Environmental influences on mental development.

Abstract

The studies reported in this chapter are based primarily upon results from the use of standard intelligence tests. The influence of environment on mental ability will therefore, in the first instance, be observed only through its effect upon mental test scores. The validity or general significance of such scores rests upon the extent to which they serve as indicators of a wider range of adaptive behavior (that is, of mental capacities or potentialities). No test is as valid as we would like to have it, but the significance of scores is particularly open to question in the case of subjects who have had special practice, or who are outside the cultural or educational range of the sample on which the test was standardized. If these or other conditions have i The subject of this chapter has been covered in comprehensive reviews in two Yearbook* of the National Society for the Study of Education, prepared respectively by Terman et al. (1928) and Stoddard et al. (1940) ; in three issues of the Review of Educational Research, edited by Stoddard (1933, 1936) and Jones (1939) ; in Heredity and Environment by Schwesinger (1983) and The Dynamic* of Population by Lorimer and Osborn (1934) ; and also in numerous' textbook treatments.With our knowledge still inconclusive at many points, the rapid growth of research in this field testifies to its continuing vitality and also to the continued need for critical summaries and appraisals.The present treatment deals with research through the year 1941.Acknowledgments are due to Miss Jane Loevinger for assistance in connection with this chapter, and also to Doctor Herbert S. Conrad for reading the manuscript and for numerous suggestions.

العلاقة بین تاریخ میلاد الطلبة ورغبتهم فی

“…They concluded that learners born in the warmer months obtained slightly higher scores than those born in the colder months. On his part, Fitt (1941) found that the intelligence of the Autumn born children was more often found to be higher, and the safest procedure was to regard the summerautumn as the high level period, while Jones (1954) concluded that the season of birth with the highest level of I.Q. was either the spring or summer.…”

PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT—PREDICTIONS FROM INFANCY*

“…Most of the early studies found no relationship at all between tests in infancy and I.Q_. results obtained during the school age period (Anderson, 1939;Bayley, 1949;Jones, 1954). However, these entirely negative findings may have been due to various methodological deficiencies (Thomas, 1967), in particular to an excessive reliance on purely motor items and the use of samples of children nearly all of whom were of well above average intelligence.…”

New questions about old heritability estimates

“…(3) The greater similarity of MZs compared with DZs is probably caused by additional environmental variance induced by the greater physical resemblance of the MZs (e.g ., Jones, 1949).…”