Flynn Effect 6: Distant ancestors: Similarities
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The grandparents of today's children need to be assigned a median birth date of 1937 to get them in school in time for the WISC. But what of their parents and grandparents, what of the cohort that was born in 1907 and the even most distant cohort born in 1877? British Raven's data show massive gains beginning with those born in 1877 -- they were actually tested at maturity of course (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1993, Graph G2). World War I military data show that U.S. gains were under way as far back as we can measure (Tuddenham, 1948). The Wechsler-Binet rate of gain (0.3 points per year) entails that the school children of 1900 would have had a mean IQ just under 70. The Raven-Similarities rate (0.5 points per year) yields a mean IQ of 50 (against current norms). Even if the latter accounts for most of the former, it will hardly do to simply say that our ancestors were bad at on-the-spot problems solving.
After all, lateral thinking is an important real-world skill. Only the worst child of the 2200 school children used to norm the WISC-IV would have performed as low as the 1900 average. To make our ancestors that lacking in innovation or problem-solving initiative is to turn them into virtual automatons. Moreover, there is some connection between mental acuity and the ability to learn. Jensen (1981, p. 65) relates an interview with a young man with a Wechsler IQ of 75. Despite the fact that he attended baseball games frequently, he was vague about the rules, did not know how many players were on a team, could not name the teams his home team played, and could not name any of the most famous players.
When Americans attended baseball games a century ago, were almost half of them too dull to follow the game or use a scorecard? My father who was born in 1885 taught me to keep score and spoke as if this was something virtually everyone did when he was a boy. How did Englishmen play cricket in 1900? Taking their mean IQ at face value, most of them would need a minder to position them in the field, tell them when to bat, and tell them when the innings was over.
The solution to this paradox rests on two distinctions that explain in turn the huge and therefore embarrassing gains made on Similarities and Raven's. The first distinction is that between pre-scientific and post-scientific operational thinking. A person who views the world through pre-scientific spectacles thinks in terms of the categories that order perceived objects and functional relationships. When presented with a Similarities-type item such as "what do dogs and rabbits have in common", Americans in 1900 would be likely to say, "You use dogs to hunt rabbits." The correct answer, that they are both mammals, assumes that the important thing about the world is to classify it in terms of the taxonic categories of science. Even if the subject were aware of those categories, the correct answer would seem absurdly trivial. Who cares that they are both mammals? That is the least important thing about them from his point of view. What is important is orientation in space and time, what things are useful, and what things are under one's control, that is, what does one possess.
The hypothesis is that our ancestors found pre-scientific spectacles more comfortable than post-scientific spectacles, that is, pre-scientific spectacles showed them what they considered to be most important about the world. If the everyday world is your cognitive home, it is not natural to detach abstractions and logic and the hypothetical from their concrete referents. It is not that pre-scientific people did not use abstractions: the concept of hunting as distinct from fishing is an abstraction. They would use syllogistic logic all of the time: Basset hounds are good for hunting; that is a Basset hound; that dog would be good at hunting. They would of course use the hypothetical: if I had two dogs rather than only one, I could catch more rabbits. They are not MR in any sense but in terms of current norms they will appear to be so on Similarities. Today we are so familiar with the categories of science and are so imbued with the scientific world-view, that it seem obvious that the most important attribute things have in common is that they are both animate, or mammals, or chemical compounds.
Today we have no difficulty freeing logic from concrete referents and reasoning about purely hypothetical situations. People were not always thus. From interviews Luria conducted with peasants in remote areas of Russia, Hallpike (1979) culls some wonderful examples. The dialogues paraphrased run as follows:
White bears and Novaya Zemlya
Q: All bears are white where there is always snow; in Novaya Zemlya there is always snow; what color are the bears there?
A: I have seen only black bears and I do not talk of what I have not seen.
Q: But what do my words imply?
A; If a person has not been there he can not say anything on the basis of words. If a man was 60 or 80 and had seen a white bear there and told me about it, he could be believed.
Camels and Germany
Q: There are no camels in Germany; B is a city in Germany; are there camels there?
A: I don't know, I have never seen German villages. If B is a large city, there should be camels there.
Q: But what if there are none in all of Germany?
A: Perhaps this is a small village within a large city and there is no room for camels.
The peasants, of course, are entirely correct. They understand the difference between analytic and synthetic propositions: pure logic cannot tell us anything about facts; only experience can. But this will do them no good on Similarities. Beginning with its inception, what counts as a correct answer favors the formal categories over the concrete and by the time of the WISC-R, this is made explicit (Wechsler, 1974, p. 155). I have altered the following to avoid reference to any item still in use. Italics are mine:
"Pertinent general categorizations are give 2 points, while the naming of one or more common properties or functions of a member of a pair (a more concrete problem-solving approach) merits only 1 point. Thus, stating that a pound and a yard are "Both measures" (their general category) earns a higher score than saying "You can measure things with them" (a main function of each). Similarly calling something a "feeling" is less concrete (and worth a higher score) than "the way you feel." Of course, even a relatively concrete approach, to solving the items ..... requires the child to abstract something similar about the members of the pair. Some children are unable to do this, and may respond to each member separately rather than to the pair as a whole .... although such a response is a true statement, it is scored 0 because it does not give a similarity."
The preference for taxonic answers (categories that classify the world and extra credit for the vocabulary of science) is extraordinary and reaches an even higher level in the WISC-IV, where the "one point" for concrete answers is reduced to "merits no or only a partial credit" (Psychological Corporation, 2003, p. 71). This preference dominates the specific scoring directions given item by item. I have used a fictitious item (dogs and rabbits) to illustrate the point, but an item abandoned after the WISC-R will show that I am not exaggerating. "What do liberty and justice have in common?" Two points for either both are ideals or both are moral rights, one point for both are freedoms, nothing for both are what we have in America. The examiner is told that "freedoms" gets 1 point while "free things" gets 0 because the latter is a more concrete response (Wechsler, 1974, p. 159). You are just not supposed to be preoccupied with how we use something or how much good it does you to possess it.
If children use pre-scientific spectacles, they can get no more than half credit on most Similarities items. If the children of 1900 were given a prehistoric version of the WISC-IV, they would have a raw score ceiling of 22. This is at the 25th percentile of contemporary children aged 14. The average child of 1900 would have a raw score of about 11 and be two SDs below the current mean, which translates into an IQ score of 70 against today's norms (Psychological Corporation, 2003, p. 229). This was the "target" score that Full Scale IQ gains implied when projected back to 1900. But recall that Similarities set the more demanding target of a mean IQ of 50. It looks as if the permeation of our minds by the scientific world-view has been supplemented by additional factors and that these have enhanced our ability to solve on-the-spot problems. The latter kind of gain may account for much of the 24 points the post-1947 data signal.
Note how the WISC manuals use the word "pertinent" to justify rewarding taxonic answers. This is just a synonym for claiming that classification is what is important about a pair of things. Imagine a rural child in 1900 being told that the most important thing about dogs and rabbits is a name that applies to both, rather than what you use them for. These comments are not a criticism of the architects of the WISC-IV. Today, when all children are being schooled in a scientific era, the brighter child probably will be the one who uses the categories and vocabulary of science. But what we need not infer is this: that the huge gains on Similarities from one generation to another signal a general lack of intelligence on the part of our ancestors. Their minds were simply not permeated by the scientific world-view.
This solution to our paradox does not imply that massive IQ gains over time are trivial. Aside from the escalation in lateral thinking, they represent nothing less than a liberation of the human mind. The scientific world-view, with its vocabulary, taxonomies, and detachment of logic and the hypothetical from concrete referents, has begun to permeate the minds of post-industrial people. This has paved the way for mass education on the university level and the emergence of an intellectual cadre without whom our present civilization would be inconceivable.