Claire Conger

Much has been made lately of Chinese and Japanese doing better than Americans on IQ tests. Specifically, they score better on the abstract/spacial thinking and not quite as well on verbal thinking, for a net higher average IQ, as it’s measured.

“Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli.”*

I think this explains that IQ difference. It’s all in the malleability of the brain.

*”Is Google Making Us Stoopid? What the Internet Is Doing to our Brains” by Nicholas Carr published in The Atlantic July/August 2008. Mr Carr is summarizing information provided by Maryanne Wolf, developmental psychologist, Tuffs University. Ms Wolf is the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Listen to a Brain Science Podcast interview with Maryanne Wolf.