Continued from top >> IQ tests have been shown to correlate with
such factors as morbidity and mortality, parental social status, and to
some degree, parental IQ: while IQ heritability has been investigated
for nearly a century, controversy remains as to how much is heritable,
and the mechanisms for heritability are still a matter of some debate.
IQ scores are used in many contexts: as predictors of educational
achievement or special needs; by social scientists who study the
distribution of IQ scores in populations and the relationships between
IQ score and other variables; as predictors of job performance and
income.
The average IQ scores for many populations were rising at an average
rate of three points per decade during the 20th century with most of the
increase in the lower half of the IQ range: a phenomenon called the
Flynn effect. It is disputed whether these changes in scores reflect
real changes in intellectual abilities, or merely methodological
problems with past testing (Wikipedia) |