Resumen de Longer lifespan may be driving down average IQ
For the period of about a century, average IQ scores in wealthy nations kept rising by about three points a decade. This "Flynn effect" is thought to be the result of improvements in social conditions like public health, nutrition and education, and has been seen in many countries, from the Netherlands to Japan. But by 2004, researchers had begun to notice what seems to be a reversal of this trend, with average IQ scores going into decline. Now Robin Morris of King's College London and his colleagues have found a way to get around this. They have broken down old IQ tests into different categories that are easier to compare. Morris's team looked through more than 1,750 different types of IQ test from 1972 onwards for two sub-groups of tests: those that measure short-term memory, and those that assess working memory--the ability to hold in your head information for processing, reasoning and decision-making. When they looked at how people performed on these kinds of tests throughout time, the team saw a clear pattern. While short-term memory scores have risen in line with the Flynn effect, working memory ability appears to have declined
