The majority of studies on intelligence have shown that environmental factors account for about 25% of the differences in people’s IQ scores. The factors that have been of greatest interest to scholars include prenatal development, nutrition, birth order, home and family environment, and the effects of schooling. Prenatal development
Do environmental factors affect intelligence quotient of children?
Effect of environmental factors on intelligence quotient of children In the present study, we found that various environmental factors such as place of residence, physical exercise, family income, parents' occupation and education influence the IQ of a child to a great extent.
Do children's shared experiences explain the greater variation in intelligence in SES?
Children's shared experiences appear to explain the greater variation in intelligence in lower SES. Citation: Hanscombe KB, Trzaskowski M, Haworth CMA, Davis OSP, Dale PS, Plomin R (2012) Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Children's Intelligence (IQ): In a UK-Representative Sample SES Moderates the Environmental, Not Genetic, Effect on IQ.
How does the environment affect IQ?
Evidence of Environmental Influences on Intelligence 1 Identical twins reared apart have IQ's that are less similar than identical twins reared in the same environment. 4 2 School attendance has an impact on IQ scores 6 3 Children who breastfed for 12 months or longer had a higher IQ (about 3.7 points) at age 30. 7 More ...
How does SES affect intelligence?
We used a twin model that allowed for a main effect of SES on intelligence, as well as a moderating effect of SES on the genetic and environmental components of intelligence. We found greater variance in intelligence in low-SES families, but minimal evidence of GxE interaction across the eight ages.
What are three environmental factors that affect intelligence?
Intelligence is also strongly influenced by the environment. During a child's development, factors that contribute to intelligence include their home environment and parenting, education and availability of learning resources, and healthcare and nutrition.
What is the relationship between socioeconomic status ethnicity and IQ?
Our results suggest that family socioeconomic status (SES) impacts children's development of intelligence from infancy through adolescence. Children of the highest and lowest SES backgrounds were on average separated by 6 IQ points at the age of 2 years. By the age of 16, the IQ gap had almost tripled (Fig. 2).
How do heredity and the environment contribute to the development of intelligence and creativity?
Today, researchers generally agree that heredity and environment have an interactive influence on intelligence. Many researchers believe that there is a reaction range to IQ, which refers to the limits placed on IQ by heredity. Heredity places an upper and lower limit on the IQ that can be attained by a given person.
How do genetics and environment affect intelligence?
Evidence of Genetic Influences on Intelligence Studies show that IQ scores of identical twins may be more similar than those of fraternal twins. Siblings who were raised together in the same environment have more similar IQs than those of adopted children who were brought up in the same household.
How are SES and IQ related quizlet?
How are socioeconomic status (SES) and IQ related? Higher SES class children tend to obtain higher IQ scores than lower SES children. that provide more opportunities.
Does heredity or the environment have more influence over an individual's level of intelligence?
While it is true that heredity has a great effect on an individual's level of intelligence, research suggests that environment has the most influence of the two factors.
What does evidence reveal about environmental influences on intelligence?
Where environments vary widely, environmental differences are more predictive of intelligence scores. Adoption enhances the intelligence scores of mistreated or neglected children. Intelligence scores of “virtual twins” (same-age, unrelated siblings adopted as infants and raised together) correlate +.
Is IQ influenced by nature or nurture?
IQ development shifts from nurture (environmental) influences to nature (genetic) influences as children move into adulthood, approximately from age 12 to 16. A thicker cortical region, which is associated with higher IQs, also appears to be associated with greater susceptibility to environmental inputs.
How is intelligence influenced by nature?
Research shows that intelligence is a product of heredity-environment interactions; thus, inherited abilities interact with environmental factors. In nature, some children who possess particular inherited traits are suited to particular environmental conditions.
Is high IQ genetic or environmental?
Numerous studies on twins suggest that between 40 and 80 percent of the variance in IQ is linked to genetics, suggesting that genetics may play a larger role than environmental factors in determining an individual's IQ.
How does culture affect IQ scores?
According to some researchers, the “cultural specificity” of intelligence makes IQ tests biased towards the environments in which they were developed – namely white, Western society. This makes them potentially problematic in culturally diverse settings.
What are the factors affecting intelligence?
Even though the genetic susceptibility plays a crucial role on the IQ of the individual, various modifiable environmental factors like education, premature birth, nutrition, pollution, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illnesses, and diseases can have an influence on an individual's IQ.
How does socioeconomic status affect education?
The school systems in low-SES communities are often underresourced, negatively affecting students' academic progress and outcomes (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008). Inadequate education and increased dropout rates affect children's academic achievement, perpetuating the low-SES status of the community.
What does low socioeconomic status mean?
A way of describing people based on their education, income, and type of job. Socioeconomic status is usually described as low, medium, and high. People with a lower socioeconomic status usually have less access to financial, educational, social, and health resources than those with a higher socioeconomic status.
How is IQ determined?
Introduction: A child's intelligence quotient (IQ) is determined by both genetic and environmental factors that start from the prenatal period itself.
What are the environmental factors that are included in a questionnaire?
All the children were administered a questionnaire consisting of various environmental factors such as parents' education, occupation, income, and the physical activity of the students.
Why is heritability lower in lower SES families?
The notion that heritability may be lower in lower-SES families is appealing, in part because of its environmental implications: If heritability is lower in lower-SES families, it suggests that environmental interventions might be more effective in boosting cognitive development for children in lower-SES families. The present study, which is based on a large UK-representative sample of children followed longitudinally, leads to a similar implication. Although the genetic influence on IQ is the same in lower-SES families, shared environmental influence appears to be greater in lower-SES families, suggesting that family-based environmental interventions might be more effective in these families. However, two further aspects of the results temper the policy implications of this finding. First, shared environmental influence is found in both lower- and higher-SES families and the difference in shared environmental influence between them is modest. Second, shared environmental influences on IQ decline from childhood to adulthood so that these influences might not have an impact in the long run.
How many pairs of twins were in the TEDS study?
This study used as its sampling frame the ongoing Twins Early Development Study, TEDS [23], [24]. TEDS is a population-based longitudinal study of over 10,000 pairs of twins born in England and Wales in 1994, 1995, and 1996. Zygosity was assigned to the twins using a parent-rated instrument that yielded 95% accuracy when compared to zygosity established from DNA markers [25]; uncertainties were followed up with DNA marker testing. Comparison to census data from the Office of National Statistics indicates that the sample has remained reasonably representative of the United Kingdom population [26]. Ethical approval for the Twins Early Development Study has been provided by the King's College London ethics committee (reference: 05/Q0706/228). The parents of the twins provide informed written consent for each TEDS assessment.
What is the twin design?
The twin design compares the phenotypic resemblance of identical (monozygotic, MZ) twins to the phenotypic resemblance of non-identical (dizygotic, DZ) twins in order to partition the variance on a trait into sources of genetic and environmental variation. The coefficient of genetic relatedness is 1.0 between MZ twins, and on average 0.5 between dizygotic twins, who share 50% of their segregating alleles. The twin model attributes the similarity of reared-together twins to additive genetic (A) and shared environmental (C) factors, and the differences between them to nonshared environmental (E) factors [43]. By definition, co-twins in both MZ and DZ pairs are correlated 1.0 for C factors. The assumptions of the twin design and attempts to validate them are described in detail elsewhere [44].
Does socioeconomic status affect intelligence?
Several studies have found that socioeconomic status (SES) modifies the heritability of children's intelligence. Among low-SES families, genetic factors have been reported to explain less of the variance in intelligence; the reverse is found for high-SES families. The evidence however is inconsistent.
How many genes are associated with IQ?
Human IQ is characterized by a high level of heritability A very large proportion of the over 17,000 human genes are thought to have an effect on the development and functionality of the brain. While a number of individual genes have been reported to be associated with IQ, none have a strong effect [57].
Why does IQ increase with age?
The increase in heritability of IQ with age is presumably due to genes that somehow predispose people to gain intelligence via certain environmental factors. People with high IQ genotypes pick stimulating environments and end up with high IQ.
What are the factors that affect IQ?
Even though the genetic susceptibility plays a crucial role on the IQ of the individual, various modifiable environmental factors like education, premature birth, nutrition, pollution, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illnesses, and diseases can have an influence on an individual’s IQ.
How many points did Mozart's sonata for two pianos increase IQ?
Rauscher and Shaw [45] reported that college students who listened to 10 minutes of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, showed an increase in IQ of 8 to 9 points on the spatial subtest on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. The phenomenon was coined the Mozart Effect.
What is the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale?
It is a cognitive ability and intelligence test that is used to diagnose developmental or cognitive deficiencies in young children. ...
Why is prenatal nutrition important?
Prenatal and early nutrition are link ed to brain structure, behavior and intelligence [21]. There is evidence that providing a high nutrient diet to very premature babies, particularly males, can help to reduce the loss of brain size and IQ often experienced by these babies [22].
How does genetics affect intelligence?
Genetic. Our genes do influence intelligence and IQ. Different studies have placed the genetic component at different levels ranging from 30-80%, but it is agreed that the level of genetic influence increases with age, at least from childhood through to early adulthood.