News Release
September 26, 2003
For Immediate Release
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Contact: Brian Weaver
(202) 783.2077 ext. 3022
bweaver@psychologicalscience.org
A New Understanding of the Origins of Intelligence
Individual differences in intelligence depend on the interaction of environmental stimulation and neurological function, according to findings from studies of intelligence and studies of brain development. This contradicts the two main, but competing, theories about the nature of intelligence. (One theory is that intelligence is "hard wired" - that is, strictly a genetic trait and relatively immune to environmental experience. The other theory is that intelligence is acquired simply by learning.)
Brain research has firmly established that neural connections develop and change in response to environmental stimulation. We also know that intellectual performance improves during childhood, but that in adulthood the pace of improvement levels off in some areas, such as reasoning skills.
Together, these findings indicate that individual differences can result from differences in the brain's capacity to form neural connections during childhood (known as "plasticity"), they can result from differences in the child's educational environment as they are developing intellectually, or they can result from some combination of these two factors.
Understanding the bases of these individual differences is critical in helping children reach their potential and specifically points to the need to expose children to the proper environmental stimulation while their neural connections are still changeable. These findings have significant implications for education and instruction, and also outline important new directions for research drawing on perspectives from both cognitive and psychological science.
Details on this cutting-edge view of intelligence are presented in "Integrating Brain Science Research with Intelligence Research" by Dennis Garlick of the University of Sydney. The article appears in the October issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
Visit the APS Media Center at www.psychologicalscience.org/media for a complete copy of this article. For more information, contact Brian Weaver at (202) 783-2077, Ext. 3022.
Current Directions in Psychological Science contains concise reviews spanning all of scientific psychology and its applications. The American Psychological Society's mission focuses on the advancement of research and science-based psychology in the public's interest.