Firstborns Gain the Higher I.Q.
Even though this research was done on males; researchers say the same results would work on females as well. There was even a study done on men who became the eldest in the household after their sibling had died. These men had I.Q. scores “the same, on average, as those of biological firstborns.” Firstborns are given a lot more attention by their parents, which could be a huge factor towards the higher I.Q. score.
There is still further research that needs to be done. However, this article does provide a great amount of information on this finding. There is an additional finding at the end of this article, which talks about children under the age of 12 who tend to outscore the eldest on I.Q. tests. More research must be done to figure out why this happens; however, this is a great start.
This article is interesting, but I don't think I buy into it. There are too many factors that could change the way the children are brought up. While some argue that the eldest children get the most attention/"discipline" from the parents, I think it can also be argued that once a second child is born the older child sometimes gets less attention and therefore less pressure to perform. The second child can be held to the standards set by the first child and then may aim to perform as well as or better than the first. In the Norwegian study, they chose participants based on military records, which I think is a very sort of narrow kind of participant pool.
ReplyDeleteEven though I have seen somewhere online that is true, I don't think this is true. I agree with Brittney about how there are many factors that dictates a person's intelligence. Furthermore, an IQ test may score someone as highly intelligent or genius but that doesn't mean that person will do genius level tasks. Just shown in class was the example of Marilyn Vos Savant who is known as someone with the highest IQ but she hasn't accomplished much. So with that point I want to point out how yes maybe their research shows 3 pt higher IQ but that really doesn't mean anything other than they did better on the test.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Vivian. Although the study finds three points statistically significant, I am not convinced. Having taken SATs and other standardized tests, it seems that there is a normal deviation of several points. The study further stated that below the age of 12 years, the younger child actually scored higher and it was not until later years that the superior IQ scores were obtained. I also agree with Vivian that there are people with high IQ scores but there are also people who are average but are driven to achieve. I would wager that the high achiever often outperforms the "smart" person.
DeleteI agree that the participant pool is too small to determine if this is actually true or not. I believe that family dynamics have a lot to do with this and it cannot be generalized that first born children have higher a higher I.Q. I think that a lot of time parents learn from what they have done with a first child and try to adjust to make other children in the family better. It might be true that the first child may get more attention than other children just because there are no other children around. However, the attention other children receive may be better in the respect that parents have learned from mistakes they may have made are are more knowledgeable with what they are doing with later children. It would definitely be interesting to see what further research shows.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I'm gonna make a quick phone call to my younger brother to gloat a little bit. In all seriousness though, the sample is very large, so I don't think its reasonable to say that the statistics are wrong, although 3 IQ points does not really seem like a huge difference to me, especially taking into account the variability between different family dynamics. I think this data would be more meaningful to analyze other data, for example it mentioned musical talent or social charm being higher in the younger siblings. It would also be cool to see how the age difference between the siblings is a factor.
ReplyDeleteI don't have siblings myself, but I have a very close relationship with my cousins. They are 7 years apart and I would say my younger cousin is the smarter of the two simply because she grew up trying to beat her older sister at everything she did. It put pressure on her to preform well which in turn caused her to study/try harder. I think the participant pool should be expanded to add more validity to this study. I think that this is a very interesting field of research.
ReplyDelete