Cognition in Eight Month Olds...

Cognition in eight month olds:

Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children: Roland G. Fryer, Steven D. Levitt NBER Working Paper No. 12066 Issued in March 2006: Abstract: On tests of intelligence, Blacks systematically score worse than Whites, whereas Asians frequently outperform Whites. Some have argued that genetic differences across races account for the gap. Using a newly available nationally representative data set that includes a test of mental function for children aged eight to twelve months, we find only minor racial differences in test outcomes (0.06 standard deviation units in the raw data) between Blacks and Whites that disappear with the inclusion of a limited set of controls. The only statistically significant racial difference is that Asian children score slightly worse than those of other races. To the extent that there are any genetically-driven racial differences in intelligence, these gaps must either emerge after the age of one, or operate along dimensions not captured by this early test of mental cognition...

Comments

[Charles Murray]

The facts are biased.

[anne]

Significant and boldly done; necessary in setting aside foolish limiting stereotypes.

[modus potus]

One wonders what the same tests would show if applied to chimpanzees?

[Charles]

I don't understand why this stuff is still being debated. Every 30 years ago, someone comes along with "brave, bold new" research showing us why we should look down on other people and mistreat them.

It's the same old manure. Not even fresh scent added.

Anyway, I'm glad that the guys at NBER can do the research Murray and Herrnstein should have done.

[margaret]

My college sociology professor told my class that "there are more differences between classes than there are between races." This, in 1958, in a southern university. It was confirmation of my intuition and my personal experience as a young woman of 18.

Education is the great equalizer, and we must have more, and better education to keep the public system alive. This helps to level the class differences, and helps people of all races fulfill their potential.

[anne]

Margaret:

"Education is the great equalizer, and we must have more, and better education to keep the public system alive. This helps to level the class differences, and helps people of all races fulfill their potential."

More and better and freer for longer....

[meno]

"More and better and freer for longer...."

And more even.

Frankly, the 19th century approach of having local communities pay for their local schools is quite out of place in the 21st century. Providing the poorest areas on America with the worst schools is utterly wrong.

[anon]

Paedomorphosis.

[anon]

"Education is the great equalizer, and we must have more, and better education to keep the public system alive. This helps to level the class differences, and helps people of all races fulfill their potential."

But if we had a working education system, where would we find the ignorants we need to dig ditches, shove manure, and vote Republican?

It's not in the grand political interests of elites to have fully educated populations as they are too hard to lead by the nose.

Sadly, evolution is also against full education: high education levels are very closely corelated with low birth rates.

The igorant will inherit the earth because ignorance is politically useful and evolutionarily desirable.

[larry birnbaum]

In their fundamental cognitive capacities, everyone is a genius. And I assume that's what can be tested in infants of this age. If you tested adults on these kinds of abilities, I imagine you'd get the same results.

What IQ and related tests measure are performance on some very focused and narrow tasks. The tests are designed to find individual differences, that's the point of them. And we don't know really what the tasks mean. How fundamental are they? That's what the argument is about.

This is a roundabout way of saying, this study strikes me as either incredibly flat-footed, or a truly cosmic send-up.

[dale]

Differences in class, race, ethnicity, religion, language, etc. take on a social charge when they are infused with inequalities of wealth and power.

Without that social charge, these differences would have little negative meaning for us.

[Anon]

I doubt this study is going to settle the issue. Research has found that the IQ scores of children do not correlate well with adult scores, even after controlling for social factors. The fact that eight-month-olds of different races had similar IQ scores is not significant. True differences do not emerge until adulthood. The most recent research shows that intelligence is highly heritable (as much as 75%) and that heritability increases with age, while the influence of shared social factors decreases.

And, as unpalatable as many people may find it, recent research (see meta-analysis mentioned below) also seems to confirm that there are group differences in intelligence, with Asians at the top, Caucasians in the middle, and then Africans.

Of course, these findings about group differences cannot tell us much about any particular individual -- that is a point I think is lost on many people.

I don’t have high hopes that we’ll have an honest policy debate about this subject –it touches too many taboo subjects and reminds us of Hitler/eugenics. Plus, we Americans really cherish (or cling to?) the ideal of individualism.

Info on the web:

For background, including opposing viewpoints, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Recent meta-analysis about race and intelligence (Rushton & Jensen) published in the June 2005 issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

Also good: “Wanted: More race realism, less moralistic fallacy.” (Rushton & Jenson, 2005) http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/journals/pppl/200504/2/328-2.html

[liberal]

anon wrote, "The most recent research shows that intelligence is highly heritable (as much as 75%) and that heritability increases with age, while the influence of shared social factors decreases."

Perhaps. The problem with most statistical models of the influence of genes is that they're additive. This means that there are plausible models in which environment has a huge effect, and at the same time intelligence will be highly heritable. For example, see "Heritability Estimates Versus Large Environmental Effects: The IQ Paradox Resolved," William T. Dickens, The Brookings Institution; James R. Flynn, University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand); Psychological Review, Vol. 108, No. 2.

------begin excerpt-----------

http://www.apa.org/releases/iqmodel.html

"WASHINGTON - A new mathematical model could help explain how certain environments can trigger changes in a person's IQ as well as the relative influence of genes and the environment on IQ by exploring how internal and external factors might interact. The model helps explain the puzzling finding that IQ scores have risen over time and suggests a larger environmental role in IQ than previously thought. The model and an extensive discussion appear in the April issue of Psychological Review, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

...

"The model also examines the power of the "social multiplier" effect to shape individual IQ in accordance with the average IQs of one's social circle and society at large. What's more, say the authors, the mathematical model makes it possible to account for very large environmental effects that occur despite large genetic effects. By this new thinking, the importance of environment is not limited by the importance of genes, and vice versa. The model permits researchers to sidestep the seemingly insoluble debate over the exact contributions of genetics and environment, by instead viewing the two as contributing differently to a process that itself changes depending on a person's age and circumstances."

------end excerpt-------------

"Of course, these findings about group differences cannot tell us much about any particular individual -- that is a point I think is lost on many people."

It seems to be lost on you, also. For example:

"I don’t have high hopes that we’ll have an honest policy debate about this subject..."

What are the policy implications, given that you agree one cannot say much about individual aptitude from group results?

"Plus, we Americans really cherish (or cling to?) the ideal of individualism."

Incoherent in general, and particularly in light of your own point about individual versus group.

"Recent meta-analysis about race and intelligence (Rushton & Jensen) ..."

LOL! Rushton is the idiot who brought us the claim that intelligence and penis size are inversely related.

[Ginger Yellow]

Without in any way supporting Bell Curve type arguments, I've got to agree with Anon that this study doesn't contribute much. Cognitive abilities at eight months will have almost nothing to do with cognitive abilities in adults (besides exceptional cases such as severe congenital defects). The brain undergoes huge amounts of development in childhood, even more than the rest of the body.

[kharris]

Gotta say, arguing that this particular study isn't worth much because it doesn't tell us what some of us want to know about the distribution of measured intelligence among adults takes a pretty narrow view of what science is about. If this study successfully establishes a single fact about human intellectual development, it is more than worth the effort. Out of the next handful of studies, we'll be lucky if one establishes a single fact about intellectual development at some other period in life, until we get a fairly complete picture.

[david]

"heritability increases with age, while the influence of shared social factors decreases."

Arguments like these will lead to many houses falling down from heads pounding on the walls. What a snakepit.

I know it's a cliche, but maybe a tag at the end of every discussion that we don't really have a good sense of what we mean by intelligence, in an eight month old or an adult, would work as a semi-protective charm against the number-worshippers.

[bakho]

Even if they had found larger differences, there are still environmental factors that affect infants. Alcohol consumption is particularly detrimental to the fetus and can affect intelligence. The diet and nutritional stutus of the mother is important. Is there anyone that still believes that environment does not have an important influence on intelligence and education?

[liberal]

david wrote, " 'heritability increases with age, while the influence of shared social factors decreases.' ...we don't really have a good sense of what we mean by intelligence..."

I completely agree that we don't have a good handle on "intelligence" (outside of very narrowly specified domains).

On the other hand, the claim that heritability increases with age is an interesting one. Read the summary of the Dickens/Flynn article I linked to above---they posit a very clever type of genetic-environmental interaction in which environmental influences can actually be extremely large, _and yet_ heritability can increase, if I recall correctly.

The take-home message is that purely additive models with no interaction terms are overly simplistic.

[anne]

"The most recent research shows that intelligence is highly heritable (as much as 75%) and that heritability increases with age, while the influence of shared social factors decreases."

Please, please, simply thinking of this supposed truth as an hypothesis will show it to be absurdly difficult or impossible to test for and logical nonsense.

[anne]

Dale

"Differences in class, race, ethnicity, religion, language, etc. take on a social charge when they are infused with inequalities of wealth and power. Without that social charge, these differences would have little negative meaning for us."

Nice :)

Rather than so many identical molecules, plants and animals are always distinct one from another making any generality only relatively true rather than true for an extended group. Even when we generalize we should understand the generality does not pertain to each individual in a group and may not pertain to any.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/science/24women.html?ex=1264482000&en=42da5acf95d82da5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

January 24, 2005

Gray Matter and Sexes: A Gray Area Scientifically
By NATALIE ANGIER and KENNETH CHANG

When Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, suggested this month that one factor in women's lagging progress in science and mathematics might be innate differences between the sexes, he slapped a bit of brimstone into a debate that has simmered for decades. And though his comments elicited so many fierce reactions that he quickly apologized, many were left to wonder: Did he have a point?

Has science found compelling evidence of inherent sex disparities in the relevant skills, or perhaps in the drive to succeed at all costs, that could help account for the persistent paucity of women in science generally, and at the upper tiers of the profession in particular?

Researchers who have explored the subject of sex differences from every conceivable angle and organ say that yes, there are a host of discrepancies between men and women - in their average scores on tests of quantitative skills, in their attitudes toward math and science, in the architecture of their brains, in the way they metabolize medications, including those that affect the brain.

Yet despite the desire for tidy and definitive answers to complex questions, researchers warn that the mere finding of a difference in form does not mean a difference in function or output inevitably follows.

"We can't get anywhere denying that there are neurological and hormonal differences between males and females, because there clearly are," said Virginia Valian, a psychology professor at Hunter College who wrote the 1998 book "Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women." "The trouble we have as scientists is in assessing their significance to real-life performance."

For example, neuroscientists have shown that women's brains are about 10 percent smaller than men's, on average, even after accounting for women's comparatively smaller body size.

But throughout history, people have cited anatomical distinctions in support of overarching hypotheses that turn out merely to reflect the societal and cultural prejudices of the time.

A century ago, the French scientist Gustav Le Bon pointed to the smaller brains of women - closer in size to gorillas', he said - and said that explained the "fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason" in women.

Overall size aside, some evidence suggests that female brains are relatively more endowed with gray matter - the prized neurons thought to do the bulk of the brain's thinking - while men's brains are packed with more white matter, the tissue between neurons.

To further complicate the portrait of cerebral diversity, new brain imaging studies from the University of California, Irvine, suggest that men and women with equal I.Q. scores use different proportions of their gray and white matter when solving problems like those on intelligence tests.

Men, they said, appear to devote 6.5 times as much of their gray matter to intelligence-related tasks as do women, while women rely far more heavily on white matter to pull them through a ponder.

What such discrepancies may or may not mean is anyone's conjecture.

"It is cognition that counts, not the physical matter that does the cognition," argued Nancy Kanwisher, a professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When they do study sheer cognitive prowess, many researchers have been impressed with how similarly young boys and girls master new tasks.

"We adults may think very different things about boys and girls, and treat them accordingly, but when we measure their capacities, they're remarkably alike," said Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard. She and her colleagues study basic spatial, quantitative and numerical abilities in children ranging from 5 months through 7 years.

"In that age span, you see a considerable number of the pieces of our mature capacities for spatial and numerical reasoning coming together," Dr. Spelke said. "But while we always test for gender differences in our studies, we never find them." ...

[PaulC]

"Anon": I don't get it. You post this rationally-toned defense of race-based intelligence theories and then weasel out of identifying yourself in any way. How seriously are we to take this?

I do agree that a study of eight months olds is far from definitive, though. One thing that caught my attention was a study that correlates intelligence with different brain growth patterns in childhood:

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=60800
"All children showed the same basic pattern of a childhood increase in the thickness of the cortex, which peaked and then decreased," noted lead researcher Dr. Philip Shaw, of the Child Psychiatry Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health.

"What differed with intelligence was the rate of these changes, and the age of peak cortical thickness," said Shaw. "The most intelligent children started with a relatively thin cortex, it got thicker rapidly, and after reaching peak thickness at a later age, it also got thinner quicker."
---end quote---

If there are actually physiological markers for intelligence, then we can probably cut through a lot of BS. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the bag of features we lump together as IQ is heritable to some extent. However, I don't know that this will tell you much about groups larger than the Bachs or Bernoullis.

It is also very clear that assuming our educational system is intended to develop the potential of every individual, it is differentially failing those already perceived as members of a group with less potential. I believe that nearly everyone can be taught to think critically, evaluate evidence, apply basic quantitative reasoning, write clearly and grammatically, and become a lifetime reader. It is possible that not everyone can excel at quantum physics or develop an encyclopedic memory of some topic.

I completely agree with the point above that IQ measures a narrow range of skills chosen primarily because they *are* highly variable. The normal human brain is a natural wonder, and we ought to focus on developing its potential for everyone blessed with one.

[tom f]

Ever since the Bell Curve, which argued not only that race and intelligence are linked but that this linkage explains social outcomes, this latter thesis has given the former one a infuriating relevance.

The evolving debate about intelligence and genetics would be fascinating and productive (and is, as far as it goes) but for the inevitable drift into politics.

In this realm, the scientific debate exists as a misguided and reactionary diversion from attending to the illegitimate distribution of wealth and power in the US.

We can largely thank the Bell Curve, and its popularity, for that.

[anonlib]

Intersting study. I'm with those that aren't sure what relevance it has to the study of differences among the races in adult IQ scores (which it seems is where the problem lies).

About the class impacting IQ point: don't the poorest whites still outscore the richest blacks? I know race has a lot to do with perceived "class," perhaps more so than money, but those results have always struck me as very problematic.

[james]

as long as one gives credence to studies that promote racial comparisons one is trapped in the logic of racial comparisons

what is the purpose of racial comparisons of iq and what is the meaning of the results of such a study

let's correlate skin color to iq and see if the color of a person's skin impacts on iq?

how would you even go about getting a representative sample of each skin color for the comparison?

[marky]

I have read that the genetic variation of the indigenous Africans is much greater (by many times) than in all the rest of the world.
If one wanted to seriously study "race" and IQ, one would want to have a sample of African-descended people representative of this diversity.

[Julian Elson]

Heritability is probably even higher for the ability to speak Tamil than it is for intelligence. Probably almost all Tamil speakers have Tamil-speaking parents, and almost all Tamil-speaking parents have Tamil-speaking children. Heritability would thus be very high. This cannot, however, be interpreted as genetic. In short, heritable does not imply genetic. Genetic does, I believe, usually imply heritable, though.

[Bruce Wilder]

Genetic implies heritable only in a specific, theoretical sense. Red hair or blues are genetically determined and we know these characteristics are inherited because we understand the mechanisms involved -- we've identified the genes. But, parents without blue eyes or red hair regularly have children with blue eyes or red hair. If Mendel had been doing regression analysis with the skillset of Murray and Herrnstein, he would not have had a prayer (and he was monk!).

If we were to study some other bundle of characteristics, like "general athletic ability", I do not think we would have the same difficulty seeing the obvious. I doubt we would see the same reactionary insistence that there was a general and racially inheritable characteristic uniting gymnasts and shotputters.

[Anon]

--Liberal:--

The study I cited (a meta-analysis of 30 years of intelligence research done in 2005) does address the article you referenced:

“Dickens and Flynn (2001) replied to Rushton’s (1999) cluster analysis with a more general statement of having resolved the paradox of how high heritabilities could go along with large secular increases in IQ. …. Dickens and Flynn hypothesized that the positive feedback effects from even small initial environmental advantages stimulate mental development and lead to an even more favorable environment, stimulating yet more IQ development. Dickens and Flynn’s (2001) model, however, appears inconsistent with some empirical evidence. Gene– environment correlation cannot explain the mean Black–White group difference in IQ because it implies that Black groups, in comparison with White groups, become increasingly disadvantaged during the developmental period from early childhood to maturity. With increasing age there would be cumulative unfavorable effects on IQ for Black groups with respect to White groups. …”

Rushton’s analysis seems to have stood up to scrutiny so far -- although I am no ideologue and am open to whatever valid scientific evidence controverts their conclusions. Please read the meta-analysis and other articles first before you judge what I am saying.

--Paul C wrote: “If there are actually physiological markers for intelligence, then we can probably cut through a lot of BS.”

From my reading on this, scientists *have* found some fairly reliable physiological markers for IQ. See “The General Intelligence Factor” by Linda S. Gottfredson published in Scientific American (link to free article: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html). Quote from Gottfredson:

“The debate over intelligence and intelligence testing focuses on the question of whether it is useful or meaningful to evaluate people according to a single major dimension of cognitive competence. Is there indeed a general mental ability we commonly call "intelligence," and is it important in the practical affairs of life? The answer, based on decades of intelligence research, is an unequivocal yes.”

--Anne—

I know what a hypothesis is. My opinions are based on extensive reading and judgment as to what scientific *hypothesis* seems to be most supported by the evidence. If *convincing* scientific evidence were uncovered to the contrary, I would change my opinion. I’ve also read the Larry Summers stuff – I actually did a research paper (undergraduate) on this subject last quarter. I’ll just say that I was upset by what he said (considering that I am a woman). I was even more surprised when I found, through extensive reading, that there really *are *group differences in intelligence, including gender differences. Once I was able to accept that, it became much easier to understand what Summers was saying and what he was not saying.

To sum it up, what does the scientific evidence seem to support?
(1) IQ can be reliably measured.
(2) There is a physiological basis for IQ.
(3) IQ is heritable – probably in the 50%-75% range

The evidence DOES NOT say that environment plays NO role, just that genes play a much greater role than conventional wisdom would lead us to believe. As for policy implications, that is up for debate (and I don’t agree with the conservative policy proposals set forth in The Bell Curve).

But since it seems to be so hard for people to even accept the premise that maybe, just maybe, IQ is influenced by genes, we will continue to talk past each other.

[PaulC]

"Anon": "just that genes play a much greater role than conventional wisdom would lead us to believe."

Eh? Conventional wisdom has always held that intelligence was highly heritable. People are often surprised when a brilliant kid emerges from a family with no history of education, and accept it readily when some other family has several generations of doctors or lawyers.

I'm not sure what common misconception it is that you're fighting so heroically.

What does strike me as odd and likely to be wrong is the contention that there is a single intelligence factor rather than a bundle of traits that are more usefully considered separately. My own experience tells me that even in narrow disciplines, there are particular talents. You take a sampling of mathematicians and some are algebraists who can whip through long series of symbolic manipulations and others are intuitionists who seem to see a deep result through a vague spatial analogy and then struggle hard to pin down a proof.

As pointed out above, it would be silly to speak of a single "athletic quotient" though there are some factors that are useful in almost every physical challenge. Why would anyone think that a single scalar score is a useful way to speak about something as complex as intelligence?

As for policy proposals, I struggle to see what good comes out of looking for averages of any such factor over groups as large as "races." Every capable individual deserves the opportunity to excel, and every ordinary individual has a brain that can be cultivated to a far greater extent than is usually the case.

[30 minutes or your money back]

Only a civilization of imbeciles could be so heavily invested in “intelligence”. I guess it's inevitable after we've objectified and reduced everything else to a collection of alienated objects that we'll do the same to ourselves.

[anne]

Research questions framed to tell us whether 50% or 60% or 70% of adult intelligence is genetically inherited as opposed to experientially gained strike me as impossible to properly study. I cannot imagine a reasonable research design. We know we have certain proclivities and have had certain experiences, but what then is the point? We are a mix of inheritance and experience, and the mix varies individual to individual. Generalizing intelligence by ethnicity or gender and genetics for adults strikes me as impossibly imprecise and of no reasonable use.

[liberal]

Anon wrote, "Please read the meta-analysis and other articles first before you judge what I am saying."

Why should anyone read anything by an idiot like Rushton?

Yes, it's an ad hominem remark, but there are only 24 hours in a day, and Rushton is a buffoon.

[liberal]

Anon wrote, "I was even more surprised when I found, through extensive reading, that there really *are *group differences in intelligence, including gender differences."

Sure, there are group differences (including gender) in intelligence (distribution at least, if not average). What you appear to want to conclude is that these group differences can be ascribed to genetic differences. Maybe, but maybe not.

"(3) IQ is heritable – probably in the 50%-75% range

"The evidence DOES NOT say that environment plays NO role, just that genes play a much greater role than conventional wisdom would lead us to believe."

But because no truly reasonable statistical model can be additive (between genes and environment), you can't just say "intelligence is X% genetic and 100-X% environmental." And you could have high heritability, yet the way that genetic factors leads to that high heritability is nontrivial.

[liberal]

anne wrote, "Research questions framed to tell us whether 50% or 60% or 70% of adult intelligence is genetically inherited as opposed to experientially gained strike me as impossible to properly study."

The real problem with it, anne, is that it implies a purely additive model of intelligence:
IQ = X*genes + (100-X)*environment

This is clearly wrong.

[Don't go]

Maybe I'm missing something here... but how exactly would you perform an IQ test on an 8-month old? Is the right answer "Goo", or "Goo-Goo"?

[Don't go]

Maybe I'm missing something here... but how exactly would you perform an IQ test on an 8-month old? Is the right answer "Goo", or "Goo-Goo"?

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=6395&u=99|3|...

Yellow-rumped Warbler Singing
New York City--Central Park, Nutters Battery.

Thank you and agreed, Liberal :)

[Arun Khanna]

I have not read the paper but sounds like an interesting finding. Why not a different study design which gets at impact of social and environmental factors? Study African American and African kids under one year old. Compare White American and White European kids under one year old and so on. This would provide a ‘near out of sample’ robustness check for Fryer and Levitt's findings.

[cw]

My dad was a psychologist who specilized in psychological testing. He gave me the Stanford-Binnet (sp?) at 15 or 16. 10 years later we were talking and I said that I thought I could do better on that test (I felt like I was better at concentraiting, at resoning, at "thinking). He said no way, that's not how it worked. I took the test again, putting more effort and using my more mature thinking abilities and I scored about 15 points higher.

That particular intelligence test tested basic skills that are trainable. As you use your brain in certain ways your mental abilities increase. And the truth is middle class white kids get lots more practice using thier brains in ways that the Stanford Binet tests for. They have a different experience than poor kids of all races as far as parenting style, opportunity, stress, nutrition, culture, medical care, etc...

Take parenting style. Poor parents of all races have different parenting styles than those of the middle class. For instance, poor babies are held and spoken to way way less than middle class babies. Human babies require touch, movement, and speech for their brains to develop.

And how about culture. African-american kids, in general, start school behind (for lots of reason). They look around them and see white kids doing better. Thier peers also tell them that doing good in school is uncool or acting white (obviously these two facts are related). How many of these kids are going to be motivated to do well on an intelligence test at 15? To try hard and concentrait?

Those are just two environmental factors. There are way way too many others that relate to brain development, to motivation, to test taking skills to say that one culture/class is more intelligent than another based on IQ tests.

[joe o]

This web page has the journal issue that Anon pointed to including the dissenting articles:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/

[bc]

How does one define who is "black"? 100% African ancestry? From sub-saharan Africa? Is the one drop rule still in effect? Do those with one "black" parent and one "white" parent score midway? Are latinos "white"?
Or, we could just go back to 1921 and claim Greeks, Italians, E. Europeans, etc. aren't really white either.

[anne]

There is just the proper point. All our characteristics of racial identity are relative. We are relatively of this racial category and another racial category. Biological characteristics are set along a gradient, so that we are not absolutely but relatively Asian or relatively Anglo or African-American.

[joe o]

>Do those with one "black" parent and one "white" parent score midway?

According to Rushton and Jenson, this is true.