Free Republic

...IQ has a substantial direct correlation with measures of success in life, and it is also correlated with a variety of other characteristics that promote success... ...It’s not just that the IQ gap in working-class and upper-middle-class communities has gotten wider. The life penalties associated with low IQ have risen since 1960. If you focus on the economic changes since 1960, those with low IQ have faced a labor market in which the market value of a strong back has dropped while the value of brains has soared... ...If you focus on the reforms and social programs of the 1960s,...

Starting to smoke pot in your teens can lead to cognitive decline not seen in those who start as adults. Becoming a heavy cannabis smoker as a teenager results in cognitive decline not seen if the illicit drug use starts when adult. Clinical psychologist Madeline Meier at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and her colleagues used data from the famous Dunedin Longitudinal Study, an ongoing multi-factor survey involving a cohort of 1,037 New Zealanders followed from birth, which now has 40 years worth of data. Participants in the Dunedin Study had been periodically tested for IQ and other neuropsychological...

Enlarge Image Brain change. Teens whose verbal IQ increased showed changes in the motor speech area of the brain (top), whereas those with increased nonverbal IQ showed changes in a region of the brain that controls motor movements of the hand (bottom). Credit: Ramsden et al., Nature A new study confirms what parents have long suspected: Adolescence can do a number on kids' brains. Researchers have found that IQ can rise or fall during the teen years and that the brain's structure reflects this uptick or decline. The result offers the first direct evidence that intelligence can change after...

Middle-class children are more likely to be clever than those from poorer families because they have 'better genes', former Ofsted chief Chris Woodhead said yesterday. The comments caused an immediate storm, with critics calling them insulting and 'crazy'. However, Mr Woodhead won support in some quarters - including the backing of an evolutionary psychologist, who said research had shown there was a link between class and average IQ. Mr Woodhead called for a return to selection by ability at 11. He suggested that grammar school pupils were more likely to be middle-class because 'the genes are likely to be better...