RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Environment: The Cumulation of Effects Is Yet to be Understood
JF Harvard Educational Review
JO herp
FD Harvard Educational Press
SP 511
OP 522
DO 10.17763/haer.39.3.554n5l7t141025n9
VO 39
IS 3
A1 Stinchcombe, Arthur
YR 1969
UL http://harvardeducationalreview.org/content/39/3/511.abstract
AB Professor Stinchcombe deals with the Jensen article from the point of view of an"environmentalist" but not from the simplistic stance that Professor Jensen attacked in his original article. Stinchcombe argues that deprivation does more than prevent children from learning simple skills at an early age—that cultures or social conditions must operate consistently and sequentially to produce successively higher levels of cognitive functioning. Environments, he argues, are cumulative,and until researchers can account for the complexity of environment, statements about the proportional effects of heredity and environment are premature. Thus extrapolations from twin studies limited to a single social group to estimates of the genetic capabilities of a different group are particularly suspect.