About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about individual differences in intelligence, focusing in particular on: (i) the non-static nature of intelligence, highlighted by the Flynn effect; (ii) the demonstration of the Flynn effect showing that environmental factors must be impacting apparent changes in population intelligence; (iii) the role of twin studies in examining the non-static nature of intelligence; (iv) findings that around 50% of variance in IQ scores are genetically founded, using twin studies to establish this; (v) the role that gene-environment interaction might play in intelligence variation; (vi) research into the impact of the environment on intelligence variation, which includes neighbourhood environment and parental income.

About the lecturer

Dr Ashok Jansari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Jansari’s research interests include memory disorders, prosopagnosia, executive functions, and synaesthesia. Dr Jansari is most famous for his research into prosopagnosia, having made numerous TV appearances, including on BBC1’s The One Show, as well as hosting his own ‘Neuro Talk’ YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAshokJansariNeuroTalk/featured

Some of Dr Jansari's recent publications include 'Acquired synaesthesia following 2C-B use' (2019), 'Using virtual reality to investigate multitasking ability in individuals with frontal lobe lesions' (2019), and 'Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crown and susceptibility to change blindness' (2018).