Rise in average IQ scores makes kids today exceptional by earlier standards

By Frank Greve
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - If judged solely by their IQ scores, today's kids are smarter than any generation since testing began - so smart that many of their great-grandparents would have been found mentally deficient by today's standards.
The gain in IQ scores averages about 3 points per decade. And the increases are beyond debate. Wherever IQ test trends have been studied - in the United States and 23 other industrialized countries, plus Kenya - average scores rise over time.
Experts in intelligence measurement are still debating what's behind the surge. Among the explanations they offer are:
- A richer intellectual environment. In 1895, 5 percent of Americans graduated from high school, noted psychologist Douglas Detterman, the editor of the scholarly journal Intelligence. A century later, 5 percent of Americans earned advanced degrees. Better-educated home environments, the theory goes, may make modern offspring more adept at answering the kinds of abstract questions that stud IQ tests.
- Smaller families. In 1900, the average American woman had four children. Today, the average is 1.9. That means a higher percentage of high-striving firstborns who probably also are getting more parental attention. This should raise IQs.
- Testing dexterity. The main gains turn out to be in parts of IQ tests that measure visual and abstract thinking rather than the 3 R's and rote knowledge, in which gains are nil. Today's kids, analysts say, bring rich experience with visual puzzles, such as mazes, Rubik's cubes and computer games, as well as more experience in solving abstract problems such as programming computers and cell phones.
- Genes. The changes have come too fast for genes alone to be a big factor. Moreover, high-IQ families have fewer children than lower-IQ families. But a small difference in gene-based intelligence these days can be magnified, experts think, by doting parents, demanding preschools and other boosters of a child's environment.
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To bad we can't teach, and test for common sense