The Flynn Effect is the grad­ual rise of the aver­age IQ over gen­er­a­tions, and the rea­son why IQ tests are peri­od­i­cally renor­malised to reset the aver­age to 100: an aver­age IQ in our gen­er­a­tion equals a higher than aver­age IQ a gen­er­a­tion or two before­hand. Or does it?

Accord­ing to new research it appears that the Flynn effect is in reverse—or is at best cor­rect­ing itself.

The researchers sur­mise that the per­for­mance decline is due to “some qual­i­ta­tive change in the empha­sis on abstract rea­son­ing and problem-solving [within the edu­ca­tional sys­tem] or a decreased empha­sis on speed”.

This isn’t new, of course, and was noted almost two years ago with this inter­est­ing comment:

Does this mean we’re becom­ing less intel­li­gent? Prob­a­bly not. It likely reflects the fact that the skill set of pop­u­la­tion is chang­ing and that we become prac­tised at dif­fer­ent tasks at dif­fer­ent rates as mod­ern life develops.

via Mind Hacks