Intelligence And Heredity Essay

Intelligence as a Product of Heredity or Environment

Is intelligence a product of hereditary or is it a product of an individual's environment? The nature versus nurture debate regarding intelligence is one that has raged long and hard. Innumerable studies have been conducted on this issue and there is still no clear-cut answer. However, since I am forced to argue one point of view for this assignment, I must conclude that intelligence is something that is hereditary.

I believe that a person's intelligence is set the day they are conceived. Intelligence is defined by Slavin as, "general aptitude for learning often measured by the ability to deal with abstractions and to solve problems" (128). Every individual has their own unique, natural tendencies, abilities, talents, and rates of learning. I have seen in P.S. 41, how one child can read a paragraph once and completely understand and another

Fried explained that one of the ways to assess the contributions of heredity and environment to intelligence is to compare siblings, especially, identical twins who were raised together and apart. He explained that, if intelligence is determined by genetic inheritance, then the correlation between the IQ scores should be greatest when the siblings have the greatest amount of genetic overlap. However, if intelligence is determined by environment, then the correlation between IQ scores should be greatest when siblings share the same environment. Studies that he spoke about that were conducted on identical twins reared apart found an extremely high correlation of intelligence scores between the individuals. The correlation was practical the same for the twins reared apart as it was for the twins reared together. How could this be if they were reared apart and did go through he same experiences or grow up in the same environment? The high correlation is because intelligence is a product of heredity. This study is strong support for the nature side of