Word: iq
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...feelings here, I must confess that I have a crush on Ann Coulter. Coulter is, of course, the political pundit infamous for saying things like this: “By the age of fourteen, you’re either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster.” A refreshing alternative to left-wing comedian Al Franken ’73, she is also more audacious and outrageous than Franken—and that’s why I am smitten. Coulter chastises letter-writers to the New York Times for being...
...actually cause intellectual impairment. Not only that, but quite a bit of damage seems to occur at low levels of exposure. A five-year study found that kids with a blood-lead level at the acceptable threshold of 10 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dl) scored seven points lower on an IQ test than kids with a level of only 1 mcg/dl. The guidelines for safe lead levels have been revised repeatedly over the years, from 60 mcg/dl before 1970 to 25 mcg/dl in 1985 to 10 mcg/dl. They may have to change again. The CDC estimates that 1 in 10 children...
...have changed dramatically. The first Scholastic Aptitude Test, which was given on June 23, 1926, included "Artificial Language" and logic sections that would seem bizarre to today's SAT takers. (A practice question asked students to translate a gibberish sentence--"OK entcola kon"--based on a given lexicon.) Similarly, IQ tests look quite different from the SAT. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the most widely used IQ test, asks funny little questions like "In what two ways is a lamp better than a candle...
...IQ tests try to probe innate abilities, and if achievement tests rate classroom learning, aptitude tests assay something in between--developed abilities. Developed abilities are those nurtured through schoolwork, reading, doing crosswords, soaking up the arts, debating politics, whatever. These aren't inborn traits but honed competencies. Whereas early psychometricians, many of them racist, propagated what Lemann calls the dipstick theory--the idea that a test score is like a mark on a dipstick showing the raw amount of intelligence in your mental oil tank--the field outgrew that simplistic notion at least a generation ago. "I don't think...
Psychologist Robert Sternberg's first field study in intelligence took place in grade school, when poor scores on IQ tests convinced him he was a "dum-dum." Largely thanks to an exceptional fourth-grade teacher, Sternberg managed to shed his self-doubt, improve his grades and go on to attend Yale University, but he never shook the sense that traditional tests are missing something. "You don't get to the top in life just on your IQ points or your SAT score," says Sternberg, now a professor at Yale and president of the American Psychological Association (APA). "You have...