What determines a person’s intelligence? Numerous personalities and studies defend the idea that our IQ is determined or highly conditioned by the genetic code, however, while there is a relationship between intelligence and genetic inheritance, it is not always as direct and clear as it seems. There must be many other factors for this intellectual predisposition to manifest.
When we talk about high skills, we are almost forced to refer to a particular name: William James Sidis. This young man who died in the mid-1940s in the United States is still considered the most amazing man with intellectual skills ever documented. in fact, it is estimated that its IQ is above 250 points.
“What we know is a drop of water; What we don’t know is the ocean?. – Isaac Newton-
The most impressive thing about Sidis was his upbringing, the fact that he entered Harvard University at age 9 was not solely due to his genetic heritage, his mother, Sara, was a physician and his father, Boris, psychiatrist and specialist in Developmental Psychology Then, if anything these two Ukrainian scientists knew was that the development of a high IQ did not depend exclusively on our 23 pairs of chromosomes.
High intelligence is the result of an easy environment and a receptive brain. The marriage of this pair of scientists steered your child’s life towards a single goal: to maximize their cognitive abilities. The result exceeded your expectations. However, this young man was more than a child prodigy: he was clearly unhappy.
Intelligence, like human behavior, is a complex trait. Defining it, however, is not difficult, as it includes all the experiences in which a person demonstrates a clear ability to learn, reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, understand complex ideas and give very creative answers.
However, knowing exactly what produces the individual differences in each of these skills has always been a challenge, today we can say yes, genetic inheritance is what shapes each of these skills, in addition, the University of Glasgow conducted a 2016 study in which genes associated with cognitive functions were shown to be inherited mainly from mothers. The X chromosome, so to speak, would largely determine our potential.
But we’re talking about possibilities, because not everything is so clear, a recent study published in the journal?Genetic reference? It showed something that has been in the minds of the experts for almost a century: social circles shape us, give us the conditions to reach our maximum cognitive potential or not, genetic inheritance, in turn, determines about 40% of the equation.
Intelligence (and high intelligence) is strongly influenced by the environment, factors such as creation, education, availability of learning resources, and nutrition form and enhance our intellectual potential.
Neurologists often comment: we overestimate the idea of high intelligence; when brain surgery is performed, there is no specific area to distinguish intelligence; there is no specialized structure that makes us brighter than the others.
In fact, there are countless processes that act in harmony, a hyperconnected synaptic world that results in a more agile, more sensitive, more efficient than average brain.
High intelligence may depend on our genes, but other factors are also important:
At this point, one of the readers is likely to ask the following question: What if my genetic heritage was associated with high intelligence, but that I did not have a favorable childhood to develop it ?, What if my environment was not favorable and my academic performance was low, does this mean that I will never be able to improve my IQ?
Every psychologist or psychology enthusiast has a key figure in his mind in this field: we are talking about Kurt Lewin, the father of modern social psychology has given us a term that has laid the foundation for many subsequent theories and studies: field theory or the power of context.
Essentially, what Lewin has shown is that human beings are the result of the interaction of all their experiences, the past and above all the present, we are our attitudes, what we choose to do with everything we experience.
Thus, what can be seen when studying the trajectory of twins separated at birth and raised in different contexts is that an unfavourable environment, with limited economic resources, significantly influences the development of intelligence.
However, our potential is not diminished or completely erased by these sterile conditions. Or if the person has, at some point, the opportunity to build an environment that allows him to recover the “lost territory”.
Lewin discovered that when a twin raised in an unfavorable environment moved away from his adoptive parents, he was free to let his genotypes express themselves, his cognitive abilities improved when they found motivation, a goal commensurate with his interests, and an environment that facilitated his development. Goals.
The brain, after all, is not a physical and stable entity, plasticity, our curiosity and our will are able to produce true miracles.