Grab the Gauge
11-23-2016, 09:21 AM
The mystery of the vanishing Caucasoid reaction time:
It was an era of glorious scientific discovery.
And the reason for the Victorians unprecedented success is simple – they were ‘substantially cleverer’ than us.
Researchers compared reaction times - a reliable indicator of general intelligence – since the late 1800s to the present day and found our fleetness of mind is diminishing.
They claim our slowing reflexes suggest we are less smart than our ancestors, with a loss of 1.23 IQ points per decade or 14 IQ points since Victorian times.
While an average man in 1889 had a reaction time of 183 milliseconds, this has slowed to 253ms in 2004.
They found the same case with women, whose speed deteriorated from 188 to 261ms in the same period.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2323944/Were-Victorians-cleverer-Research-indicates-decline-brainpower-reflex-speed.html#ixzz2UouozYTR
Asian reaction speeds not decreasing:
The same three-way pattern of race differences has been found using the simplest culture-free cognitive measures such as reaction time tasks, which 9- to 12-year-old children perform in less than 1 s. Lynn (2006) found that East Asian children from Hong Kong and Japan were faster than European children from Britain and Ireland, who in turn were faster than African children from South Africa. Using similar tasks, this pattern of racial differences was also found in California (Jensen, 1998; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). Within each group, the children with higher IQ scores perform faster those with lower scores.
Why?
It was an era of glorious scientific discovery.
And the reason for the Victorians unprecedented success is simple – they were ‘substantially cleverer’ than us.
Researchers compared reaction times - a reliable indicator of general intelligence – since the late 1800s to the present day and found our fleetness of mind is diminishing.
They claim our slowing reflexes suggest we are less smart than our ancestors, with a loss of 1.23 IQ points per decade or 14 IQ points since Victorian times.
While an average man in 1889 had a reaction time of 183 milliseconds, this has slowed to 253ms in 2004.
They found the same case with women, whose speed deteriorated from 188 to 261ms in the same period.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2323944/Were-Victorians-cleverer-Research-indicates-decline-brainpower-reflex-speed.html#ixzz2UouozYTR
Asian reaction speeds not decreasing:
The same three-way pattern of race differences has been found using the simplest culture-free cognitive measures such as reaction time tasks, which 9- to 12-year-old children perform in less than 1 s. Lynn (2006) found that East Asian children from Hong Kong and Japan were faster than European children from Britain and Ireland, who in turn were faster than African children from South Africa. Using similar tasks, this pattern of racial differences was also found in California (Jensen, 1998; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). Within each group, the children with higher IQ scores perform faster those with lower scores.
Why?