63

SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 6.'3-76,

November, 1931.

INTELLIGENCE, ENVIRONMENT AND HEREDITY.

BY
R. W. WILCOCKS, B.A., PH.D.,
Professor of Psychology, University of Sfellenbosch.

Presidential Addresil to Section F, delivered 9 July, 1931.

Ordinary experience and the results obtained by the applica-

tion of int,elligence tests clearly show that wide differences of
intelligence, or intellectual efficiency, exist between individuals.
On the whole there is a tendency for the impression to be created
that such differences are still to be found between individuals
when environmental influences acting on them before and after
birth have been, at least apparently, in the main the same.
The theory is thus suggested that these differences must, wholly
or very largely, be due to differences in the germplasm itself
when unaffected by what are to be looked upon as abnormal
circumstances. That is, the differences are, in the first place,
due to differences of heredity. This theory undoubtedly receives
support from the fact that, as Weintrob and Weintrob G4 have
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shown, unfavourable environmental conditions may be accom-

panied by a relatively high degree of intellectual efficiency as
measured by intelligence tests, and that more favourable environ-
mental conditions may be accompanied by relatively low degrees
of such int.ellectual efficiency. It is hardly necessary to state
that this also is in agreement with ordinary experience. On
the other hand, it may be urged that ordinary experience also
shows t.hat environmental influences bring about marked differ-
ences in intellectual efficiency, that our attempts at education
are based on this very observation, and that individual differ-
ences which we may, at first sight, be inclined to ascribe to
heredity may largely be due to differences in environment which
have been overlooked. Various Jines of research have been
followed in attempting to answer the question which is thus set
us, and the present paper is intended as a statement of the
advances which have been made towards obtaining an answer in
the case of human beings. A great mass of evidence has been
collected which makes it impossible to doubt that positive cor-
relations exist between blood relations with regard to intellectual
efficiency. We cannot do more than indicate shortly, by way of
examples, the main types of researches and :findings in this
connection. The work of Dugdale l l forms an illustration of one
type of research. His study of the " Jukes " was carried on
later by Esterbrook14 to cover more than 1200 individuals belong-
ing to the same family and then living. Of these it was found
that some 40 per cent. possessed only a relatively low degree of
intelligence and another 16 to 17 per cent. are classified as of the
 64 SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.

feeble-minded type. Similar results were obtained by Goddard

in his study of the " Kallikak " family23, and further corrobo-
rative findings were reported by him in his study of feeble-
mindedness,u tl~ough the question may safely be left in abeyance
at present as to the degree of success with which Mendelian
concepts are applied by. him to his findings. The study of the
" Hill-folk" by Danielson and Davenport 8 gives further proof,
if any were needed, of the tendency towards resemblances
between blood relations in cases of 19W intelligence. Similar
evidence is available with regard to the opposite pole of ability.
We shall refer to the work of Galton on this point in another
connection. According to Kretschmer38 Rath has traced the
close blood relationship which existed between a number of
famous Swabian poets and philosophers, and Sommer 51 has
shown, in his study of Goethe's genealogy, the presence of a
number of gifted ancestors. In this connect,ion too the works of
Candolle5 and Mobius"" have to be mentioned with regard to the
occurrence of great mathematical ability in the Bernoulli family.
Following a different method of research, and making use of
the estimate of the intelligence of pupils by their teachers,
Pearson"'''' obtained correlations of ·44 to ·45 in the case of
siblings. Schuster and Elderton,58 making use of material col-
lected by Heymans and Wiersma'" by the questionnaire method,
obtained a correlation between fathers and sons with regard to
school performance of ,35. Burris" obtained somewhat smaller
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correlations between siblings with regard to school performance

in different subjects, but, still, the correlations were positive,
and the same holds true for the findings of Thorndike 62 in, for
example, arithmetic. Pintner"'8 found positive correlations in
intelligence test performances between siblings, though these
were decidedly smaller than those obtained by later and mor~
reliable researches, and Cobb's8 data showed the presence of
positive correlations between the performances in arithmetic of
parents and children. Downey9 making use of intelligence tests
found that 80 per cent. of children with parents of more than
average intelligence also show more than average intelligence,
whereas in another group, where both parents were of only aver-
age intelligence, or where only one parent was of more than
average intelligence, only 33 per cent. of the children showed
more than average intelligence. Gese1l 20 making use of intelli-
gence tests found, for a pair of like·sex twins, practically the
same high LQ. for them at the ages of seven and eight.
Recently .Tones and Burks 12 find a correlation with regard to
intelligence of ·55 between parents and offspring living in the
same house.
Occasionally, in some of the earlier work (8 and 48) the
authors seem inclined to consider their positive correlations
between blood relations as evidence speaking strongly in favour
of the presence of a hereditary factor. It is, however, clear that
the positive correlations obtained in these and similar researches,
 PRESIDENTIAJ. ADDRESS-SECTION F. 65
while indicating the possibility of heredity as a causal factor
determining the degree and nature of mental efficiency, cannot,
by themselves, be taken as proof positive that such is actually
t.he case. Neither do the limitations in the size of the correla-
tions found exclude the possibility that heredity may be much
more important in determining intellectual efficiency than would
be indicated by the size of the correlations found among blood
relatives. 29 It can hardly be doubted that agreement with regard
to blood relationship tends to be accompanied by agreement with
regard to environmental factors, and, pending further evidence,
these latter might be looked upon as the cause of any positive
correlations in intellectual efficiency which are found to exist
among blood relatives. So, for example, the American Army
results 68 with intelligence tests, have established the fact that a
clear association exists between the socio-economic status of
adult males and their intellectual efficiency 'as measured by
intelligence tests. A large number of researches leave no room
for doubt that children of parents of different socio-economic
levels tend to differ in a similar way with regard to their intel-
lectual efficiency. The most important studies to be mentioned
in this connection are those of Duff and Thomson,1° Collins 7 and
Haggerty and Nash. 32 It may be added that the results obtained
by the present writer from the application in the Union of the
South African Group Intelligence Tests to 3281 " poor white ..
childr~n of the ages 120 to 150 months show their average LQ.
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to be 93·3. A number of researches (~arried out on a smaller

scale have shown similar results, both with regard to intelligence
tests and school performance, for example, those of MacDonald u ,
Hartnacke,33 others summarised by S'tern,59 Kornhauser,37
MusterS' and others. While, undoubtedly, these findings would
agree well with the theory that a poorer innate equipment is a
predominant factor in determining the parents' socio-economic
status, and that this poorer equipment tends to be produced in
his offspring, the possibility of the opposite view can, on such
data taken alone, not be gainsaid. Aecording to this opposing
view unfavourable environment would, in the main, have deter-
mined both the intellectual effi,ciency and the socio-economic
status of t.he parent, his child would live under similarly unfav-
ourable circumstances, and would thug also tend to show rela-
tively poor intellectual performance.
In another type of procedure which appears to offer some-
what more conclusive results, the attempt is made to follow the
method of concomitant variations. The main fact which has
been established is that the degree of correlation in intellectual
efficiency between blood relatives tends to vary with the degree
of blood relationship. In his pioneer work GaIton17 already
found, as is well known, that men of great ability tend to have
a much larger number of blood relatives of great ability than
ean possibly be explained by chance, and that this number tends
clearly on the average to be greater according to the degree of
 66 SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.

closeness of the blood relationship. Schuster and Elderton 55

found that the agreement with regard to scholastic and academic
success was greater in the case of brothers than in the case of
fathers and sons. Peters 47 in comparing the school performance
of blood relat.ives found a greater resemblance between siblings
than bet\\'een children and parents or sons and fathers. The
correlation between grandchild and grfudparent was still smaller.
Assembling the data from various authors with regard to the
concomitanpe in the variations of closeness of blood relationship
and the size of the correlations of intelligence quotients between
such relatives, Wingfield and Sandigold 66 are able to show that
this concomitance is a very dose and regular one, varying from
·90 in the ease of physically identical twins to ·16 in the case of
grandparent and grandchild. These authors conclude that there
is an increasing degree of resemblance in general intelligence
among human beings with an increasing degree of blood relation-
ship among them, and that general intelligence is, in conse-
quence, an inherited trait.
Strictly speaking, however, the method of concomitant varia-
tions must demand that only one of the antecedents shall vary
concomitantly with the effect to which the antecedent is ascribed
as cause. Hence we are at a loss as soon as two or more ante-
cedents show similar concomitance with the effect in question.
It is reasonable to accept that, on the whole, there will be some
tendency for environment to vary in a concomitant way with
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blood relationship. Notwithstanding exceptions, the socio-

economic status of the pRrent tends, on the whole, to be repeated
in the offspring. So also, as, e.g., 1~errin46 and Thurnwald 63
have shown, there is some tendency for sons to follow the calling
of the father and we cannot avoid accepting that such factors as
family tradition and parental example are important environ-
mental influences bringing about correspondence in this respect.
The question thus arises as to the degree of concomitance between
environment and intellectual efficiency. To this question we
return at a later stage.
The results of the study of the correlations between blood
relatives do, however, obtain a new significance for our problem
if they can be combined with a successful attempt to eliminate
environment as a differentiating fnctor. Before proceeding to
the discussion of attempts which have been made in this direc-
tion, we find it convenient to pass on, first of all, to iPearson'sH 45
comparison between the amount of correlation he found between
the intelligence of siblings and that found between various physi-
cal characteristics. He collected data for a large population of
siblings, making use of teachers' estimates of intelligence. Con-
siderable differences of socio-economic level were present between
the different groups of siblings. The correlation between the
intelligence of the siblings was dosely in the neighbourhood of
'50, which agreed closely also with his findings in the case of a
number of physical characteristics of siblings. Pearson argue!"
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS-SECTION F. 67

that at least some of the resemblances, e.g_, in hair and eye

colour, in the case of physical characteristics cannot possibly be
dUt? to home influences and must be due to common heredity.
Moreover, he concludes we are forced to the conclusion that the
correlation between the intelligence of siblings, being so closely
the same as that found for physical characteristics, must also be
due to a common heredity _ Other later resellrches, carried out
by more objective methods of determining intelligence, have,
however, sometimes given markedly higher correlations than that
found by Pearson when environment was present as differentiat-
ing factor between different groups of siblings. Thus Thorndike u
recently obtained a correlation of -60 in this case.
In continuing the researches on the correlation between the
intelligence of blood relatives, Schuster and Elderton,5' in their
work to which we have previously referred, limited their popula-
tion groups to, broadly speaking, the same socio-economic levels.
The correlations between the intelligence of brothers was in the
neighbourhood of '4, but it is pointed out that the relative small-
ness of these correlations should reasonably be ascribed to limita-
tion of the range of lalent, in which case the difference between
the results obtained by Schuster and Elderton on the one hand
and Pearson on the other cannot be ascribed to the differentiating
influence of environment. Pearson,H further, making use of
the results of intelligence tests obtained by Gordon 30 with orphan-
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age children, i.e., children living in a highly uniform environ-

ment, obtains a correlation of ·51 between the intelligence of
siblings. This clearly agrees closely with his own findings,
already mentioned above, where differences of environment were
present as possible differentiating factors. This result is looked
on by Pearson a.s a further very strong corroboration of the view
that intelligence is inherited. It may be mentioned, in this
connection, that the present writer 65 also found a correlation of
·5 between the intelligence of siblings as measured by the South
African Group Intelligence Tests where considerable differences
o~ socio-economic status were present between different groups of
siblings. Further data, obtained by means of intelligence tests
by Gordon 31 with sibling orphanage children, give a correlation
of ·540 according to the method of statistical treatment given to
Gordon's data by EldertonY Data collected by Drinkwater on
the intelligence of siblings, both by means of the estimate of
teachers and by means of intelligence tests, are also treated
statistically by Elderton. 13 While at least a portion of the data,
as Elderton clearly shows, present anomalies, the attempt is
made to sum up the results. Where there are clearly wide
environmental differences between different groups of siblings,
the eorrelations obtained bv Elderton varv from -384 in the case
of the relation sister-sister (by teacher's estimate of intelligence),
to . 552 for the brother-sister relationship (by intelligence test
measurement) .
 68 SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL O}<' SCIENCE.

Summing up the results of this group of researches we may

say, in general, that while there is a good deal of variation in the
size of the coefficients of correlation, they do certainly remain
approximately of the same order of size, and, more particularly,
that this is the case when correlations, with environment as
possible differentiating factor, are compared with those obtained
when this diffel'entiating factor is largely eliminated or, at least,
somewhat decreased. On the whole, then, it may safely be said
that they strongly tend to show that heredity is an important
factor in determining the level of intellectual efficiency.
Studies of twins have undoubtedly thrown further light on
the problem at issue. 'l'horndike 62 comparing, in the mail\,
scholastic performance of twins as determined by tests, did no't
find that, on the whole, older twins show greater resemblance
than younger twins. He holds that older twins should show a
greater amount of resemblance than younger twins, if environ-
ment is important, since the older twins would have been sub-
jected to the same environment for a longer time. He also points
out that siblings not differing much in age show much greater
differences than twins. His interpretation of these findings is
that by far the greatest amount of the resemblance between
twins must be due to their original nature, this being in agree-
ment with an earlier finding of Galton, using less objective
methods. 16 Merriman,.u in a study of twine by means of intelli-
gence tests, obtains a result agreeing with that of Thorndike,
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although valid objections have been made 52 to some aspects of

the statistical treatment of his data. Similar objections have
been raised by Wingfield and Sandigold 68 to the work of Lauter-
bach 39 on twins. But Lauterbach's results do still agree in
principle with those of Thorndike. Wingfield and Sandigold's
own data clearly support those of Thorndike, since they find
that a group of twins from 12 to 15 years old do not, on the
whole, resemble each other more in mental efficiency than a
group of twins from 8 to 11 years old. As in the case of Thorn-
L. dike's research, they also found that twins do not show more
likeness in subjects where the school has concentrated its training
than in respects in which this is less the case, namely, in intelli-
gence test performances. Their conclusion is that environment
is inadequate to explain the mental resemblances between twins.
One objection to their work that may be raised arises from the
fact that the correlation for unlike-sex twins is approximately of
the same size as that for siblings. This finding is explicitly
drawn attention to by the authors and is found in their own
results. We have, however, not been able to find in how far
this finding has been taken into account by them in comparing
the older and younger groups of twins. It is clear that a com-
parative preponderance of either identical or non-identical twins
in either the younger or older groups would seriously affect the
size of the correlations obtained. However. Wingfield and
Sandigold, as also Tallman,12 also find that identical twins show
 PRESIDEXTIAL ADDRESS-SECTION F. 69
a higher degree of resemblance than fraternal twins, the correla-
tion in the one case being ·90 and in the other ·70 as measured
by intelligence tests. Should we be justified in a.ssuming that
environmental, and especially pre-natal environmental condi-
tions, are practically the same on the average, for pairs of like
twins on the one hand and pairs of fraternal twins on the other
hand, then the difference between these correlations must be
due to heredity. It is not, however, clear to what extent this
assumption is justified. Tallman finds that the difference
between like and unlike twins is smaller than that between
unlike twins and siblings. On the assumption that the heredi,
tary similarity between unlike twins and siblings is the same,
we should have to explain the increased resemblance in the case
of unlike twins, as compared with siblings, to environmental
influences. Here again the question arises as to the extent to
which our assumption is correct. Koch12 finds in the case of
a pair of Siamese twins that the divergence shown by them on
intelligence test results is just about the same as that found in
the case of ordinary like twins. Here we ha.ve a case of a prac-
tical maximum of uniformity of environment. Should the dif-
ference between these Siamese twins have been markedly
less than that found in the case of ordinary identical twins, the
case examined by Koch would tend to show, as far as one case
can do so, that environmental circumstances are of importance
in bringing about similarities in intelligence. It is possible, on
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the other hand, to interpret Koch's actual findings in the sense

that the environmental conditions, under which Siamese twins
live, are, comparatively, not much more similar than those
usually present in the case of ordinary identical twins. If so,
then Koch's findings would be inconclusive with rega.rd to the
importance, or otherwise, of environment.
Summing up our account of the work with twins we would
say that none of the findings give positive support to a theory
according to which similarities of environment would be the
chief factor in determining the similarity of twins. On the
other hand, if we take the data on twins alone, or in conjunction
with other data already discussed, they by no means exclude
the possibility of more marked differences of environment (than
were present as possibly differentiating factors in the cases of
the twins studied) bringing about marked differences in'intel-
lectual efficiency. The findings do, however, agree with those
mentioned earlier in showing that there is a concomitance of
variation between intellectual efficiency and heredity.
A further line of attack on the main problem consists in
attempting more specifically to get the correlations between
environmental fadors and intellectual efficiencv. Heron 34 found
only very small or insignificant correlations between the intelli-
gence of school children and cleanliness, nutrition, glands,
tonsils and condition of teeth. None are nearly comparable in
size with those found for the resemblance between siblings in
 70 SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.

the case of in~elligence. Elderton!3 adduces further data show-

ing similarly small or insigniffcant correlations between intelli-
gence of children and intelligence and drinking of father, or
mother, morality of parents, physical condition of parents, eco-
nomic condition of home and overcrowding. The fact that Ia.ter
researches have clearly established an association between socio-
economic status of parents and the intelligence of their children,
make it impossible to accept these data as conclusive proof of
the unimportanee of environment. It may, in addition, justly
be urged that isolated aspects of the environment might give
no or small correlations with the intelligence of children, and
that, at the very least, such data should be subjected to treat-
ment by multiple correlation meth.9ds. So, for example, in the
Stanford studyl2 of foster children, the multiple correlation
between the foster children's 1.Q. and various features of the
environment had a value of ·42. Terman"! does indeed state
that tonsil and adenoid troubles seem to have little effect on
the 1.Q., but recently Matthew and Luckey!2 studied some cases
in which changes of some points in LQ. were readily explicable
us caused by medical complications. On the other hand, Hoefer
and Hardyl2 did not find clear improvement in either I.Q. or
E.Q. in the case of several hundred children as result of steps
taken to improve their physical condition. The results of an
investigation reported by Fick!5 agree with these findings. lsser-
lis,3s making use of data collected by Wood, found compuratively
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large correlations on the one hand between teachers' estimate of

intelligence, standurd in school, und intelligence as measured by
tests, and, on the other hand, clothing of children, economic con-
dition of home and care of home. These correlations certainly
seem to open up the possibility of improvement in environmental
circumstances improving the intelligence of children. Hildreth,!2
Goodenough l2 and Heilman!2 do not appear to have found statis-
tically significant differences in the 1. Q. between groups of young
children some of whom hud, and some of whom had not, attended
nursery or kindergarten schools before proceeding to what we
should call the primary school. Gowen and Gooch 29 also did not
find that college students who had attended a better class of high
school showed better performance in their studies at college than
those who had attended a poorer class of high school. They also
found that performance in college is correlated with the perform-
ance of the individual in high school, and from this they conclude
that the largest element in subsequent college performance is the
individual's innate capacity and not the environment into which
he may have been thrown previously. Their sweeping conclusion
is by no meuns .i ustified by their data. At most, their data
would show that the differences between the high schools in ques-
tion were too small to have an uppreciable effect on later college
performance. Schmitt 54 in a publication on the subject, stutes
that he found that children, from the poorer classes, who had
been placed in institutions (Fiirsorge-Anstalten) i.e., under
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS-SECTION F. 71

improved environmental conditions for some years, showed no

better intelligence test performances on the average than the
relatively low ones ordinarily found with children belonging to
the lower soeio-economic levels of society. His conclusion is
that heredity must, at bottom, be responsible for the low I.Q.
found on the average with this class of child. Sehmitt did not,
however, have thoroughly standardised intelligence tests at his
disposal and his results do not exclude that the possibilities of
larger numbers ilnd more dellcate instruments of measurement
might show a differenee in I.Q. accompanying improvement of
environment. It must, however, be added that Rogers12 also
found that transference of children from a distinctly unfavour-
able environment to the favourable one of an excellent institution
did not, at least aftet· a year of the new environment, bring about
an improvement in their I.Q.
In summing up the results of the researches just discussed
it is clear that apparently marked changes and differences of
environment do not affect the 1.Q. of children to any great
extent; indeed we may say that they do so, at m08t, to only a
small extent. We have, however, also to take into consideration
how large these environmental differences are in comparison with
the amount of environment which is present but non-differentiat-
ing, because common to all. The question then becomes how big
an apparently marked change or difference in environment really
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is It cannot reasonably be doubted that very big changes in

environment must affect mental efficiency and so also perform-
ance on a mental test. Our mental asylums offer plenty of cases
where intelligence is radically and permanently affected by infec-
tious disease, and it would be unreasonable to doubt that long
continued and extreme malnutrition will have a very deleterious
effect. Or, to take another type of case, the South African Group
Intelligence Tests presuppose the ability to read, and a child who
has, through laek of educational facilities, lagged behind in this
ability will, for this reason alone, make a poor showing on the
test. Findings such as those of Murdock and Maddow 12 and
Petersen,12 indicating an absence of the so-called language handi-
cap ])ave, thus, only limited validity. We have, then, to fisk
what data are available on the constancy of the I.Q. when
environmental changes of an undoubtedly major charader are
introduced. The fact that the I.Q. remains at least relatively
constant under ordinary circumstances has been shown by such
work as that of Terman,S" Rugg,'l Rugg and Col1oton,'" Garri-
son," Rogers, Durling und MacBride" and is to-day, of ('ourse, a
\\'pl1-known fact.
An illusory attempt to determine the influence of major dif-
ferences of environment on the I.Q. and thus, by implication, on
its constancy, has recently been published by Sims.53 He finds
that siblings reared in the same home show a correlation of ·45
between their] .Q.s as determined by an intelligence test. Unre-
lated pairs equnted with the siblings on the basis of age and
5
 72 SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.

home background, and attending the same school as the siblings,

show a correlation between their I.Q.s of something in the neigh-
oourhood of ·30. His conclusion is that out of the total correla-
tion of ·45 found between siblings, ·30 must be ascribed to simi-
larity of environment and ·15 to heredity. It is, however, obvious
that Sims has overlooked that, while in this way eliminating
identity of parentage, he has by no means eliminated similarity
of heredity, since it can hardly be denied that, on the whole, the
different levels of socia-economic status of the parents may cor-
relate in a positive way with hereditary fact.ors making for higher
intelligence not only in their own case but also in the case of
their children.
In the recent so-called Stanford and Chicago investigations l2
with foster children, the procedure followed consisted of attempt-
ing to determine what changes in the I.Q. of foster children took
place in connection with their placement in the new foster
environment. In the Stanford investigation Burks finds in
respect of intelligence, a correlation in the case of foster children,
adopted in the first few months of life, with the adopting fat,her
of ·09 and with the adopting mother of ,23. If we could be quite
certain that no selective influences were at work tending to let
the more intelligent class of parent get the more intelligent
foster children, these ~orrelatiolls, in so far as they are statistic-
ally reliable, would have to be ascribed to environmental influ-
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ences; Terman;"1 in discussing the question of selection, admits

that extraneous factors were so carefully controlled that the data
is about as crucial as it is humanly possible to secure, number of
cases considered, but holds that there is a bare possibility of even
the small correlations found being due to selective placement.
The average I.Q. of the Stanford group of foster children is 107·4.
Since a reasonable estimate of the intelligence of the parents
would· put their I.Q. at, say, approximately 100, it would appear
that the more favourable environment of the foster homes had
effected an improvement of some 6 to 8 points. Unfortunately,
the estimate of the intelligence of the parents is a rather specu-
lative one. Freeman, Holzinger and Mitchel\12 obtained results
in the case of the Chicago investigations which, in the main,
agree with those obtained in the Stanford invcst,igation. The
average I.Q. of the foster children in thifl 'case is 97'5, but they
were adopted later in life than those of the Stanford group, and
it is estimated that the avernge intelligenee of t,heir parents is
also considerably lower than in the case of the Stanford group.
Unfortunately. here, too, the estimate of the parents' intelligence
is of a somewhat speculative nature It WI1S further found in the
Chicago investigation that, where 130 sib pairs had been sepa-
rated, one being placed in a superior home and one in an inferior
home, those placed in the superior homes averaged 9 point,s
higher than those placed in the inferior homes. There can hardly
be any doubt that selective plaeement has played a role in givinll
this result, since, as Terrnan 61 points out, there was a correlation
 PRESIDENTTAL ADDRESS-SECTION F. 73
of ·34 between foster parents and foster children at the time of
adoption. Selective placement may possibly also account suffi-
ciently for the fact that correlations of from ·25 to ·34 are found
between unrelated foster and" own " children living in the same
home. This remark also applies to the fact that the correlation
between foster and own children in the same home was found to
be ·37. There are, however, other findings in the Chicago study
which cannot be explained in this way and which, on our view,
must be interpreted as showing that improved environment appre-
ciably affects the I.Q. Thus, in the case of 74 children placed
in foster homes at the age of eight years, the average I.Q. at the
time of adoption was 95 and after four years it was 102·5. Those
going to better homes improved up to 105. In the less favourable
homes the I.Q. rose to 100·5. Moreover, siblings who had been
separated and brought up in different homes showed less resem-
blance than siblings in general do. This indicates that the
resemblance of siblings is due in part to similar environment. In
agreement with this, it, was found that siblings who had been
separated late diffend less than those who had been sepamted
early, and corresponding findings were obtained for those who had
been separated a longer and a shorter time respectively. In addi-
tion, those who had been placed in similar homes differed less
than those who had been placed in homes which were dissimilar.
On the whole, then, we have to conclude, from the data before us,
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that major, even though not extreme changes in environmental

circumstances do have an apprJ')ciable effect on the size of the
T.Q. The size of such changes in I.Q. is, however, quite limited
for major changes of the order under discussion. That this
should be so is indicated by the general trend of other researches
that have been discussed, and a further corroboration is obtained
from the work of Goodenough. 25 It has already been pointed
out, for the case of children of school age, that their general
level of I.Q. tends to vary with the socio-economic status of the
parents. Should this, in the main, be the effect of environmental
factors, we might reasonably expect younger children from dif-
ferent socio-economic levels to show less difference. The work
of Goodenough shows that, for children of from two to four years
of age, the differences are quite of the same general size as in
the case of school children.
Finally, we wish to refer shortly to the result obtained by
the present writer in South Africa. Use was made of the South
African Group Intelligence Tests, the norms for which have been
worked out on the basis of the tests results of nearly 17,000
European children in t,he Union, care being taken to make the
norms as nearly as possible repre$entative of the European popu-
lation. It was found that the average I.Q. of 3,281 .. poor
white" children, from the ages 120 to 155 mont.hs shows clear
tendency to sink with increase of chronological age. The follow-
ing table gives the main facts:-
 74 SOUTH AFRICAN ,JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.

Age. No. tested. Aver. I.Q. SD of Dist.

120-123 356 95'4 II'4
124-127 341 95'4 11'8
128-131 351 95'1 12'2
132-135 357 92'6 12'6
136-139 328 93'5 II'4
140-143 338 94'0 II'3
144-147 404 92'7 12'25
148-151 395 91'4 12'3
152-155 411 90'6 12'0
A straight line fitted to the points given by the different
. avenlges by the method of least squares gives an average fall
from one average I.Q. to the next of '5765, that is, a total
fall of about 4'6 points in some three years. Three times the
standard error of the angle of fall is ·195, since<Jt= v'6/k(4k 2 -1)0
= '065. It may then be easily calculated that at the very
least we can be certain, for the three years' time with which
we are hera concerned, of a fall of over 4 points. The most
:r.oasonable interpretation to give to this finding is that the fall
is due to un£avourable environmental conditions und·er which the
poor white child lives.
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