In one of my recent blog posts on Infant Stimulation I mentioned a book in which the authors promised parents that they could raise their child’s IQ by thirty points. To achieve this goal, parents had only to follow the program of activities described in their book. This bogus claim, which many parents take seriously, merits a blog on intelligence and, on infant intelligence in particular. Let’s start with a definition. The IQ, or intelligence quotient, is arrived at by dividing a child’s mental age (MA), by his or her chronological age (CA). The child’s MA is determined by the child’s performance on a variety of tests, in comparison to the performance of normative (IQ 100) comparison group of same age children. These tests, including those for memory, vocabulary, concept formation, problem solving and more, are what define intelligence as measured by tests. A child who scores higher than the normative group will have a higher MA than his or her CA and thus a higher IQ than the norm of 100. In the same way, a child who scores lower than the normative group will have an IQ below 100.

A few additional points. First, there are no units of intelligence and you can’t, or shouldn’t, perform mathematical operations upon IQs. A child with an IQ of 100 for example, is not twice as smart as a child with an IQ of 50. The IQ is simply a rank, no different than the points given to a competitive ice skater or gymnast. There are no units of ice skating or gymnastics either.

Secondly, the same IQ score can indicate very different performances. For example a child who scores high on vocabulary and low on concept formation will attain the same overall score as a child who performs at the same level on both tests.

Thirdly, the IQ is generally more determined by heredity (60-65 percent) than it is by the environment (40-35 percent) except in extreme cases. Finally, the IQ generally remains constant across the life span.

In practical terms by the time a child is five or six most parents have a pretty good sense of their child’s IQ (or relative brightness) and can estimate it within ten points or so. This is because in daily life parents intuit IQ in terms a child’s language facility, readiness to learn, adaptability to new situations and problem solving. This brings us to the issue of infant intelligence. Most intelligence tests involve language both in the instructions given to the child and in the tests themselves. Inasmuch as infants have little or no language, it is really not possible to measure their intelligence. To be sure there are a number of infant intelligence scales, but these are limited to measuring the infant’s motor and attentive skills. Performance on Infant intelligence scales does not predict later intellectual ability.

After this long digression, it should be obvious why any claims that particular activity programs increase an infant’s IQ are false and misleading. There is absolutely no evidence that we can increase an infants IQ in a programmatic way. The skills and abilities that are measured on intelligence tests simply cannot be increased because they are largely genetically determined. But we can inhibit and retard intellectual growth with overzealous stimulation.

The Just Ask Baby program was created in part, at least, to counter some of false claims about raising children’s IQ’s. In the Just Ask Baby videos, we show that, by simply following the babies lead, we can provide all the age appropriate stimulation needed to maximize intellectual, social and emotional development.