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Does your older brother think he's cleverer
than you? Well, he's probably right. According to a new research published in the
journal Intelligence, the oldest children in families are likely to have the highest
IQs and the youngest the lowest.
A number of studies have suggested
that IQ scores decline with birth order. In the most recent study, at Vrije University,
Amsterdam, researchers looked at men and women whose IQ had been tested at the ages
of 5, 12, and 18.
The results, which show a trend
for the oldest to score better than the youngest in each test, involved about 200,000
people. That showed that first-borns had a three-point IQ advantage over the second-born,
who was a point ahead of the next in line.
The order of birth can also affect
personality, achievement, and career, with first-borns being more academically successful
and more likely to win Nobel prizes. However, eldest children are less likely to
be radical(不同凡响的) and pioneering. Charles Darwin, for example, was the fifth child of
six.
Exactly why there should be such
differences is not clear, and there are a number of theories on environmental influences
on the child.
The so-called dilution(稀释法) theory
suggests that as family resources, both emotional and physical, as well as economic,
are limited, it follows that, as a result , as more children come along, the levels
of parental attention and encouragement will drop. Another theory is that the intellectual
environment in the family favors the first-born who has, at least for some time,
the benefit of individual care and help.
The theory which enjoys the most
support is that the extra time and patience that the earlier-borned get from their
parents, compared with those arriving later, gives them an advantage.
