Focused Intelligence
Donna G. Stevenson <dgstevenson@mac.com>: This page is part of a document, titled Brain-Quadrant Integration, which examines whether imbalanced use of four parts of the brain, the left and right neocortex and limbic system, could be the source of focused intelligence, learning and mental disorders, and autism.
On this page, it is argued that it is reasonable to believe that focused intelligence is created in the brain by overdeveloping some parts of the brain and leaving other parts underdeveloped. This trade-off in abilities would explain the paradox that intelligence is associated with social problems and disorders of many kinds. It is also consistent with the association in time of trends in increasing IQ’s and increasing number of people with disorders.
It is clear that learning and mental disorders do not bar someone from being gifted or highly intelligent, and some have made the claim that there is an association between the conditions. Kay Jamison (1993) wrote in Touched with Fire that “A possible link between madness and genius is one of the oldest and most persistent of cultural notions” (p. 50). Researcher Michael Corballis (1983) wrote “Paradoxically, this disorder [developmental dyslexia] may also afflict those who are in other respects gifted.” (p. 161). It is this paradox that I believe can be understood by seeing focused intelligence as a trade-off - some areas of the brain strengthened and some areas left weaker.
In our understanding of ourselves, one mystery is what difference could transform us into a species which can write plays, build monuments, and come to greater and greater understanding of the workings of the universe. I am proposing that the key to this kind of activity is not just greater over-all intelligence. It is clear to me that we are not simply smarter versions of our nearest primate relatives. I believe that it is uneven development of the brain that not only makes us smarter (in a narrower way) but also disrupts natural activities and creates the drive to accomplish tasks that would otherwise not be important to us.
Beyond even our strengths helping us, we might find that our weaknesses become our great strengths. An example of how this could be involves the connection between intuition and science. Intuition is obviously an important ability. Malcolm Gladwell (2005), in his book Blink, impressed me with its power – especially in situations where decisions have to be made quickly and with limited information. On the other hand, Lewis Wolpert (1993) wrote in The Unnatural Nature of Science that “Science does not fit with our natural expectations.” (p. 1) “Wolpert insists that science is deeply paradoxical and surprising, an affront to common sense rather than an extension of it, and he makes a good case.” (Dawkins, 1998, p. 179) and Wolpert (1993) wrote “if scientific ideas were natural, they would not have required the difficult and protracted techniques of science for their discovery” (p. 6).
Newton’s law that objects stay in motion unless positively stopped is counter-intuitive. So is Galileo’s discovery that, when there is no air resistance, light objects fall at the same rate as heavy objects. So is the fact that solid matter, even a hard diamond, consists almost entirely of empty space. (Dawkins, 1998, p. 179)
In this particular example, I would suggest that some scientific discoveries are difficult to make for those who have a strong ability to have intuitive ideas about nature. Weakening our intuition, and not simply strengthening other abilities, may be necessary for some discoveries. Therefore, not only is there a benefit to narrowing our motivations, and clearly a benefit from strengthening some of our functions, there may also be a benefit from lacking natural abilities to deal with certain situations and information.
One difficulty in discussing these issues is that even if we agree that great business people and scientists are intelligent, there are many different definitions of intelligence, but an exact definition isn’t necessary for my purposes. In general, the intelligent seem to be able to think, to learn, and to apply their abilities to help themselves or others. What I am going to claim from this is that it is very unlikely that intelligence emanates from a single part of the brain. Researcher Joseph Hellige (1993) wrote “even simple tasks consist of a number of components or subprocesses” (p. 29). I am also going to claim that personality is another quality that we have that is unlikely to emanate from one part of the brain. If both are qualities that develop as the brain develops, then there should be some sort of connection between the two.
For centuries people have postulated models of personality in which it is comprised of four elements. Ned Herrmann (1988, 1996) expanded on this, drawing his inspiration from the right and left neocortex and limbic system. In other parts of this document, I explain why I believe that there is reason to investigate this particular model, but what would be required for the brain-quadrant integration idea to work is that parts of the brain develop together, and that the total number of sections is not very large. Then, as the brain develops, some parts become overdeveloped, and some parts are underdeveloped.
This model would explain why we have so many stereotypes of people in different professions – absent-minded professors, socially-inept engineers, doctors with bad handwriting. I’ve read so many autistic biographies in which the person enjoyed organizing their things and also had very acute hearing for faint sounds that I’ve come to believe that the old-fashioned shushing librarian might really have heard whispers very loudly.
Intelligence, giftedness and genius would have to do with having the right balance between different sets of abilities. Too much imbalance would cause difficulties. An article titled ‘Nutty Professors’ in The Chronicle of Higher Education said “It has often been observed that the more prodigious the intellect, the more it can compromise other aspects of the personality, such as self-awareness and social grace.” (Brottman, 2005, B7)
One reason that this may not make intuitive sense is that there appears to be a strong connection between success and intelligence. “Another way of stating this assertion is to point out that the theoretical distinctions that some make between intelligence and achievement are immaterial to the empirical reality that a good measure of one almost always is highly correlated with a good measure of the other.” (Ceci, Rosenblum & Kumpf, 1998, p. 290)
I do think that this four-quadrant model matches these findings, that success and intelligence go hand in hand, with two caveats. One is that achievement would need to be measured in an environment that allows for specialized intelligence. In an environment where one is required to be accepted in the group for safety’s sake, and must complete the same tasks as the others in the group, then this quadrant model would predict that the relationship between IQ and achievement would not be as well correlated. The other issue is that this model would not contradict the relationship between intelligence and achievement for a wide middle range of IQ’s, but it would predict that the relationship would not be the same for the extreme values of IQ.
For those that the imbalance is very great, I am hypothesizing that this would cause autism. Elsewhere in this document, I go into greater detail about evidence that supports this assertion, but I will say that again and again you see that autism is not just about deficits. Donna Williams (1994) wrote about her autism and about tests she was asked to take:
They were some sort of intelligence test, but instead of just showing an overall intelligence level, they showed which areas a person was intelligent in. It seemed I was exceptional in some areas and very backward in others. I was both genius and retarded. (p. 41)
One might argue that some people with autism have high intelligence, and that others don’t have this strength, but even those who are not obviously intelligent have their surprising abilities. Ranae Johnson (1992) wrote about her son in Winter’s Flower. “Kelton learned effortlessly, only his method was different – close to sheer genius I thought sometimes!” (p. 63) and “he knew how to get on any roof, how to disappear and return; how to swim and ride a bike without a lesson; how to zip over eight-foot fences; how to take care of himself; how [to] unlock combination locks without the combination; how to take a lawn mower apart and put it back together” (p. 81). A teacher said “One day you are convinced he is really retarded, then he will do something that tells you he is probably smarter than you are in some areas.” (p. 125) In this case, those around Kelton see that he has strengths. I believe that for some people with autism, the deficits completely obscure any strengths.
I see intelligence emanating from the range of abilities that people have. Greater imbalances would impair intelligence and ability to perform well on testing. Both in life and academically, intelligence would be impaired. What I am suggesting is that people with autism have great strengths and great deficits.
One reason to dispute this view of intelligence, that it is a matter of someone’s balance of abilities rather than a more singular property of the person, is that there is some evidence that people who are intelligent, who do well in their individual areas of achievement, also do well generally in broad testing. Ian Deary (2001) has written an overview of intelligence, in Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction, in which he wrote about IQ testing and intelligence.
Once again, it is a statistical distillation that describes a solid research finding: That there is something shared by all the tests in terms of people’s tendencies to do well, modestly, or poorly on all of them. (p. 10)
He also wrote that “there are sub-groups of tests that relate more highly to each other than to the other tests” (Deary, 2001, p. 10). This aspect is exactly what one would predict from a four-quadrant model. Whether by coincidence or connection, he mentions four sub-groups.
In fact, the common name for these four collections of sub-groups is ‘group factors’. These group factors refer to certain domains of cognitive performance that can be separated to a degree. The statistical methods used to examine these data can give people scores on ‘verbal comprehension’, ‘perceptual organization’, ‘working memory’, and ‘processing speed’. (p. 10)
This still leaves us with the question of how a four-part model of the brain could account for the part of intelligence which is a general intelligence. Though it isn’t the orthodox view, one way to answer this is to say that there really is no general intelligence. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences follows that path. “ I was challenging the widespread belief – one held by many psychologists and entrenched in our many languages – that intelligence is a single faculty and that one is either “smart” or “stupid” across the board.” (Gardner, 1999, p. 34)
Though I agree with much of what Gardner is proposing, denying the idea of general intelligence is not the tack that I am taking. I am going to suggest that intelligence has to do with overemphasizing parts of the brain, but that it doesn’t matter as much as one might think which parts are strengthened. I believe this to be a logical argument because the model divides the development of the brain only into four sections, and that the functions haven’t been slotted into these parts in a mutually exclusive fashion.
What we know about the laterality of the brain shows that the left and right functions often do similar tasks, but just in different ways. Researcher Joseph Hellige (1993) wrote “it is rarely the case in the intact brain that one hemisphere can perform a task normally whereas the other hemisphere is completely unable to perform the task at all” (p. 29). One might also guess from the evolutionary layering of the neocortex over the limbic system that some functions in the neocortex are doing similar tasks as the limbic system, but in different ways. I believe that there would be enough overlap in ability to account for the general intelligence that researchers see.
There would be interesting details to this model, such as whether some combinations of quadrants produce higher IQ scores, in discovering the personality attributes of intelligent people of different types, or exploring the idea that a single, lower IQ number could describe someone who is well-balanced or someone who is too unbalanced. All in all, I believe that this quadrant model, with intelligence coming from emphasizing some parts of the brain but leaving other parts weakened, is an excellent match to what we see, and worth further investigation.
I believe that a possible clue to these topics is that both IQ and mental disorders have been increasing over the same time period. The increase in IQ has been named the Flynn Effect and has extensive support. “Data now are available for 20 nations, and there is not a single exception to the finding of massive IQ gains over time.” (Flynn, 1998, p. 26) “Recent data show that IQ gains in Britain began no later than the last decade of the 19th century at a time when, paradoxically, IQ tests did not exist”. (Flynn, 1998, p. 26) On the other hand, about the increase of mental illness over time, Torrey and Miller (2002) wrote in detail in The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present.
Both these trends continue to be mysterious and unexplained. The types of environmental issues discussed, such as vaccines, nutrition and complex modern life, often are suggested as explanations for both trends. No current model explains how those factors could both make us smarter and crazier. Research continues on these types of environmental factors, but no evidence has been found that substantially supports those hypotheses. Though it is possible to dispute the rising numbers, or what the data reflects, I think it is worth considering what it means for both intelligence and mental disorders to be increasing over the same time period.
In investigating what factors are important to intelligence, our common sense tells us what might raise IQ. In his book Intelligence, which summarizes current understanding on the topic, Dreary (2001) wrote about results from twin studies and the “near-incredible conclusions” (p. 74). “A counter-intuitive and rather unpalatable finding to assiduous parents: that family upbringing has very little effect on intelligence level. Most of us would begin with the opposite assumption.” (p. 74) I would suggest that it is those same factors which our intuition tells us should effect individual intelligence levels which are what we assume would create the upward trend in IQ, but these are unlikely to be the cause. This may seem inconceivable, but consider that researcher James Flynn (1998) wrote “I believe it is fair to say that up to now, efforts to identify the environmental factors that have caused IQ gains have not come to much.” (p. 49)
There are also plausible environmental factors that have been suggested for the rise of mental illnesses, but these have not successfully explained the rise in numbers. Torrey and Miller (2002) wrote about suggested causes of increasing insanity in England in the 1800’s.
Railway travel, which was thought to injure the brain, was frequently cited, since the development of railroads coincided temporally with the rise of insanity. The steam engine, “uterine excitement,” “tight lacing,” severe bee stings, constipation, “sudden change from quiet to bustle,” the study of astrology, “blowing the fife all night,” and “attending socialist lectures” all had adherents as causes of insanity, as did a multitude of other factors. (p. 98)
Not only can our intuition mislead us as to what factors are involved, it may also lead us to think there is a cause and effect relationship between factors when the relationship is something other than what we would expect. Torrey and Miller (2002) wrote about the association between insanity and poverty.
Since most insane persons sooner or later became paupers, the causal relationship of insanity and poverty was widely debated in the 1850s. Isaac Ray argued that “insanity … may be traced, in many instances, more or less directly to poverty.” However, he added that “it does not follow that these persons were paupers before becoming insane.” In support of this, John Chapin, in a study in New York State, found that 82 percent of insane persons had been self-supporting “previous to the invasion of insanity”: “The relation, therefore, that pauperism holds to insanity does not appear to be that of cause and effect, to the degree that many suppose; pauperism being rather a condition involved in the situation of its victims.” (p. 241-242)
If one assumed, instead, that both increases in IQ and increases in mental illnesses were connected, we might begin to look at other possible causes. If one thought that unbalanced development of the brain was the underlying cause of both conditions, then one might reasonably conclude that it is within the person’s genes and in their pre-birth environment that would be the most likely explanation for how this development occurred. It is much less likely that environmental influences after birth could account for this.
Though both genetics and the person’s environment are clearly involved in intelligence and mental illness, the rise itself may be attributable to one or the other. About environmental influences, the obvious possibilities, like nutrition, haven’t been able to explain the increase in IQ. The number of less obvious trends seems endless, but I can’t imagine that there is an environmental aspect that we could remove that would drop both intelligence and mental disorders in the resulting generation. This may simply reflect a blind spot in my own intelligence, an unwillingness to accept that a subtle environmental aspect could have that kind of power over our lives.
I will admit that I am more intrigued by the possibility that the increases may be through greater inheritance. A counter-intuitive aspect is that one might assume that it is in a rigorous, primitive society that intelligence would evolve to the greatest extent. In discussing history from an environmental point of view in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond (1997) wrote:
That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent. (p. 21)
This might seem to make logical sense, but wouldn’t necessarily be true if intelligence was increased through strengthening some areas of the brain and leaving other areas weakened. In that situation, we might expect that in an environment that shelters and values people with unique skills, and accepts quirky individuals, that intelligence would increase. This wouldn’t suspend evolution, it would only change the environment in which success and failure were taking place.
One might argue that even if this sheltering environment and increase in IQ’s were true over some part of human history, currently, being an intelligent woman leads one to have fewer children and have them later, and therefore one would expect that this trend would lead to a lowering of the average IQ over time. In contrast to this, I believe that there are trends which allow more intelligent people to survive to adulthood, and trends which allow many more of the very intelligent to go on to have any children at all.
Researchers Geschwind and Galaburda (1987) wrote “the same influences that alter brain development also lead to disturbance of the birth process” (p. 176) This means that in the past, these babies with atypical development, and their mothers, may have been more likely to die in the birth process. Joan Hundley (1971), parent of an autistic son, wrote “To start off with, more babies survive today. Women who look like miscarrying are often prevented from doing so by injections” (p. 102) and “Fifty years ago the slow and difficult feeders among autistic children might not have had the same chance of survival as they have now. Before the days of antibiotics some of them could have weakened and died of infections” (p. 102). Therefore, if these same sorts of arguments are applicable to intelligence, and that is what I am arguing, we may find that the trends in medicine and infant care allow more intelligent babies to survive to adulthood – especially those whose IQ would be greatest.
If great intelligence is linked to social problems and mental disorders, then there are innumerable trends which could contribute to them being more likely to go on to have any children at all. Intelligent, quirky people are able to find a compatible spouse at college, working at the same company, or over the internet – all increasing opportunities over the last century. Simon Baron-Cohen, whose research focuses on autism, has speculated about changes in our environment which may have allowed people with autism to find mates when they wouldn’t have otherwise. “Baron-Cohen, wrote an essay for a Web site called edge.org, suggesting that the rising case numbers might be attributed to the march of technology.” (Kirby, 2005, p. 224) “The airplane allowed autistic men to travel. Once in a foreign culture, Baron-Cohen wrote, their odd behavior might be less detectable.” (Kirby, 2005, p. 224) “As for the computer, it allowed autistic men to make a good living.” (Kirby, 2005, p. 224) Better management of mental illnesses and learning disorders may allow some people to have children when they wouldn’t have otherwise. We may also find that changes in brain chemistry compromise fertility. Infertility treatments may be of much greater benefit to intelligent people because of lower fertility and because of their older age when they finally meet that quirky soul-mate.
I believe that though the IQ rise has been very dramatic, leaving few people considering whether this is from the spread of genes for being smart, there have been dramatic changes in our environment which may have helped spread those genes. I believe that the large numbers of changes, and the large impact of some of those changes, make it worth taking another look at whether the spread of genes could contribute to the trend of rising IQ’s.
One additional complication to consider is that if the brain-quadrant model is correct, it does not necessarily mean that the genes to specify which quadrants to emphasize are linked to those genes that would specify how much to overemphasize those areas. Jim Bowery (2003) has written a web article titled “Immigration May Be a Major Cause of Autism.” Though I do not agree with his conclusions, nor have I checked his calculations, I find the overall idea interesting. He claims that there is a significant correlation between the number of ‘Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita’ and ‘autism rates in 2000AD.’ This was a reminder to me that we may need to consider the mixing of populations to get a better overall picture of how focused intelligence could have spread.
Considering that we now have a very large number of focused and intelligent people in our population, and even if the numbers have gone up dramatically in the past century or two, there would presumably have needed to be a long period of time for these genes to spread. In Madness, Roy Porter (2002) wrote:
Madness may be as old as mankind. Archaeologists have unearthed skulls datable back to at least 5000 BC which have been trephined or trepanned – small round holes have been bored in them with flint tools. The subject was probably thought to be possessed by devils which the holes would allow to escape. (p. 10)
Therefore, I believe that there could have been enough time for these genes to spread over the centuries, and reasons to believe that the genes could have become even more prevalent over the last century or two. We might even find that this scenario could explain some of the mysteries of our history as a species.
So though I do believe that our intuition tells us that human nature is unchanging, and that changes in behavior over time are a result of things we can control like culture and pollution, I believe that other models are worth pursuing since science has been unable to prove this intuition correct. In the rest of this document, I continue to try to show that the Brain-Quadrant Integration model is worth further investigation, especially because it would explain the overlapping pattern of mental disorders, and some of the very quirky aspects of autism.
Bowery, J. (2003). Immigration May Be a Major Cause of Autism. Retrieved on January 6, 2006, from http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/imbamcoa.html.
Brottman, M. (2005). Nutty Professors. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 52:4, p. B7.
Ceci, S. J., Rosenblum, T. B. and Kumpf, M. (1998). The Shrinking Gap Between High- and Low-Scoring Groups: Current Trends and Possible Causes. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures (pp. 287-302). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Corballis, M. C. (1983). Human Laterality. New York and London: Academic Press.
Dawkins, R. (1998). Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Deary, I. J. (2001). Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company.
Kirby, D. (2005). Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Flynn, J. R. (1998). IQ Gains Over Time: Toward Finding the Causes. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures (pp. 25-66). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books.
Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York and Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Geschwind, N. and Galaburda, A. (1987). Cerebral Lateralization: Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Hellige, J. B. (1993). Hemispheric Asymmetry: What’s Right and What’s Left. Harvard University Press: Cambridge Massachusetts.
Herrmann, N. (1988). The Creative Brain. Lake Lure, North Carolina: Brain Books.
Herrmann, N. (1996). The Whole Brain Business Book. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Hundley, J. M. (1971). The Small Outsider; The Story of an Autistic Child. New York: Ballantine Books.
Jamison, K. R. (1993). Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Johnson, R. (1992). Winter’s Flower. Salem, Oregon: RainTree.
Porter, R. (2002). Madness: A Brief History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Torrey, E. F. and Miller, J. (2002). The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press.
Williams, D. (1994). Somebody Somewhere: Breaking Free From the World of Autism. New York: Times Books.
Wolpert, L. (1993). The Unnatural Nature of Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Brain-Quadrant Integration
