First-borns aren’t always smarter
Intelligence is more complex than a child’s IQ, writes Linda Blair.
A recent study at Leipzig University has confirmed that firstborns have a higher IQ than their younger siblings.
The study was carried out to address a question psychologists have been arguing over since 1874, when the British anthropologist Francis Galton collected information on a number of English scientists and found that most of them were firstborn sons.
As a result, he concluded the eldest child in the family is likely to do best intellectually.
Galton thought this was because parents can offer their first-born child exclusive attention and rich linguistic input during the period when language is emerging and the brain is developing most rapidly.
A number of researchers tried to prove Galton right, but the studies were too small for anyone to feel certain the findings reflected the population generally. The Leipzig study, on the other hand, is based on a huge amount of data. The information from studies conducted in the U.S., U.K. and Germany was pooled, giving researchers data from 20,186 individuals aged 18-98.
The IQ difference they found isn’t large — first-borns scored on average 1.5 points higher than second-borns — but it occurred significantly more often than would be expected by chance, so we can feel confident the conclusion is correct. First-borns really are likely to have a higher IQ.
But wait. Is it justifiable to conclude that first-borns are more intelligent than their siblings? I don’t think so.
The first thing to point out is that IQ isn’t the same as intelligence. It’s a good predictor of academic success, but little else.
Intelligence is much more com- plex. It’s the ability to perceive information, to make sense of it and store it as knowledge, and to have the capacity to apply it in ways that are useful to and/or valued by oneself and others. A person can express intelligence through music, art, dance or sensitivity to other people, as well as through the more strictly academic routes.
Every child hopes to be recognized as special and different from their siblings. Because first-borns receive so much language input from their parents and are likely to become accomplished in that way, it’s only sensible for laterborn children to choose a different area — music, sport or art, for example — in which to excel.
Each child in a family is intelligent — just in different ways.