ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effects of heredity and parental socialization on IQ development. It emphasizes cross-cultural comparisons in order to determine which aspects of the development of children’s symbol use are universal and which reflect particular cultural influences. For Jerison, intelligence is related to information-processing capacity, language, and the ability to construct reality. Woodruff and Premack in a nonlinguistic study, showed that chimpanzees will intentionally deceive human trainers, or tell them the truth, depending on whether the human is competitive or cooperative. During the past 10 years, research has been guided by a cognitive development framework that includes concerns about the social context of language and interpersonal communication. Early language development is now seen as strongly paralleling the cognitive achievements of sensory-motor and preoperational thought. From an evolutionary point of view, the most important criterion in defining intelligence in this way is that the mental activities be related to genetic survival (Darwinian fitness).
