Education: Smarter Seniors

For more than a decade educators and parents alike have been lamenting the steadily declining scores of high-school seniors on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Now, a University of Michigan psychologist forecasts a reversal in the scores—and without any tightening up of teaching methods or reduction in TV watching, factors that he plays down as reasons for the decline. The reversal, Robert Zajonc says, may come about simply as a result of demographic changes. Zajonc notes, as other researchers have also observed, that the circumstances of being the first-born and of being a member of a small family both lead to greater intellectual performance. Since in 1963 U.S. families began to get smaller, he hypothesizes that by the early 1980s 18-year-olds taking the SATs will score higher.

Zajonc warns that birth order in itself must not be overemphasized, since a large age gap between children within a family will offset the advantage the first-born normally has. Further, he does not discount genetic and other influences on intelligence, or claim that his theory predicts any given person’s intelligence. He deals with averages, not individuals. Still, he says, “all our hypothetical data seem to fit.” He also notes that higher scores on Iowa and New York performance tests by children who will turn 18 in the early ’80s suggest that his hypothesis is correct.