When talking about nature vs. nurture debate, intelligence comes to be a really polemical topic. There are many ones who state that it come in genes and is inherited, while they are many others who defend the position of intelligence being an environmental factor. Through time persons experience different situation and experiment different things which can develop brain activity. Also being born in an academical and with rigorous discipline atmosphere, should influence the level of intelligence. An important step for developing intelligence is to study and be a good student. In the other hand, there are many cases where a baby has intellectual actions that a baby should not have. There also exist some kids who actually are not good students and are not disciplined, but they carry the intelligence in their bodies.This is the point where I can state that intelligence is a factor that depends of genes and in other cases of environment.
For proving intelligence to be a genetic heritage, scientist collected pairs of separated twins and reunited them while testing their personalities and IQs. Also they tried by comparing the IQs of adopted people with those of their adopted parents and their biological parents or their siblings. The results were: Same person tested twice 87%, Identical twins reared together 86%, Identical twins reared apart 76%, Fraternal twins reared together 55% ,Biological siblings reared together 47% (studies show that reared apart about 24%), Parents and children living together 40%, Parents and children living apart 31%, Adopted children living together 0%, Unrelated people living apart 0%. (Ridley, 1999, p.83) As it is shown twins, either together or separated, had a high percentage of similarity, while adopted children and unrelated people had low results. This experiment highly suggests it should be nature.
Testing if the factor of intelligence and IQ was nurture, scientist did an experiment in which they noticed that in many countries the IQ level is incrementig by 3 points each decade. James Flynn, the principal author of this research attributed the results to ads, posters, videogame and TV graphics and other things rather than written things which were the only source of learning in the past. He suggests that children experience a much richer visual environment than in older times, developing in a better way children IQ. As it is shown in the previous experiment the environment had been influencing in a big way human inteligence. This also suggests that depending on the school level, the teacher, and even the oraganization and interest shown, a student will develop their brain and intelligence.
"No single environmental factor seems to have a large influence on IQ. Variables widely believed to be important are usually weak....Even though many studies fail to find strong environmental effects....most of the factors studied do influence IQ in the direction predicted by the investigator....environmental effects are multifactorial and largely unrelated to each other."Bouchard & Segal (1985), p.452. Some biologist and psychologist, such as the ones in the previous quote, agreed with the idea that the level of inteligence of a person, or IQ, can be influenced in certain way by expierences, but it is not a completely or a major factor, it shuold be working together with genetic staff.There are good different investigations that defend either nurture or nature when talking about intelligence. Very related people living together and not leaving together, such as twin, and parents and sons, show a similar result in their IQ test, while non related and adopted persons show from few to no similarities. In the other hand they are studies that how environmental things as school, t.v., video games, posters, and other visual things affect the development of a child IQ. Also some scientists tried to prove that intelligence depends on both factors by stating that environment can affect somehow someones´ IQ, but it is not a major cause. Intelligence is a topic of nature vs. nurture debate were genetics and nature factors complement each other for its existance and development.
Bouchard, T. J., & Segal, N. L. (1985). Environment and IQ. In B.B. Wolman (Ed.). Handbook of Intelligence: Theories, Measurements, and Applications (pp. 391-464). New York: John Wiley.
Ridley, M. (1999). Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters. London: Fourth Estate Ltd.
www.intelligencesquared.com
this post is very interesting because of your information of the twins and the adopted children, how thay are different and how they are similar.
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