An article in the September Scientific American discusses the longitudinal increase in intelligence we have
been experiencing over the past 100 years (we don’t have much research for the
periods before that). One of the
findings that I find most intriguing is that many of our capabilities haven’t
gotten better. The improvement over time
is really narrow. Our abstract reasoning
is what has improved. How are things
related (remember those analogy questions on the SAT?)? And geometric pattern recognition.
Why these? I suspect
that these capabilities are much more important now than they were 100 years
ago when manual labor was what 99% of us did for a living (and to live). Now that we grow up in a world that involves
lots of abstract reasoning, it is important to be able to do it well. And we need to see lots of 3-D shapes in 2-D artifacts like paper and computer screens. But basic skills, like working memory
capacity, aren’t in much higher demand now than they were a century ago. Maybe even less necessary now that we have so
many electronic toys to help us.
So the good news is that as the world changes around us, our
brains have the capability to adapt and improve. But the bad news is that if the environment
doesn’t push us to get better, we won’t.
