used in a sentence, or how its meaning was explained by association with another term), the manner in which all language is learned. Knowledge for those newly learned meanings required the acquisition of associations, associations inferred from context. We found that the ability to acquire the meanings of novel terms and to later remember those recently acquired meanings is related to general vocabulary knowledge, a knowledge tested on standard IQ tests and known to be highly g-loaded.
Empirically, our results are quite consistent with other studies that have found that the amount of new knowledge gained during a brief training period is predictive of g loadings on a standard aptitude test. Jensen (1998, pp. 275–277), for example, cites a study by Christal (1991) in which performance on a brief course of instruction of uniform content and duration was predictive of subtest scores on a standard aptitude test with correlations across subtests ranging from .39 to .65, with an average validity coefficient of .53. As noted above, in the present series of experiments, performance on a brief course of instruction was similarly predictive of scores on tests of general vocabulary knowledge with raw correlations averaging about .50 and correlations corrected for unreliability averaging about .65. Thus, the magnitude of the present results is in accord with the magnitude of the results cited by Jensen. Interestingly, Jensen (1998, p. 275) goes on to conclude from such data that "the amount learned during a course of instruction of uniform duration is related mostly to g."
In the present study, we employed only one measure of intelligence, general vocabulary knowledge. Thus, we could not compute g over a variety of tasks. However, given the fact that tests of vocabulary knowledge are highly loaded on g and that how much one learns during a brief course of uniform instruction is highly related to g, we feel justified in assuming that the acquisition of the meanings of novel terms, a task we found to be equally well accomplished by Blacks and Whites, is highly related to g. Is the acquisition of new information under experimentally assured conditions of equal opportunity for exposure highly related to the standard computation of g derived from a battery of IQ subtests? Is such acquisition of new information more related to fluid intelligence (Gf) or to crystallized intelligence (Gc) (Cattell and Horn)? These remain interesting questions for future study.
9.4. Does training last?
As time passes, are Blacks and the Whites still equally knowledgeable in what they have newly learned under conditions of equal exposure to information? That, too, remains a question for future study. We feel it unlikely, however, that one racial group would lose newly gained information at a more rapid rate than another racial group. We base our conjecture on the fact, well established over 30 years ago, that even when the amount of information initially learned by two groups differs, retention slopes for the groups do not differ. This equality in retention is true even for groups varying greatly in IQ such as normal and retarded children (Belmont; Belmont; Ellis; xxxan and xxxan).
A broader question is whether training or intervention produces lasting effects on IQ. The available data are based on studies involving children. In general, the effect on IQ of providing children with information they would not usually have gotten is summarized by Ramey and Ramey (1998). Programs of early intervention can cause changes in average IQ ranging, over studies, from 3 to 15 points. As Ramey and Ramey note, how much the IQ score is changed by providing information depends on timing, intensity, direction, and continuity. Intervening early in life and continuing intervention results in higher IQ scores. Adoption, for example, results in IQ gains of 9 to 12 IQ points (Jensen, 1998, pp. 339–340). Intensive and direct intervention is more effective than casual and indirect teaching.
The effects of intervention on IQ, just noted, are more easily understood if we assume that the IQ score is a measure of what the child knows that, in turn, depends on how well the child processes information and on what information the child has been given to process. Providing the thinking child with information to process will result in knowledge. Providing information as soon as possible, as often as possible, as long as possible, and as clearly as possible will lead to more knowledge. More knowledge is reflected in a higher IQ score. Delay, disruption, and disorder in providing information to the thinking child will result in ignorance. Such ignorance, as reflected in a low IQ score, or an IQ score that declines with age, may be due to lack of information and may have nothing to do with information-processing ability.
9.5. Culture-fair testing
Operationally, the authors of standard intelligence tests assume that a person who knows more than another person about particular information (such knowledge being predictive of achievement in that culture) is the more intelligent person. As Sternberg (2000) points out, the processes of intelligence may be the same from culture to culture. But a person is called more or less intelligent based on socially approved standards of what is important to know. Sternberg goes on to note that confusing intelligence with what society says is intelligent may cause us to give up on people who have basic abilities that go unrecognized. We agree with Sternberg's observations. The chief practical implication of the present study is that it may be possible to develop culture-fair tests of intelligence that will allow basic intellectual abilities to be recognized. Specifically, the inequality of educational achievement among races in our country has highlighted a need for culture-fair tests of intelligence. Blacks do not do as well as Whites on IQ tests and other tests of knowledge such as the SAT, the GRE, and the ACT. Basing admission to higher education on such test scores means that only a small percentage of Blacks are eligible for admission to colleges and universities. Jensen (2000) believes, on the basis of much evidence, that it may not be possible to come up with tasks that show no differences in test performance between Blacks and Whites and yet still predict academic performance.
We do not agree. We believe that the failure to develop tests of intelligence that can be fairly applied across racial groups stems from a theoretical bias to equate the IQ score with intelligence rather than with knowledge. If we define intelligence as information processing and the IQ score as knowledge, the possibility of culture-fair tests of intelligence based on estimates of information processing arises. We are not alone in such a conjecture. Williams (2000, p. 17) notes that "xxxan's ideas" (xxxan 2000) of measuring thinking or information processing rather than accumulated knowledge are "relevant to the debate on intelligence testing and affirmative action because ... a true measure of processing efficiency (if it could be devised) would be fair to members of all racial and ethnic groups." In the present study we have employed brief and easily administered tasks to show that Black and White adults do not differ in knowledge of newly learned information when given equal opportunity for exposure to the information to be acquired. In the future, culture-fair tests of information processing would have an important social application. They might provide a culturally unbiased way to select candidates for employment or advanced education, thus fulfilling the spirit of affirmative action and equal opportunity programs.
In summary, the present series of studies was based on the assumption that performance on standard IQ tests is influenced by both intellectual ability and by the information to which people have been exposed. Blacks and Whites differ in IQ. Knowledge of the meanings of words is a standard test on which IQ scores are based. Blacks and Whites differ in general vocabulary knowledge. In the present studies, Blacks and Whites were given equal opportunity for exposure to information that conveyed to them the meanings of new words. No differences in knowledge were obtained between Blacks and Whites given equal opportunity to learn new information. The results of the present experiments support the assumption that exposure to information, rather than intellectual ability, may account for racial differences in IQ.
9.3. The g factor
In asking people to learn the meanings of words did we select a task with little relationship to g, the general factor found in a factor analysis of IQ subtests? We do not think so. Conceptually, the task we employed was one in which the meaning of a novel term had to be acquired by experiencing that term in a linguistic context (e.g., how the new term was used in a sentence, or how its meaning was explained by association with another term), the manner in which all language is learned. Knowledge for those newly learned meanings required the acquisition of associations, associations inferred from context. We found that the ability to acquire the meanings of novel terms and to later remember those recently acquired meanings is related to general vocabulary knowledge, a knowledge tested on standard IQ tests and known to be highly g-loaded.
Empirically, our results are quite consistent with other studies that have found that the amount of new knowledge gained during a brief training period is predictive of g loadings on a standard aptitude test. Jensen (1998, pp. 275–277), for example, cites a study by Christal (1991) in which performance on a brief course of instruction of uniform content and duration was predictive of subtest scores on a standard aptitude test with correlations across subtests ranging from .39 to .65, with an average validity coefficient of .53. As noted above, in the present series of experiments, performance on a brief course of instruction was similarly predictive of scores on tests of general vocabulary knowledge with raw correlations averaging about .50 and correlations corrected for unreliability averaging about .65. Thus, the magnitude of the present results is in accord with the magnitude of the results cited by Jensen. Interestingly, Jensen (1998, p. 275) goes on to conclude from such data that "the amount learned during a course of instruction of uniform duration is related mostly to g."
In the present study, we employed only one measure of intelligence, general vocabulary knowledge. Thus, we could not compute g over a variety of tasks. However, given the fact that tests of vocabulary knowledge are highly loaded on g and that how much one learns during a brief course of uniform instruction is highly related to g, we feel justified in assuming that the acquisition of the meanings of novel terms, a task we found to be equally well accomplished by Blacks and Whites, is highly related to g. Is the acquisition of new information under experimentally assured conditions of equal opportunity for exposure highly related to the standard computation of g derived from a battery of IQ subtests? Is such acquisition of new information more related to fluid intelligence (Gf) or to crystallized intelligence (Gc) (Cattell and Horn)? These remain interesting questions for future study.
9.4. Does training last?
As time passes, are Blacks and the Whites still equally knowledgeable in what they have newly learned under conditions of equal exposure to information? That, too, remains a question for future study. We feel it unlikely, however, that one racial group would lose newly gained information at a more rapid rate than another racial group. We base our conjecture on the fact, well established over 30 years ago, that even when the amount of information initially learned by two groups differs, retention slopes for the groups do not differ. This equality in retention is true even for groups varying greatly in IQ such as normal and retarded children (Belmont; Belmont; Ellis; xxxan and xxxan).
A broader question is whether training or intervention produces lasting effects on IQ. The available data are based on studies involving children. In general, the effect on IQ of providing children with information they would not usually have gotten is summarized by Ramey and Ramey (1998). Programs of early intervention can cause changes in average IQ ranging, over studies, from 3 to 15 points. As Ramey and Ramey note, how much the IQ score is changed by providing information depends on timing, intensity, direction, and continuity. Intervening early in life and continuing intervention results in higher IQ scores. Adoption, for example, results in IQ gains of 9 to 12 IQ points (Jensen, 1998, pp. 339–340). Intensive and direct intervention is more effective than casual and indirect teaching.
The effects of intervention on IQ, just noted, are more easily understood if we assume that the IQ score is a measure of what the child knows that, in turn, depends on how well the child processes information and on what information the child has been given to process. Providing the thinking child with information to process will result in knowledge. Providing information as soon as possible, as often as possible, as long as possible, and as clearly as possible will lead to more knowledge. More knowledge is reflected in a higher IQ score. Delay, disruption, and disorder in providing information to the thinking child will result in ignorance. Such ignorance, as reflected in a low IQ score, or an IQ score that declines with age, may be due to lack of information and may have nothing to do with information-processing ability.
9.5. Culture-fair testing
Operationally, the authors of standard intelligence tests assume that a person who knows more than another person about particular information (such knowledge being predictive of achievement in that culture) is the more intelligent person. As Sternberg (2000) points out, the processes of intelligence may be the same from culture to culture. But a person is called more or less intelligent based on socially approved standards of what is important to know. Sternberg goes on to note that confusing intelligence with what society says is intelligent may cause us to give up on people who have basic abilities that go unrecognized. We agree with Sternberg's observations. The chief practical implication of the present study is that it may be possible to develop culture-fair tests of intelligence that will allow basic intellectual abilities to be recognized. Specifically, the inequality of educational achievement among races in our country has highlighted a need for culture-fair tests of intelligence. Blacks do not do as well as Whites on IQ tests and other tests of knowledge such as the SAT, the GRE, and the ACT. Basing admission to higher education on such test scores means that only a small percentage of Blacks are eligible for admission to colleges and universities. Jensen (2000) believes, on the basis of much evidence, that it may not be possible to come up with tasks that show no differences in test performance between Blacks and Whites and yet still predict academic performance.
We do not agree. We believe that the failure to develop tests of intelligence that can be fairly applied across racial groups stems from a theoretical bias to equate the IQ score with intelligence rather than with knowledge. If we define intelligence as information processing and the IQ score as knowledge, the possibility of culture-fair tests of intelligence based on estimates of information processing arises. We are not alone in such a conjecture. Williams (2000, p. 17) notes that "xxxan's ideas" (xxxan 2000) of measuring thinking or information processing rather than accumulated knowledge are "relevant to the debate on intelligence testing and affirmative action because ... a true measure of processing efficiency (if it could be devised) would be fair to members of all racial and ethnic groups." In the present study we have employed brief and easily administered tasks to show that Black and White adults do not differ in knowledge of newly learned information when given equal opportunity for exposure to the information to be acquired. In the future, culture-fair tests of information processing would have an important social application. They might provide a culturally unbiased way to select candidates for employment or advanced education, thus fulfilling the spirit of affirmative action and equal opportunity programs.
In summary, the present series of studies was based on the assumption that performance on standard IQ tests is influenced by both intellectual ability and by the information to which people have been exposed. Blacks and Whites differ in IQ. Knowledge of the meanings of words is a standard test on which IQ scores are based. Blacks and Whites differ in general vocabulary knowledge. In the present studies, Blacks and Whites were given equal opportunity for exposure to information that conveyed to them the meanings of new words. No differences in knowledge were obtained between Blacks and Whites given equal opportunity to learn new information. The results of the present experiments support the assumption that exposure to information, rather than intellectual ability, may account for racial differences in IQ.
If you can read and write, you're good to go for an IQ test. A kid in grade 1 might score higher on the IQ test than a 1st year university student. knowledge (education) is not a prerequisite, and it doesn't effect your result.
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