Moving on to the US: his use of averages is interesting, but this doesn’t tell me too much − 2006 was a while ago, and mightn’t there be falls or plateaus?
It’s always possible, but I’m unware of subsequent standardization samples showing that.
And on what base is this increase coming, and how is it distributed?
Not sure, I haven’t seen US data for that in Flynn’s book. I’ve only seen details about the low vs. high ends of the distribution for Britain.
The British example really confuses me, because I was under the distinct impression that one of Flynn’s researches has been on how the British Flynn effect has stopped and reversed (specifically, “Requiem for nutrition as the cause of IQ gains: Raven’s gains in Britain 1938–2008” Flynn 2009).
(That paper’s the “Flynn, 2009a” cited in the snippet I quoted, incidentally.) Looking more closely into Flynn’s full discussion of the British data in the book clarifies things. The data come from two Raven’s Matrices tests, the CPM and the SPM. The CPM covered ages 5-11 and the SPM ages 7-15 (pages 45 & 46). On the CPM the Flynn effect was faster from the 1980s onwards but on the SPM it was slower; Flynn detected that this was an age effect, and so compared the CPM & SPM over their common age range of 7-11. Over that range both tests had an accelerating Flynn effect (p. 47), and I assume this is where Flynn’s conclusion that the UK has a stronger recent Flynn effect comes from.
However, considering the SPM alone over its entire age range, there was a net slowing down of the Flynn effect (0.15 points per year for 1979-2008 vs. 0.23 points per year for 1938-1979), because at the highest ages tested the Flynn effect went into reverse (a 1.9 point IQ drop from 1979 to 2008 for 14- & 15-year-olds). Presumably it’s this data that suggested a reversal of the UK Flynn effect to you, and your inference differed from Flynn’s because the two of you looked at different slices of the data. Flynn focused on younger children, who have rising IQs, and you remembered the data from older children, who have falling IQs. (It’s a shame there are no recent adult data to resolve which trend the grown-ups are following.)
China is an interesting example and a potential counter-example, but my basic question is this: the age frontier
So if Japan’s own development & Flynn effect did not—apparently—reverse the age frontier, why do you expect China to reverse it?
I don’t disagree with you about the age frontier. The part of your comment that brought me up short was “Have you been following the Flynn effect research? It’s dead, Jim.”, because it didn’t jibe with what I remembered from Flynn’s book. The rest of your comment looked good to me.
As for plagiarism in Chinese science, I suspect it probably is just a teething problem that’ll work itself out in a few decades. My intent wasn’t to roll out a stock stereotype about Chinese culture being unoriginal but simply to note a sideline the paper might touch upon.
However, considering the SPM alone over its entire age range, there was a net slowing down of the Flynn effect (0.15 points per year for 1979-2008 vs. 0.23 points per year for 1938-1979), because at the highest ages tested the Flynn effect went into reverse (a 1.9 point IQ drop from 1979 to 2008 for 14- & 15-year-olds). Presumably it’s this data that suggested a reversal of the UK Flynn effect to you, and your inference differed from Flynn’s because the two of you looked at different slices of the data. Flynn focused on younger children, who have rising IQs, and you remembered the data from older children, who have falling IQs. (It’s a shame there are no recent adult data to resolve which trend the grown-ups are following.)
Hm, maybe I’m missing something on how the tests interact, but if the older range up to 2008 on the SPM was falling, doesn’t that tell you how the adults are going to turn out simply because they are closer to being adults than the younger counterparts?
Hm, maybe I’m missing something on how the tests interact, but if the older range up to 2008 on the SPM was falling, doesn’t that tell you how the adults are going to turn out simply because they are closer to being adults than the younger counterparts?
A priori, it does seem like the older kid trend should be more relevant to adults than the younger kid trend.
However, British IQ gains might have a V-shaped relationship with age: solid gains in younger kids, lesser gains (or indeed losses) in teenagers, and a return to higher gains in adulthood. As written that probably sounds like a wilful disregard of Occam’s razor, but there is some precedent.
I went back to Flynn’s original 1987 article “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations” and looked up Great Britain. The only Matrices results seem to be for the SPM, but as well as the familiar 1938-1979 results, there’s an adult IQ gain estimate. Flynn got it by comparing a 1940 sample of militiamen (average age 22) at a WW2 training depot to the 15½-year-olds in the 1979 sample, adjusting the gain estimate to partially offset the teenagers’ age disadvantage.
Comparing the adult(ish) gains to the child gains reveals something like a V-shaped trend: ages 8-11 gained 0.25 points/year, ages 12-14 gained 0.11 points/year, and the 15½-year-olds outpaced the militiamen by 0.18 points/year. In this case, the older kids’ gain rate was no better as an estimate of the (pseudo-)adult rate than the younger kids’ rate.
It’s always possible, but I’m unware of subsequent standardization samples showing that.
Not sure, I haven’t seen US data for that in Flynn’s book. I’ve only seen details about the low vs. high ends of the distribution for Britain.
(That paper’s the “Flynn, 2009a” cited in the snippet I quoted, incidentally.) Looking more closely into Flynn’s full discussion of the British data in the book clarifies things. The data come from two Raven’s Matrices tests, the CPM and the SPM. The CPM covered ages 5-11 and the SPM ages 7-15 (pages 45 & 46). On the CPM the Flynn effect was faster from the 1980s onwards but on the SPM it was slower; Flynn detected that this was an age effect, and so compared the CPM & SPM over their common age range of 7-11. Over that range both tests had an accelerating Flynn effect (p. 47), and I assume this is where Flynn’s conclusion that the UK has a stronger recent Flynn effect comes from.
However, considering the SPM alone over its entire age range, there was a net slowing down of the Flynn effect (0.15 points per year for 1979-2008 vs. 0.23 points per year for 1938-1979), because at the highest ages tested the Flynn effect went into reverse (a 1.9 point IQ drop from 1979 to 2008 for 14- & 15-year-olds). Presumably it’s this data that suggested a reversal of the UK Flynn effect to you, and your inference differed from Flynn’s because the two of you looked at different slices of the data. Flynn focused on younger children, who have rising IQs, and you remembered the data from older children, who have falling IQs. (It’s a shame there are no recent adult data to resolve which trend the grown-ups are following.)
I don’t disagree with you about the age frontier. The part of your comment that brought me up short was “Have you been following the Flynn effect research? It’s dead, Jim.”, because it didn’t jibe with what I remembered from Flynn’s book. The rest of your comment looked good to me.
As for plagiarism in Chinese science, I suspect it probably is just a teething problem that’ll work itself out in a few decades. My intent wasn’t to roll out a stock stereotype about Chinese culture being unoriginal but simply to note a sideline the paper might touch upon.
Hm, maybe I’m missing something on how the tests interact, but if the older range up to 2008 on the SPM was falling, doesn’t that tell you how the adults are going to turn out simply because they are closer to being adults than the younger counterparts?
(Guess I’ll have to read his book eventually.)
A priori, it does seem like the older kid trend should be more relevant to adults than the younger kid trend.
However, British IQ gains might have a V-shaped relationship with age: solid gains in younger kids, lesser gains (or indeed losses) in teenagers, and a return to higher gains in adulthood. As written that probably sounds like a wilful disregard of Occam’s razor, but there is some precedent.
I went back to Flynn’s original 1987 article “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations” and looked up Great Britain. The only Matrices results seem to be for the SPM, but as well as the familiar 1938-1979 results, there’s an adult IQ gain estimate. Flynn got it by comparing a 1940 sample of militiamen (average age 22) at a WW2 training depot to the 15½-year-olds in the 1979 sample, adjusting the gain estimate to partially offset the teenagers’ age disadvantage.
Comparing the adult(ish) gains to the child gains reveals something like a V-shaped trend: ages 8-11 gained 0.25 points/year, ages 12-14 gained 0.11 points/year, and the 15½-year-olds outpaced the militiamen by 0.18 points/year. In this case, the older kids’ gain rate was no better as an estimate of the (pseudo-)adult rate than the younger kids’ rate.