Development of Intelligence
2000; Elsevier BV; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s0022-4405(99)00033-3
ISSN1873-3506
Autores Tópico(s)Infant Development and Preterm Care
ResumoThis special issue presents research and review articles that investigate some of the many factors affecting the development of intelligence. The articles explore the development of intelligence from different perspectives, each of which is relevant for researchers and practitioners interested in children’s school performance. Thus, the goal of this issue is to provide information from basic research to better inform prevention and intervention efforts for improving children’s school grades and behaviors. One major focus of research on infant intelligence has been to identify testable traits that represent the same underlying aspects of intelligence that tests in later childhood tap. For instance, infant attention and responses to novelty appear to be fundamental to the concept of intelligence across all ages (Berg & Sternberg, 1985), and a number of researchers have explored the prediction of later IQ scores from novelty and attention scores in infancy (Bornstein & Sigman, 1986; Colombo, Mitchell, Dodd, Coldren, & Horowitz, 1989; DiLalla et al., 1990; Dougherty & Haith, 1997; Fagan, Singer, Montie, & Shepherd, 1986; O’Connor, Cohen, & Parmelee, 1984; Rose, Feldman, & Wallace, 1988). Speed of processing and memory capacity directly impact such behaviors as fixation duration (how quickly a visual stimulus is encoded), reaction time, novelty preference (i.e., showing preferential looking for a novel stimulus), and retention, all of which, in turn, have been shown to relate to later cognitive ability (Colombo, 1995). Speed of processing also has been noted to be central to general cognitive development in older children (Kail & Salthouse, 1994). Much current research now is focusing on factors that increase or decrease later IQ. A large body of research has shown that IQ is about 50% heritable (Bouchard & McGue, 1981; Plomin, DeFries, McClearn, & Rutter, 1997). This means that about half of the IQ variance among people is a result of genetic influences, but also about half of that variance is a result of environmental influences. This leaves us with two important questions: How does genotype influence the development of intelligence across age, and how do genes and environment interact to affect a child’s intellectual development? These are complicated questions that behavior geneticists are just beginning to explore systematically.
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