Heredity & Environment & Human Behavior

More specifically, human intelligence is determined by an array of genetic and environmental variables. Because there are many different kinds of intelligence, and because intelligence is not scalable, it is both impossible to qualify or quantify. This fact has not stopped cognitive researchers from trying to objectively measure intelligence by some means called the "IQ," or "intelligence quotient." These attempts to quantify intelligence are pseudoscientific at best, and racist at worst. Early researchers were excessively one-sided in their attempts to demonstrate the racial and cultural nature of IQ--one was either born with good genes, or one was biologically destined to a life of inferior status. More recent hereditarians who believe that most of one's intellectual ability is inherited do acknowledge that IQ can be environmentally increased, but they confine their optimism to the very early years of developmental childhood.

It will become clear that only an interaction between heredity and environment c

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l abilities of identical, or monozygotic twins, who have been reared apart. He asks the reader to imagine an index, like the IQ, based on a set of different measures. He then goes on to effectively refute hereditarian views on intelligence: Suppose we combine measures of the length of the right big toe, the dyanometer-measured strength of the left hand, the distance between the two pupils, the cumulative tapping rate with the right hand for 30 seconds, and so on. The measure would show low intercorrelations among the tests, but the overall index would be reasonably reliable. It would obey all the principles of statistical genetics. That is to say, identical twins reared apart would show correlations almost as high as those reared together, and so forth. In short, simply because some grab-bag combination of measures shows high hereditability does not necessarily mean that such a combination taps some fundamental ability. (p. 115) Deese (1993) concludes by stating that intelligence is determined by particular contexts, contexts often induced by social demands. In the next example, Sternberg & Wagner (1993) also see the necessity for examining human ability in a social, rather than genetic, context. The fact that intelligen
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Approximate Word count = 2496
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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