Those exposed to more endocrine-disrupting chemicals during the first trimester gave birth to children with lower IQs.
Turn up this dial to increase your cognitive performance — if you are a woman.
Turn up this dial to increase your cognitive performance — if you are a woman.
Raising the room temperature can boost scores on IQ-like tests by almost 10 percent, new research reveals.
The increase only applies to women, though, whose verbal and math skills are better at higher room temperatures.
Men perform better when the room temperature is towards the cooler end of the spectrum.
Perhaps this finding helps explain why women tend to prefer warmer indoor temperatures than men.
The study revealed that women got 9 percent more math answers correct when the temperature was 9F (5C) higher.
At the higher temperature, women tried harder on the tests, while men tried harder at lower temperatures.
Dr Tom Chang, the study’s first author, said:
“What we found is it’s not just whether you feel comfortable or not, but that your performance is affected by temperature.
One of the most surprising things we learned is this isn’t about the extremes of temperature.
Even if you go from 60 to 75F (15.5 to 24C), which is a relatively normal temperature range, you still see a meaningful variation in performance.”
In a study subtitled, ‘Battle For The Thermostat’, 542 men and women were given tests of math, logic and verbal ability in temperatures ranging from 61F to 90F (16C to 32C).
For the tests of math and verbal ability, women performed better when it was warmer and men when it was cooler.
Temperature had no effect on men’s and women’s performance on the logic test.
The study’s authors conclude:
“In a large laboratory experiment, over 500 individuals performed a set of cognitive tasks at randomly manipulated indoor temperatures.
Consistent with their preferences for temperature, for both math and verbal tasks, women perform better at higher temperatures while men perform better at lower temperatures.”
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Chang & Kajackaite, 2019).
Stereotypes about men and women have seen massive changes in the last 70 years.
Research examined the link between bilingualism and intelligence.
Studies on half a million people reveal how education and IQ are linked.
IQ tests across almost three decades reveal a worrying trend.
IQ tests across almost three decades reveal a worrying trend.
Average human IQ has been dropping over the last few decades, new research concludes.
Potential culprits are worsening nutrition (particularly eating less fish), poorer education and the rise of new technologies.
The trend is surprising as in the early part of the 20th century, people were getting smarter.
The IQ boost that humans previously enjoyed is called the ‘Flynn effect’, after the psychologist who researched it.
But now that trend has stopped and gone into reverse.
In the last twenty or thirty years, humans have started getting dumber, researchers in Norway now suggest.
Their data come from compulsory IQ tests given to young men entering military service in Norway between 1970 and 2009.
The 730,000 test results suggest people are dropping around 7 IQ points, on average, each generation (around 25 years).
This is not the first study to find that average IQ is dropping.
Data from the UK and Scandinavian countries including Finland, Norway and Denmark also suggest IQ is dropping.
The Flynn effect was sometimes put down to improved nutrition, better education, improved social environment, and so on.
In a word: progress.
So, what do we say now that IQ scores seem to be dropping again?
This study looked for the cause in genetic factors, but found that these could not explain the change.
The study’s authors write:
“…we show that the increase, turning point, and decline of the Flynn effect can be recovered from within-family variation in intelligence scores.
This establishes that the large changes in average cohort intelligence reflect environmental factors…”
That leaves us with the possibility that after progressing up until around the 1970s, society has started regressing.
Poorer nutrition, worsening education, coarsening media and new technologies could all be to blame, the authors write:
“…our results remain consistent with a number of proposed hypotheses of IQ decline: changes in educational exposure or quality, changing media exposure, worsening nutrition or health…”
In other words, the human race could be making itself more stupid with its lifestyle.
The studies were published in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Intelligence (Bratsberg & Rogeberg, 2018; Flynn & Shayer, 2018).
Brain scans measured the total surface area of the cortex and its thickness.
Brain scans measured the total surface area of the cortex and its thickness.
Taller people are more intelligent, on average, new research finds.
The reason is that taller people have proportionally larger heads.
A larger head generally gives people higher cognitive ability.
Of course shorter people with smaller heads can also be highly intelligent, however they are slightly rarer.
Dr Eero Vuoksimaa, the study’s first author, said:
“Even though taller individuals have, on average, bigger brain compared to shorter people, the size of any given individual’s brain cannot be determined by their stature alone.
Further, cognitive ability is not simply determined by brain size.
The findings do, however, shed light on the biological mechanism underlying the association between height and cognition.”
The study used brain scans to measure both the total surface area of the cortex and its thickness.
Participants were 534 middle-aged men, around half of whom were identical and non-identical twins.
The results showed that taller people had greater surface area of their cortex, but not a thicker cortex.
Dr Vuoksimaa said:
“These observations are in line with recent MRI studies of cortical development suggesting that cortical surface area increases until approximately the age of 12, whereas thinning of cortex occurs across the childhood and adolescence.”
Genetics is the major factor in cortical size, cognition and health, although environmental factors play a part Dr Vuoksimaa said:
“For example, childhood malnutrition has an impact on both height and brain growth, and affects also cognitive development.”
The study was published in the journal Brain Structure and Function (Vuoksimaa et al., 2018).
The bacteria has also been linked to reduced anxiety and higher serotonin levels.
The clothes to wear, body language to use, hairstyle to adopt and how to talk.
The clothes to wear, body language to use, hairstyle to adopt and how to talk.
Wearing more clothing makes you look more competent, a study finds.
Something as simple as taking off a sweater is enough to make you look less competent, the researchers found.
The finding applies to both men and women.
The effect occurs because seeing more flesh encourages us to think about a person’s body, rather than their mind.
Maintaining eye contact while talking is one of the easiest ways to appear smarter, research finds.
Indeed, intelligence tests revealed that people who maintained eye contact were actually smarter.
Other common ways to appear smarter include speaking pleasantly, clearly and quickly, having a self-assured expression and being responsive.
Medium-length casual-looking styles are judged as making women look more intelligent, a survey finds.
These styles are also linked to being good-natured.
The hairstyle that gives an intelligent sheen to a man was medium-length side-parted hair.
The bad news for men with these haircuts is that they were also seen as narrow-minded.
Getting more sleep makes people look more intelligent because of how it affects their resting or neutral facial expression.
People who are better rested open their eyes wider and do not have a slight frown on their face.
After restricted sleep, people tend to display a slight frown and their eyes are not as wide open as they are normally.
This makes them look less intelligent.
Speaking slowly makes people sound more intelligent, research finds.
The study had people trying to intentionally change their voices to embody different traits.
They tried to sound more sexy, confident, intelligent and dominant.
Both sexes had no problem sounding more intelligent and more dominant.
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Some video games can act like an IQ test.
Some video games can act like an IQ test.
Certain strategy games can act like an IQ test, according to new research.
People who perform well at the two games also did better at standard paper-and-pencil intelligence tests.
One of the video games is called ‘League of Legends’, a popular game which has millions of players around the world.
The second game is called Defence of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2).
Professor Alex Wade, who led the study, said:
“Games such as League of Legends and DOTA 2 are complex, socially-interactive and intellectually demanding.
Our research would suggest that your performance in these games can be a measure of intelligence.
Research in the past has pointed to the fact that people who are good at strategy games such as chess tend to score highly at IQ tests.
Our research has extended this to games that millions of people across the planet play every day.”
Along with these two strategy games, the research also looked at people playing ‘first person shooters’.
First person shooters are the type of games that mostly involve reaction times, rather than strategy.
The study found that people’s ability to play first person shooters simply declined after their teens.
However, people got better at playing strategy games like League of Legends and Defence of the Ancients 2 as they got older.
Mr Athanasios Kokkinakis, the study’s first author, said:
“Unlike First Person Shooter (FPS) games where speed and target accuracy are a priority, Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas [such as League of Legends] rely more on memory and the ability to make strategic decisions taking into account multiple factors.
It is perhaps for these reasons that we found a strong correlation between skill and intelligence in MOBAs.”
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Kokkinakis et al., 2017).
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