Intelligence Theories IX

 All it consists of is a bell a group of four-year-old children and a plate of marshmallows. The question is can a child resist eating the one marshmallow in front of them for the promise of getting three later? If they don't want to wait the time they can ring the bell. It's like watching a primeval battle between man or woman and their own desire. The waiting time is ten minutes just five minutes shorter than in the original. First to go is Bridie. See she's now thinking when's he coming back? See I'm not absolutely convinced that she is now thinking about the marshmallows. I think she might be thinking about whatever kid's thoughts now. Now she's thinking about the marshmallows. If Bridie is going to succeed she will have to devise strategies like the children in the original study to look away or stop thinking about the taste and smell of the marshmallow. Just seconds to go and Bridie is still resisting. I'm feeling a bit sorry for her now. Ooh. Oh-oh. She's gone for the bell she's gone for the bell. Is she ringing or is she just looking at the bell? Now she's rung the bell she rang the bell.

Intelligence Theories VIII

 We don't know how many genes we're talking about and if there are very very many they're going to have very very small effects and be very very difficult to find. But I think these genetic differences when they're expressed are going to show up throughout the brain. It's not going to be this gene does that bit of the brain this gene affects another bit of the brain. Now that's a hypothesis for now but it's a very testable one when we find these damn genes if we ever do find them. Scientists have now gathered data from combined studies of over pairs of twins to give a more up-to-date measure of nature versus nurture.

Intelligence Theories VII

I didn't know because this was everything. Do you want to hand me the dog? I am immensely pleased with the outcome of the mating between Dr Blake and Number . We've had a splendid result. I think no question about it. Doran is about as ideal as nearly as we can judge at his early age about as ideal as we could hope. Everyone wanted to know about my genius sperm bank child. Doran represented what Dr Graham was trying to achieve. Smart beautiful. Everybody wanted a Doran. They just wanted to come to our bank and get a Doran. The phone rang off the hook. We had arrived. After years in operation my genius sperm bank was ultimately responsible for the production of children. We've got lots of baby pictures. Jessie ended up being the th baby born to the repository.

Intelligence Theories VII

 I would not be here without Robert Graham without his existence and in a way I owe him my life. Well I'm Tom Grunwal and live here in Temecula in southern California. I'm Andrea Grunwal and I live with Tom. I had had two children with my first wife then with my second wife I took the steps to have a vasectomy. The next thing you know I'm divorced. I never really thought I would ever have another child in the rest of my life. Until I met Andrea. I finally just spilled my gut and said Tom I don't know how to say this but I would really like to have a baby and I don't know how you feel about that. And I said OK if you can figure out how let's go for it. I wanted to offer these women the seed of clever men and for me scientists were the pinnacle of intelligence.
 With proven measurable practical ability. I figured let's start at the top. We were trying to have outstanding genes and Nobel Prize winners possessed them. Due to your outstanding achievements you would be an excellent donor for our Repository for Germinal Choice.
We hope to create some very bright children possibly a genius or two. I managed to convince three Nobel laureate scientists to each provide an anonymous sample for my bank. I actually was a little surprised that some of these older fellows were able to produce specimens so quickly. Bob was very pleased when we took that first look at the specimen under the microscope and saw thousands of sperm swimming vigorously. He beamed with joy. Good job! It's peculiar but I didn't think it was weird.
My name is Dr Afton Blake and I live in Los Angeles California in a little place called Mount Washington. Om.... When I first called the repository they were very friendly. They came up the next day to meet me and interview me. And I think the very next month I tried my first insemination. Choose me as your mother. Then months after I had tried the first time I conceived. In August having been impregnated with donor codenamed Red Dr Afton Blake gave birth to a boy she named Doran.
It was ecstasy from the moment he came out looked in my eyes and stopped crying immediately that we made contact and the bond was like so incredible. Everybody liked the name Doran which means in Greek a gift from the gods. I could never imagine life without him. It was like suddenly what did I have before I had Doran?

Intelligence Theories VI

I would not be here without Robert Graham without his existence and in a way I owe him my life. Well I'm Tom Grunwal and live here in Temecula in southern California. I'm Andrea Grunwal and I live with Tom. I had had two children with my first wife then with my second wife I took the steps to have a vasectomy. The next thing you know I'm divorced. I never really thought I would ever have another child in the rest of my life. Until I met Andrea. I finally just spilled my gut and said Tom I don't know how to say this but I would really like to have a baby and I don't know how you feel about that. And I said OK if you can figure out how let's go for it. I wanted to offer these women the seed of clever men and for me scientists were the pinnacle of intelligence.
 With proven measurable practical ability. I figured let's start at the top. We were trying to have outstanding genes and Nobel Prize winners possessed them. Due to your outstanding achievements you would be an excellent donor for our Repository for Germinal Choice. We hope to create some very bright children possibly a genius or two. I managed to convince three Nobel laureate scientists to each provide an anonymous sample for my bank. I actually was a little surprised that some of these older fellows were able to produce specimens so quickly. Bob was very pleased when we took that first look at the specimen under the microscope and saw thousands of sperm swimming vigorously.
 He beamed with joy. Good job! It's peculiar but I didn't think it was weird. My name is Dr Afton Blake and I live in Los Angeles California in a little place called Mount Washington. Om.... When I first called the repository they were very friendly. They came up the next day to meet me and interview me. And I think the very next month I tried my first insemination. Choose me as your mother. Then months after I had tried the first time I conceived. In August having been impregnated with donor codenamed Red Dr Afton Blake gave birth to a boy she named Doran. It was ecstasy from the moment he came out looked in my eyes and stopped crying immediately that we made contact and the bond was like so incredible. Everybody liked the name Doran which means in Greek a gift from the gods. I could never imagine life without him. It was like suddenly what did I have before I had Doran?

Intelligence Theories V

 The correlations the statistical results that he reported remained identical to the third decimal. Well theoretically that sort of thing could happen. Also theoretically the sun might not rise tomorrow morning and that's probably a more probable event than what one would have had to have believed if one took Burt's number seriously. All of them remain identical to the third decimal place. Clearly something was drastically wrong. There's universal agreement among psychologists that Burt couldn't possibly have tested pairs of twins. That at least the last pairs must be figments of his imagination. I take perhaps an even more sceptical view of Burt. I think it's reasonable to suppose that he may never have laid eyes on a separated twin in his entire lifetime.
But Kamin was convinced that Burt was motivated only by his genuine belief in inherited intelligence. I don't think Burt thought of himself as a manipulator and misleader of the public. I think Burt had the intellectual audacity to think that he knew the truth prior to any actual investigation of the facts and therefore on account of noblesse oblige he was letting the rest of us get a handle on the truth by presenting us numbers that would help us to accept it. And he did us the courtesy of inventing the numbers for us.
Comprehensive proof of the part genetics play in intelligence still remained elusive but as the ' s got underway that didn't deter one man from adopting a radical new approach. In a rather sinister echo of Burt and Galton's theories Californian doctor Robert Graham reasoned that if there were intelligence genes to be had he could find a way of passing them on. In after Graham's death Horizon looked back at his extraordinary quest. My name is Robert Klark Graham and I had a dream. To single-handedly saved the human race one child at a time. Robert Graham believed that the gene pool was going downhill and that we needed to do something about that. He had this grandiose plan to remake all of humanity.
It had the air of James Bond movie meets Disney or something. Using the sperm of clever men I hope to create intelligent kids. He was this strange scientist that was trying to breed the super race. What we're doing is exploring the possibilities of genetics. I was accused of being a racist and a Nazi. I can't say that I know much about Hitler or his vision. Yet my sperm bank was operational for nearly years. Despite tremendous controversy I was responsible for the creation of over children.

Intelligence Theories IV

 And he certainly tried to follow in his footsteps. Oh no. Do you read classics? I want to be a scientist. Burt was particularly drawn to one of Galton's ideas. In Galton had coined the term eugenics meaning good birth. He believed that people of high rank had greater intelligence and should be encouraged to marry and have children to preserve these traits while the poor be strongly discouraged from breeding. Burt adopted this idea with enthusiasm. For example Burt has written out on his hand "The problem of the very poor. "They must be segregated prevented from reproducing their own kind".
This is the kind of atmosphere obviously to which he was exposed. Working in the s Burt was determined to prove intelligence was inherited. He brought together more evidence for the inheritance of intelligence than any other person had done at that time. His papers were more impressive in terms of the number of different kinds of kinships on which heritables had been estimated. The fine grain detail in which the analyses were carried out. And so on. Burt introduced the IQ test as a way of measuring schoolchildren's intelligence. He was also to influence the introduction of the Plus test which was to become a key decider of a child's academic future. By every child's intelligence was tested. In order to study the inherited element of intelligence
Burt looked for subjects that were the same in every way except the environment they were brought up in. Identical twins who had been separated at birth. So now if you can find when they are old enough to be IQ tested a fair number of pairs of such twins you can give them all IQ tests and if their measured IQs resemble one another that must be due to the only thing they have in common namely their identical genetic make-up. It cannot be due to their environment in theory because they don't have that in common. Burt announced his findings with a great flourish stating that he had found genetics were responsible for % of his subjects' IQ. In the crucial matter of separated monozygotic twins and the measurement of the genetic heritability of intelligence over the years we have been fortunate enough to steadily increase our sample size to the point where our data based on pairs of twins is some % greater than that of its closest rival. Burt's research was highly respected and in he became the first British psychologist to be knighted for his contributions to psychological testing. But his ideas on eugenics had rather lost their appeal.
Adolf Hitler adopted this philosophy to murder thousands of people he labelled mentally defective. The scientific community began to distance itself from the idea of engineering society according to intelligence. Burt continued to defend his ideas but it was only after his death in that scientists including Professor Leon Kamin scrutinised his results and came to some uneasy conclusions. As the sample size increased progressively in successive papers one noted an absolutely incredible thing.