re: Average IQ by state....Another way Mississippi ranks last

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I do but I'm not getting that deep.

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That you can't seem to relate biomechanical environmental adaptations to sensory processing seems that you have a very naïve understanding.

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I've given examples. Various motor skills abilities can be seen at all levels of IQ. Ultimately for most professional jobs, the IQ matters more.

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That's not the type of justification I'm looking for, as I would rather one along neuroanatomic or neurophysiologic lines.

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 I would rather one along neuroanatomic or neurophysiologic lines

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That doesn't matter as there are functional and practical reasons with real world impacts that justify the distinction. I also mentioned that one can have motor lesions and cognitive and intellectual abilities are left intact.

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It's not anthropology, evolutionary biology, or even neuroscience.

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Well that is my sort of my background, and thus I tend to want to understand things with respect to their evolutionary basis, especially extremely robust adaptations such as fine motor control and environmental sensory processing. My med school is also full of neurologists and psychiatrists who are deadset against IQ testing, for some reason.

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My point about Hawking was that he was diagnosed with ALS at 21

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Doesn't the data suggest that IQ is relatively stable from a young age? People with ALS can have cognitive dysfunction, but it is interesting that Hawking didn't.

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Like what?

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Functional assessments. Fitness evaluatioms. Legal issues.

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Ok. Decades of psychologists and psychiatrists are wrong to use it, and you, a med student, are correct.

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Let's not pretend there has been wide agreeance on its use and validity. It's history has been contentious, to say the least. There hasn't even been a clear distinct description of the process of cognition, and yet I'm supposed to treat a test that has to be re-normed periodically as though it is immutable?

And you don't understand very much about evolution, and gave me a stilted description of intelligence without understanding what you were implying. And IQ testing has had a contentious history. That the best answer anyone has given me with regards to relegating motor control entirely distinct from other responses to sensory input is that there isn't a neuroanatomic or neurological basis for it, but rather it is separated just because. There might be a more elegant defense of its use, but you aren't the one to provide it, clearly.

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What do you suggest?

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A better explanation than the one given. Or at least reasoning that isn't so circular. It's a limited test that supposedly, according to another poster, can test processing of information, but only processing related to certain motor outputs, i.e. the ability to use visual information to process pattern recognition in the somatosensory cortex and selecting an answer on a test. In other instances where a person might integrate visual information in the exact same way, this time ending it with a distinct motor response expressed through fine motor movement, the mere fact of a response processed through the primary motor cortex leads it to being disregarded as an example of overall processing power? It measures some types of pattern recognition, and some types of motor response, since it is timed and the test taker has to physically answer, but not all types receive this privilege? And the best answer anyone has given me is that this is just the way it is, because IQ tests have some use.

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There are contentious histories with anything that suggests differences that make people uncomfortable.

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That isn't my issue with it, which is strictly in reference to the neuroanatomical structures and neurophysiology. While I was wrong about the log scale, no one has provided any evidence of an actual anatomic justification which these tests supposedly could capture, which is the primary aspect of my distrust. Nothing else in medicine works like this to my knowledge, where at least there is a physiologic justification.

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I also said that we'd still have separated out from other primates with or without our superior dexterity.

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I don't think there is evidence for this notion, for a lot of very complicated reasons.

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Does this processing power result in outcomes valued by those seeking solutions to problems that require intellectual power?

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It's a general description of how brain information is processed. Literally everything has a motor output. I'm asking the reasoning for the privileging. Because as it stands, it seems that it is valuing a particular type of processing that isn't all that distinct neuroanatomically, and just values that it produces something that people like to use because of its convenience. The fact that people seem to be getting scoring higher, requiring re-norming of the test, doesn't seem to be problematic for the test itself, though if I described this about any other test for any other organ system, you would regard the test itself as unreliable.

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And thousands of psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists and researchers along with court systems and government benefits services.

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Yes I'm well-aware, but again, appealing to those authorities aren't satisfying my prime issue, which is a clear description of the mechanisms at play, and how those mechanisms correlate to higher cognitive function. For example, there was one Chinese meta-study that showed that pre-natal iodine introduction increased IQ by the SIQP, which translates to 15 IQ points. Other studies showed that post-natal iodine levels measured through TSH had no effect on IQ, and then there is little description in the literature of the metabolic aspects of cognition. The mere fact that nutritional factors can modulate cognitive function to that degree undermines the notion that the purview of IQ is strictly related to the psychological and sociological characteristics of a particular cohort. Do you understand what I mean by this? The purview has to have some metabolic, anatomic, and physiologic contribution that is a distinct process. Hence why I say that I need reference to neuroanatomic and physiologic characteristics, because no one would trust a test in any other body system with that degree of modulation.

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Therefore it has been decided and no new theories should come to light?

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Well, biomechanical function and sensory processing are highly conserved, and predate anatomically modern humans, as the time-scale involved suggests farther back human ancestors. The robustness implied by that conservation also implies extremely long time scale, which is why I said that there is no evidence for this notion, because we don't necessarily know the cognitive make-up of those ancestors specifically. We do know that the drying trend in Africa at the time would have exposed those ancestors to significantly new environments, so we can make guesses.

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Because one type of processing leads to huge advances in human knowledge and the ability for people to more readily support themselves and the other doesn't.

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They are literally the same type of brain function, in terms of a description of processing power. The fact that they aren't distinct is my issue. I can't even get a description of the necessary character of that distinctness, using references to neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic characteristics.

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WBC counts have been renormed for black americans. Is that test unreliable now? Same for GFR. Is that unreliable?

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They were re-normed for stronger reasons than "people are scoring too highly on our test of intelligence."

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Nutrition has long been known as a factor in iq.

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With very little description of the mechanisms at play in the literature. And I'm skeptical of massive nutritional differences in some studies as an explanation for re-norming, like the study of Israeli military recruits from 1971 to 84, which showed a 6.6 point difference per decade. It beggars belief that nutritional characteristics could change within one cohort that much to account for that much improvement.