Two quick comments (you can see more detailed stuff here):
Of course nurture plays a role in differences in spatial reasoning. In this particular study, each additional year of education dropped puzzle completion time by 4%. Human brains are very flexible, and good at getting better at doing things that they do repeatedly. Considering nature and nurture to be opposites is not even wrong. The last question of this post gets to the right issue- how do nature and nurture interconnect with one another? What nurture should we pair with a given nature?
Second, one study like this does not highly question a theory by itself. The question is where the winds of evidence blow you, not whether or not you have an arrow in your quiver.
Of course nurture plays a role in differences in spatial reasoning. In this particular study, each additional year of education dropped puzzle completion time by 4%.
Correlation is not causation. This is well studied and the causation runs the other way, at least in western societies.
The average duration of education in the matrilineal society was, if I remember correctly, 4.5 years. I don’t think we can apply Western studies about the link between g and education to poor India without significant caveats.
I believe that Douglas is asserting not that the correlation is inversely related but that the direction of the causual relationship goes the other way. That is smarter, faster thinkers manage to stay in school longer.
Two quick comments (you can see more detailed stuff here):
Of course nurture plays a role in differences in spatial reasoning. In this particular study, each additional year of education dropped puzzle completion time by 4%. Human brains are very flexible, and good at getting better at doing things that they do repeatedly. Considering nature and nurture to be opposites is not even wrong. The last question of this post gets to the right issue- how do nature and nurture interconnect with one another? What nurture should we pair with a given nature?
Second, one study like this does not highly question a theory by itself. The question is where the winds of evidence blow you, not whether or not you have an arrow in your quiver.
Correlation is not causation. This is well studied and the causation runs the other way, at least in western societies.
The average duration of education in the matrilineal society was, if I remember correctly, 4.5 years. I don’t think we can apply Western studies about the link between g and education to poor India without significant caveats.
Just to confirm, are you saying that higher education in western societies correlates with worse performance on the kinds of puzzles in this study?
I believe that Douglas is asserting not that the correlation is inversely related but that the direction of the causual relationship goes the other way. That is smarter, faster thinkers manage to stay in school longer.
Thanks. I should have been able to see that.