Why are People Getting Smarter? Video Games and TV Shows? 
By Edgar Coudal

From Manasota FL Mensa's 6-05 "The 4-M" Newsletter

PEOPLE who scored in the top 10 per cent of the population on I.Q. tests in 1920 would see their scores ranked in the bottom third today, according to research by James Flynn, reported in an essay by Malcolm Gladwell in the NewYorker, May 6, 2005. One major reason for the rise, according to Flynn, is that I.Q. tests are recalibrated frequently to maintain 100 as the average. However, Flynn also said that after backing out the recalibrations, the population shows an average gain of 3 percentage points on I.Q. tests per decade.

Flynn suggested that part of the surge is due to increased economic pros­perity resulting in better nutrition, more systematized schools, more skill in taking tests, and staying in school longer. However, the increase was not just in prep schools and private institutions of the west, but throughout the developed nations and especially in the middle class, “supposedly suffering from a deteriorating public school system and a steady diet of lowest common denominator television and mindless pop music,” as Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, wrote.

This was all lead-in to Gladwell’s review of Everything Bad is Good for You, by Steven Johnson. For one thing, Johnson reportedly says that television programs are much “harder” today than just 30 years ago. Back then, a Dukes of Hazzard episode portrayed two cartoon character guys following an essentially linear story line to a decisive conclusion. Today, shows like the Sopranos or West Wing might have five or six story lines involving well-developed characters weaving in and out of the shows’ allotted time. Brain exercise and learning, just keeping track!

Gladwell reports that Johnson’s second point is about video games. Today’s game is a far cry from Tetris and Pong of our past, which were exercises in motor skills and pattern recognition. A massively popular game like Grand Theft Auto III uses a 53,000-word walkthrough to familiarize beginners with it--that’s a full-length novel! And to “win,” the player must solve any number of difficult puzzles, physical and mental, in the correct order. Gladwell quotes Johnson: “It’s about find­ing meaning and order in world, and making decisions that help create that order".

Johnson does not decry books, but points out that the media are entirely different. With books, the content is what matters, the explanation of how the bones and muscles work together as described in a biology text. In video games and TV shows, the process of how you think is important and improving that process is paramount. Both kinds of intelligence, the fluid kind of the thinking process and the crystallized kind of the books’ content, are vital.

Gladwell poses the final question: how do we find the best balance between the two kinds of intelligence, thus avoiding the trap of falling into a position that says only explicit grazing for facts is important?