Daniel Wilingham on Paul Tough

He likes the book -- I may have to read!

been there, done that

Abstract

Economists have identified a substantial adult wage premium attached to high school leadership activity. Unresolved is the extent to which it constitutes human capital acquisition or proxies for an ‘‘innate’’ unobserved skill. We document a determinant of high school leadership activity that is associated purely with school structure, rather than genetics or family background – a student’s relative age. State-specific school entry cut-offs induce systematic within grade variation in student maturity, which in turn generates differences in leadership activity. We find that the relatively oldest students are 4–11 percent more likely to be high school leaders.

What makes a leader? Relative age and high school leadership (pdf file)
Elizabeth Dhueya, , Stephen Lipscombb
Economics of Education Review 27 (2008) 173–183

I've seen this over and over and over and over ........ again.


relative age effect
high school leadership, wages, and relative age
redshirting kids
redshirting & tournament settings

non-school factors, math, and reading

More confirmation that advantaged kids get their reading comprehension at home & their math at school. (I'm adding bullets.)

I had been particularly influenced by Wesley Becker's famous Harvard Educational Review article (1977) noting that the impact of early DISTAR success with decoding was muted for reading comprehension in later elementary grades by vocabulary limitations. Becker argued that this was a matter of experience rather than general intelligence by observing that while his DISTAR students' reading comprehension fell relative to more advantaged students by grade 4, their mathematics performance remained high.

• He suggested that the difference was that all the knowledge that is needed for math achievement is taught in school, whereas the vocabulary growth needed for successful reading comprehension is essentially left to the home.
  

• Disadvantaged homes provide little support for vocabulary growth, as recently documented by Hart and Risley (1995).
  

• I was further influenced by the finding of my doctoral student, Maria Cantalini (1987), that school instruction in kindergarten and grade 1 apparently had no impact on vocabulary development as assessed by the Peabody vocabulary test. Morrison, Williams, and Massetti (1998) have since replicated this finding.
  

• This finding is particularly significant in view of Cunningham and Stanovich's (1997) recently reported finding that vocabulary as assessed in grade 1 predicts more than 30 percent of grade 11 reading comprehension, much more than reading mechanics as assessed in grade 1 do.

source:
Teaching Vocabulary:
Early, Direct, Sequential
by Andrew Biemiller


Our schools here teach vocabulary K-8 (don't know about high school).

As with so many other subjects, vocabulary isn't taught systematically; the kids study word lists from whatever they're reading in class.

I imagine vocabulary instruction here would be more effective if they did some form of systematic instruction, too, but I don't know.

We're still struggling through Vocabulary Workshop, which I continue to believe is a dandy series. (Struggling, meaning struggling to find time to do it.)

I'm curious about the Greek and Latin roots approach, too.


non-school factors and math
non-school factors, math, and reading

math isn't English

My sense of the Johnson - Bouchard study is that it weighs in directly on the side of parents who intuitively perceive that math isn't English.

Interestingly, it is the image rotation abilities that have repeatedly shown the most robust sex differences among cognitive abilities (favoring males, Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995).

[snip]

It has been known for some time that performance on spatial tasks, particularly those involving image rotation, predicts success in fields such as airplane piloting, engineering, physical sciences, and fine arts better than does general intelligence, and especially verbal ability (Gottfredson, 2002; Humphreys & Lubinski, 1996; Shea, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2001; Sheppard, 1978).

Academic prose.....pretty impenetrable.

Instead of cutting and pasting any more of this, I'll post the short version of what I take to be Johnson's and Bouchard's points. (Take this with a grain of salt; I would need to interview them to feel confident that I've got this straight.)

• a general intelligence factor - g - exists which "contributes to all mental abilities"
  

• "residual" factors also exist: once a general intelligence factor is extracted from any collection of ability tests, the correlations among the residuals fall into two main groups ["verbal" and "perceptual" in Vernon's classic model].
  

• Johnson and Bouchard find 3 "residuals," not 2: verbal, perceptual, and image rotation
  

• these 3 map directly onto the classic distinction between the left and right brains, with verbal skills being left-brain and spatial skills being right-brain, "though it is clear that all tasks of any complexity involve contributions from both hemispheres (Gray & Thompson, 2004)."
  

• you can be high in verbal intelligence and not so high in spatial abilities, and vice versa
  

This study appears to support parents' felt sense that it's wrong to force a mathematically-inclined child (note the use of the term "inclined") to "demonstrate understanding" by putting math into words.

Math and English aren't the same subjects, and the abilities that underly achievement in the two subjects differ.


it's not just the gifted

Another terrific aspect of Johnson's and Bouchard's article is that it appears to support a perception I've had for quite awhile now:

It has been known for some time that performance on spatial tasks, particularly those involving image rotation, predicts success in fields such as airplane piloting, engineering, physical sciences, and fine arts better than does general intelligence, and especially verbal ability (Gottfredson, 2002; Humphreys & Lubinski, 1996; Shea, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2001; Sheppard, 1978). There is also evidence (Humphreys, Lubinski, & Yao, 1993) that failure to include assessment of such abilities in the standard batteries used for college and graduate school admissions is resulting in loss to those fields of potentially highly talented individuals. Perhaps of even greater concern, however, is the possibility that effects of this type may not be limited to the gifted and talented. Elementary school curricula tend to be used to educate those of all ability levels and they are generally much more highly focused on verbal than on image rotation abilities. This may be resulting in alienation from school of individuals unlikely to attend college as well as reducing the achievement of those who may. The social costs associated with early school leaving are well documented (e.g., Henry, Caspi, Moffitt, Harrington, & Silva, 1999).

This is something I see in schools.

I've worked with at least one child, a boy, who is mathematically inclined, but who has problems with learning and is classified SPED. (Very high-end SPED, the sort of kid who is still classified only because his mom correctly continues to fight for and win the designation.)

My frustration with the situation has always been that while everyone is working well with this boy, who is having a far better middle school experience than a lot of the non-SPED kids, no one appears to perceive that he has a particular talent for and interest in math, and thus ought to be pushed and supported in that subject specifically.

Instead there's a global assumption that he needs help.

Which is true as far as it goes.

But oughtn't the "help" offered be different in math than it is in language-based subjects?

Shouldn't the school be trying to move him ahead in his strongest subject?

Part of the reason this doesn't happen, I think, is that this boy isn't mathematically gifted. (At least, I don't think he is.)

He is mathematically inclined.

Mathematical giftedness leaps out at people; it's hard to miss.

But mathematical inclination, especially in a child who finds his other subjects challenging, is more subtle.


bonus passage

Specifically, we would expect that general intelligence will prove to be influenced by several to many genes responding to environmental stimuli to control biochemical processes acting throughout the brain. At the same time, we would expect that there will be several to many genes that influence brain functions that affect primarily verbal abilities and others that influence brain functions that affect primarily spatial and perceptual abilities. Some of these genes may even enhance abilities in one area at the expense of abilities in another, contributing to the lower correlation between verbal and perceptual abilities than between fluid and crystallized abilities in our models. Such environmentally mediated genetic processes may also help to explain differences in strategies used to approach cognitive tasks, individual differences in stimuli that attract attention, and sex differences in performance on various kinds of tasks. Evidence in support of these kinds of predictions is beginning to emerge.

The structure of human intelligence: It is verbal, perceptual, and image rotation (VPR), not fluid and crystallized (pdf file)

good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 1
good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 2
good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 3
Seth Roberts on IQ
fuzzy math makes you smarter
IQ quiz
school raises IQ
intelligence is verbal, perceptual, and image rotation
math isn't English

help desk - statistics

I desperately need a course in statistics.

My question concerns this passage from a terrific article: The structure of human intelligence: It is verbal perceptual and image rotation (VPR), not fluid and crystallized by Wendy Johnson & Thomas J. Bouchard Jr.^* (pdf file)

Interestingly, though the correlations between the verbal and perceptual and perceptual and image rotation factors were high (0.80 and 0.85), the correlation between the verbal and image rotation factors was much lower, 0.41.

This study sets out to determine the "relative statistical performance of three major psychoetric models of huam intelligence," those being:

• Cattell-Horn fluid-crystallized model
• Vernon's verbal-perceptual model
• Carroll's three-strata model

The fluid-crystallized model, which has been dominant for some time now, didn't work.

Good.

I'm glad.

I'm glad because according to the fluid-crystallized model people get dumber as they age and their "fluid" intelligence gets less fluid. Or something.

This is why we're always hearing that for us old folk "experience and wisdom" have to make up for "ability to solve novel problems" or what-have-you.

Turns out that "experience and wisdom" and the "ability to solve novel problems" are the same thing.

Or so I gather. (If anyone who actually researches intelligence stumbles across this entry, I yearn to be fact-checked on this. Please. Chime in.)

At any rate: Bouchard's new study is good news for geezers because the fluid-crystallized model did not work out.

Nor did the "three-strata model." (Don't know what the three-strata model is; not going to find out any time soon.)

What did work is the verbal-perceptual model, which is pretty much the common-sense understanding of human intelligence most of us non-experts have always believed in.

I still don't really understand the distinction between verbal intelligence and perceptual intelligence. Generally speaking, however, it breaks down this way:

• "verbal: verbal fluency and divergent thinking [ed.: what is divergent thinking?] as well as verbal scholastic knowledge and numerical abilities"
  

• "perceptual speed, and psychomotor and physical abilities such as proprioception in addition to spatial and mechanical abilities"
  

Clear as mud!

What's interesting about Johnson's and Bouchard's study is that they discovered that one needs to add a third category, which is the ability to mentally rotate, manipulate, and twist two-and three-dimensional objects.

As we all know, this is a guy thing:

Interestingly, it is the image rotation abilities that have repeatedly shown the most robust sex differences among cognitive abilities (favoring males, Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995).

I'll get back to that.

In another post.

Here's my question.

I'm not understanding how verbal intelligence can correlate highly with perceptual intelligence, and perceptual intelligence can correlate highly with image rotation intelligence, but image rotation intelligence does not correlate highly with verbal intelligence.

How does that work?

Am I reading the passage incorrectly?

Is this an expression of a sex difference?

Or what?

Thanks in advance!



^* Bouchard directs the Minnesota Twin Study.

good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 1
good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 2
good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 3
Seth Roberts on IQ
fuzzy math makes you smarter
IQ quiz
school raises IQ
intelligence is verbal, perceptual, and image rotation
math isn't English