I attribute that to the lack of boredom in young people. When I was young I was bored at least from time to time. This led to doing mischief but also to use the brain and invent something entertaining to waste time.
Now distractions are all around us (play stations and TV on demand) or with us (smart phones). No more need for being imaginative.
There is also this interesting correlation of declining crime rate which can be attributed to kids wasting time with play stations rather than hanging out in the street.
have discussed this with close friends. In the past we perceived that and considered declining intelligence as an assumption, with recent articles like that it seems to be a fact.
Basically, as this is an average for societies, the average environmental factors are better in Scandinavia than in America. But those factors already peaked, and now are starting a downwards trend:
>The authors note several possible factors, among them worsening health and nutrition, a decline in the quality of education, detrimental changes to media exposure, and the indirect effects of immigration.
OTOH, America's average environmental factors are still improving, so, it's still on the rise:
> It may be that, once we’ve made our schools as good as theirs, we’ll see our Flynn effect max out, and then whatever channels feed their anti-Flynn effect will show up in our data, too.
So again a pet hypothesis which can explain both rising and falling IQ. So what observation could theoretically disprove this hypothesis?
Note that you can state exactly the opposite hypothesis and still claim the numbers support it. The use of gaming consoles and smartphones improve IQ, but this effect have maxed out in Scandinavia.
Now distractions are all around us (play stations and TV on demand) or with us (smart phones). No more need for being imaginative.
There is also this interesting correlation of declining crime rate which can be attributed to kids wasting time with play stations rather than hanging out in the street.
have discussed this with close friends. In the past we perceived that and considered declining intelligence as an assumption, with recent articles like that it seems to be a fact.