
IQ decline and Piaget: Does the rot start at the top? - yasp
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289617302787
======
nabla9
Interesting.

>Piagetian gains at the bottom of the curve should not be dismissed as simply
a phenomenon that offsets losses at the top. Consider the British results for
Equilibrium and Pendulum. The decimation of top scorers means that by the age
of 12 to 14, fewer British schoolchildren attain the level of formal
operations. This means that fewer could think in terms of abstractions
(without concrete examples), which limits their capacity for deductive logic
and systematic planning. However, the fact that these losses are made up by
gains over the rest of the “curve” means that far more of them are at the
concrete generalization level. They are better at on the spot thinking (e.g.
in playing demanding computer games). Their understanding of the physical
world is limited to simple causation between two variables, but they can draw
inferences from observations to make generalizations.

[...]

>The Piagetian results are particularly ominous. Looming over all is their
message that the pool of those who reach the top level of cognitive
performance is being decimated: fewer and fewer people attain the formal level
at which they can think in terms of abstractions and develop their capacity
for deductive logic and systematic planning. They also reveal that something
is actually targeting that level with special effect, rather than simply
reducing its numbers in accord with losses over the curve as a whole. We have
given our reason as to why the Piagetian tests are sensitive to this
phenomenon in a way that conventional tests are not.

