Is an education revolution responsible for rising IQ scores?
TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2015 10:57 AM

The Flynn Effect refers to the considerable rise of IQ scores over the last century, as discovered by James Flynn. Flynn famously studied the collective IQs of several countries for a decades-long time span, and discovered gains in IQ scores of between 5 and 25 points. There have been many hypotheses about why the population as a whole seems to be gaining intelligence, including more years spent in school and better nutrition, but a new study from Penn State University may have another answer.

The education revolution
The study, published in the scientific journal Intelligence, found that it's not just more schooling that has led to higher IQ scores (though that has certainly made a difference), it's the types of problems students are now asked to solve in their classrooms. Whereas education used to focus more on memorization tasks, students are now asked to think critically and solve complex problems beginning at a young age.

"Certain kinds of activities - like solving problems or reading - stimulate the parts of the brain that we know are responsible for fluid intelligence," David Baker,  lead author of the study, said in a statement. "And these types of activities are done over and over in today's schools, so that you would expect these students to have higher development than populations of people who had no access to schooling."

This is in direct contrast to the idea that programs like President George W. Bush's education initiative No Child Left Behind have caused schools to lower their standards in order to teach to students of relatively lower intelligence. In fact, the study's researchers say that this idea that education has become less effective in recent years is so widespread that it's the reason scientists haven't tested the study's hypothesis before now. Yet according to the study's findings, education has actually been improving.

According to Baker, "This misperception has tended to lead cognitive scientists away from considering the impact of schooling and its spread over time as a main social environment in neurological development."

Three parts of the study
The research from Penn State was performed in three parts. In the first part of the study, the researchers used neuroimaging to look at the effect on children's brains of solving specific styles of math problems. They found that the complexity of math problems today activated areas of the brain connected with fluid intelligence. The second part of the study researched adults from farming communities in Peru, only some of whom had access to education - the findings made it clear that access to education affected higher intelligence. The third tier studied math textbooks between 1930 and 2000, with the conclusion that the books actually did contain more complex problems over time.