Hi all
>> Nick Bostrom wrote:
>> > BTW, contrary to what was said on another thread some weeks back,
>> > there seems to be a fairly substantial correlation between IQ and
>> > brain size. I've heard figures of correlation coefficients of up
>> > to .4.
yip. contrary also to everyone's favourite defender of Marxist-Leninist
science for the people Steven jay Gould.
>>>It would be interesting to try correlate the size and
>> > complexity of specific cortical areas with performance measures of
>> > the sort of activity they are thought to be responsible for. Maybe
>> > one could find even greater coefficients then.
That is being/has started to be done. People are looking to extract the
factor structure of human intelligence from regional cell counts and
gray/white matter ratios. Of course, the great bulk of IQ variance is
explained by a single factor so these effects struggle under pretty hefty
signal to noise ratio.
>> This is probably a stupid question, but how to explain this Brain
>> size/I.Q correlation if we admit that the I.Q level has
>> significantly risen in one century?
One answer (proposed by Jim Flynn, in fact, is that intelligence hasn't risen, while IQ has).
then Remi Sussan said (in reply to nick):
> >A .4 correlation leaves a huge scope for other factors, so I
>>don't see any difficulty here.
difficulty for what: dualist theories on mind?
>(It's also possible to imagine that
>better nourishment during childhood could have increased average brain
>size.)
That proposal has been tested by the late HJ Eysenck, with some success.
>One has to be careful before jumping to conclusions from a weak
>correlation.
umm. why so any more than with strong correlations? One actually has to be careful jumping to conclusions when there is no theory. There is a well formulated theory of why brain size and structure relates to IQ.
>After all, shoe size also correlates positively
>with IQ (though less than brain size I think).
not very well at all actually. Nose size however, has a good correlation (around .4)
>Couldn't head size
>simply be correlated with body size, which in turn may be correlated
>with intelligence because the best mates prefer to mate people who are
>both tall and intelligent?
That is exactly what is tested in the papers on this matter.
a nice reference is given below. There are by now, however, many dozens of papers on this topic. Steven jay Gould's response is simple denial: fitting really for such an arm chair critic.
Rushton,-J.-Philippe; Ankney,-C.-Davison (1996) Brain size and cognitive ability: Correlations with age, sex, social class, and race. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 3: 21-36.
Dr. Timothy Bates Don't compromise. Use QuickTime. Dept Psychology <http://www.apple.com/quicktime/> Macquarie University <http://www.QuickTimeFAQ.org/> Sydney NSW 2109 Australia
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