Table 10.3 in the textbook suggests that there is an 8% difference in the amount of explained variability in intelligence between identical twins raised in the same environment and those separated at birth, which suggests that environment plays a part in helping to determine intelligence. The book also goes on to discuss this and highlight experience as an important influence in heritability coefficient later in Chapter 10. This is further …show more content…
It discusses the long term studies conducted by USC neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang on students from lower income and higher income neighborhoods and why their intelligence levels differ. The overall findings of the study was that the lower income (the children exposed to more violence as a part of their lives) children's brains ended up developing with less surface area and they ended up having "weaker real-time neural connections and interaction in parts of the brain involved in awareness, judgment, and ethical and emotional processing. (Links to an external site.)" The tie between this worrying trend, poverty, and the effect of environment on intelligence