So You Want Your Child to Be a Genius 英文参考文献.docVIP

Book Review/Science in the Media So You Want Your Child to Be a Genius? Jonathan Flint The inability to settle on a measure of intelligence makes exploring its relationship to genetics even more complicated. It’s possible to ?nd those who argue against the existence of IQ, against the heritability of IQ, and, going a little further, against the value of quantitative genetic analyses of how genetic variation contributes to human behaviour. Nevertheless, psychologists still work with intelligence tests, using separate measures of performance and verbal IQ, as well as the full-scale IQ score (the one that needs to be over 150 if you want to become a MENSA member), largely because there isn’t anything better. There are certainly circumstances when you need these measures, clinically speaking. I’ve seen children referred for elective mutism (hard to believe anyone would complain about a ten-year-old keeping quiet) who, on testing, turned out to be learning disabled. Some of these children owe their disability to a genetic mutation. If you plot the IQ distribution in the population, the well known bell shaped curve (with the majority of people having a mid-range IQ and fewer numbers of people having very high or very low IQs) is interrupted at the lower end of the distribution by a small blip. This has long been attributed to the combined effects of chromosomal abnormalities (predominantly Down syndrome) and single gene mutations, such as the Fragile X syndrome. or lack of it, in other complex phenotypes. Just like the question of the value and meaning of IQ tests, data by themselves may not be enough to convince sceptics. The primary tool used to address whether genes in?uence intelligence, the twin study (in which commonalities are examined between genetically identical twins), has generated technical discussions of such formidable complexity that it sometimes appears as if both sides of the argument can claim victory. There are alternative strategies to the twin stud