Firstborn Get the Brains 467
Dekortage writes "Eldest children have higher IQs than their siblings, according to a recent study by Norwegian researchers. The study focused on men, particularly 'on teasing out the biological effects of birth order from the effects of social status,' but indicates that the senior boy in a family (either by being firstborn, or if an elder brother died) has an average IQ two or three points higher than younger brothers. As noted in the New York Times coverage, 'Experts say it can be a tipping point for some people — the difference between a high B average and a low A, for instance... that could mean the difference between admission to an elite private college and a less exclusive public one.'"
2 or 3 points? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares..? (Score:2, Insightful)
what if the firstborn was a girl? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds to me like this study is meaningless anyway. They focus on men from one country, an affluent country with little liklihood of malnutrician being a factor, and all at the same point in their lives, being during compulsary military service. That carries with it the further distorting factor that none of these men were disqualified for reasons of physical/psychological disability, and to be honest, if you're educationally sub normal, you ain't getting to play with guns...
Re:Who cares..? (Score:3, Insightful)
Off-topic, but are private schools always (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people like denigrating public universities, but I don't really understand why. To be honest, they are some pretty bad public universities, but there are also bad private schools as well (Patriot University, Regent University etc)
Re:2 or 3 points? (Score:3, Insightful)
The standard error pretty much disappears at that sort of number of participants.
Re:Girls (Score:4, Insightful)
I myself am an engineer who looks down upon both scientists and web designers, but I think scientists are smart (high IQ). Web designers are creative - they COULD have high IQs, but need not necessarily have high IQs. This is why DeVry has a program in web design and not in molecular biology. Cheers! -- Vig
Re:Which study do you believe? (Score:2, Insightful)
Methinks the data has a few outliers (Score:2, Insightful)
George W Bush, eldest son of George H W Bush.
actually.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How about the $$$? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that a lot of people have earned a great living despite poor grades or lack of education, but these people represent a minority. For many people, grades are a major factor in determining acceptance or rejection to paths of life that guarantee some amount of financial success.
It's fairly easy to figure out how school grades can translate into money. If you've got top grades, you earn a chance at being accepted to a Law school (for example). Once you've done your time, you are practically guaranteed a six-figure income: that's money in your pocket because you excelled at school. However, if you act as if grades are irrelevant, you're success might just be dancing with Lady Luck.
Re:the teacher (Score:3, Insightful)
A valid idea except for the fact that the older kid starts out ahead of the younger kid so the younger kid spends his/her energy catching up. Usually the younger kid has more time for such things.
I also think it depends on the atmosphere and age difference. If the kid is 8 years older than the younger then the order probably makes no difference. An even more extreme circumstance is my cousin's girlfriend. She has a daughter who is 26 and 24 years later she had twins. I'm willing to bet the experience she gained from being a parent will help the twins and ultimately the twins will be much more intelligent as her older daughter is making a lot of the same mistakes she did.
Of course we're all aware that IQ isn't everything, certainly not the difference between attending one of them fancy schools versus community college.
Re:IQ != Intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
IQ may not be the *only* thing that corresponds to intelligence, but it definitely is an objective measure of some factors that we consider to be the hallmarks of an intelligent person.
Now, there may be other measures and metrics (objective and subjective) that may correspond to intelligence - good language skills, good social skills, good game playing skills and so on. However, that does not necessarily mean that good quantitative and problem solving skills is also not a good measure.
A quarterback who can gauge how the field looks at a given moment and decide upon a particular action is just as intelligent (in a different way) as someone who is excellent at arithmetic. Similarly, someone who has excellent social skills (i.e. read emotions) is just as intelligent as someone who has a prodigious memory. A marketing person is just as intelligent as a computer programmer in a different way, and a tennis player is just as intelligent as a musician, in a different way.
But none of that means that IQ is *not* a measure of intelligence - it is. It just is not the *only* measure of intelligence.
I think there is a difference. A subtle difference, that's for sure, but a difference nevertheless.
Re:Evolution? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'd provide a full explanation, but something tells me that if you were interested in one, you wouldn't have ended up posting this comment.
The first sentence alone on the Wikipedia article for evolution provides enough information to dispute your claim.
Re:the teacher (Score:3, Insightful)
Also oldest kid is given more attention during first years and she will be more stimulated by her parents than younger siblings coming afterwards. When younger siblings born, parents are focussed in older son as well, so they not have all the resources (time) they "spent" on the first son.
At least, this is my experience. With 3 children@home, I'm pretty run out of time lately...
It's been known for years (Score:3, Insightful)
Statistics and damn statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't put my hands on the exact set of studies right now so this will only be anecdotal evidence, but there are examples of "quite young" siblings being quite brilliant compared to next older siblings precisely because there was just enough age difference between the youngster and an older (teenage plus) sibling that was close enough to an adult to provide direction in problem skills at a nearly adult level AND still be young enough and close enough to how a little kid thinks to teach those skills in a way that makes sense to littler kid at their lower developmental level.
What I am really saying is that an article built around an averaging statistic like those quoted are useless news, not stuff that matters.
Re:2 or 3 points? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nature vs. Nurture ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly, the first born gets all of the parents attention for some period of time, before the second is born. The second gets only (roughly) half of the parents attention. I would be very surprised if parental attention at a young age does not have a large effect on the child. Giving one child twice as much parental attention as the other, for the first year or two of their respective lives, seems likely to give the one an advantage over the other. A small difference in communication or learning skills acquired during that first year might make the first born better able to learn other things later in life.
The observation that first-born children score higher on standardized tests does not speak to the cause of that difference. A correlation does not imply a cause.
Coincidently, I am the first-born of three. I have a Ph.D., the middle sibling has a masters, and the youngest has a bachelors.
Re:IQ != Intelligence (Score:1, Insightful)
Right, I can't even imagine matching wits with my cat stalking a bird.
And a bat integrating sound reflections to identify and catch a mosquito, all while flying so fast we can barely perceive it, must be as intelligent as Einstein.
Re:Who cares..? (Score:4, Insightful)
It might make a bit more of a difference right out of school, where they employers don't have much else to go on. But in that case, your best bet is get a job through personal connections, relying on your school's name probably isn't your best bet.
Re:IQ != Intelligence (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be interesting to see how well those quarterback qualities correlate with IQ scores, I would assume there's a good correlation...
Re:the teacher (Score:3, Insightful)
Children in multi-child families have an advantage of forced socialization, which means they probably have more experience and better response to interacting with others. Exceptions to this would probably occur when parents don't discipline children, or don't do so equitably.
Re:Which study do you believe? (Score:1, Insightful)
Biological? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well then it isn't biological if the death of someone older occurs. It means that the parents paid more attention to the child. This isn't something new. My wife and I were looking into overseas adoption and the person we were talking to said that with infants you find about 1 month delay for every 3 months in an institution aka orphanage. She said that she saw this with both of her adopted children and the remarkable thing was that they did catch up at a remarkable rate once they were in their home. Almost like going from crawling to walking in mere days.
I would be more interested in a study showing the learning rates between children with a parent who stays home compared to ones who are in daycare part-time, full-time and the sad cases where they spend majority of a 24 hour period in daycare cause mom and dad need a new Beemer.
Wow, you really must be the youngest child... (Score:3, Insightful)
Though, all of that has nothing to do with your objections. You objected because it's doesn't apply in one case? How about all those people who kept cackling that "I'm the youngest and I'm not gay" - after that study which found rather than 3% youngest children stand a 5% chance of being gay. Average means it doesn't apply to everybody, just applies more often than it doesn't.