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LINKS: ....Bird Flu Info ....Your Memory Enhancer ....Neurotech ....Success Tips ....Free Is our intelligence changing?In an attempt to avoid a slant that favours a particular culture, intelligence tests were devised that focused on mathematical and spatial skills rather than vocabulary. But even these tests are not exempt from cultural influences - increased use of video games improves spatial awareness and reaction time. However, although we are gaining skills in some areas of intelligence, we are losing out in others, such as memory. So although this generation may not be able to remember the vast number of poems that our grandfathers¡¯ learnt, their skills are greater in other areas. James R Flynn has been trying to decipher these problems, especially in light of an alleged increase in IQ with successive generations, termed the 'Flynn Effect'. However, it is exactly in this area that intelligence tests come unstuck. Who is to say that playing a video game is more intellectually demanding than being a scrivener in the nineteenth century? Scriveners had an amazing capacity for arithmetic brought on by the need to do double-entry bookkeeping without calculators, a skill that today's 'yoof' could only dream of. HOME...... Brain Food LINKS: ....Medical Dictionary ....Stress Management ....Allergy Info |