-
Why are you so smart
Scientists
have been trying to search for
genes
for intelligence be used to determine genetic IQ?
To what extent do the genes you're born
with have to do with IQ? The following
passage tells us some latest studies on this
issue.
科学家们正在试图寻找可能治理着智力的
“
聪明
”
基因。
但是智力基因能被用来测定遗传
的智商吗？与生俱来的基因在多大程度上与智商有关系？下面的文章将告知我们在这个问
题上的最新研究。
It is one of
the most important predictors of financial and
social success. It helps determine
where you work, where you live, whom
you marry, whether you divorce, whether you have
children out of wedlock, whether you
wind up in jail. It can be measured with great
precision, and
it changes very little
over a lifetime. It is substantially influenced by
your genes.
这是经济和社会胜利最为主要的猜测者之一。它赞助决定你在哪儿工作，在哪儿生活，
和谁结婚，是否会离婚，是否会未婚生子，是否会有牢狱之灾。它可以被十分准确地测算，
毕生中很少变化。它受你的基因的重大影响。
Or
is it?
真是如斯吗？
When the
subject is human intelligence, you don't have to
go far to find an argument. In the
century since British psychologist
Charles Spearman proposed that a single, general
mental ability
governs many aspects of
cognitive performance, scientists and society have
bickered long and
often about
intelligence: what it is, what it does, who has
it, how to improve it, how to measure it,
and how to best interpret and use those
measurements.
当探讨说的是人类智能时，你不用太省力就能够找到论据。自从英国心理学家查尔斯
?
斯皮尔曼提出一种单个的综合智力管理着认知行为的许多方面的主
意
，一个世纪以来，科
学家们和社会
已对智力进行了长期而一直的争论：
它是什么，
作用是什么，<
/p>
谁领有它
，
如何
改良它，如何测算它，以及如何最好地解释和利用测算方法。
Most recently,
the controversy incited by the 1994 book The Bell
Curve has revived the
nature-nurture
debate: Is intelligence malleable or genetically
programmed? Is a human mind born
or
made? After decades of research, most intelligence
experts have come to decide that it's both, in
roughly equal measure.
最近，由
1994
年出版的书《钟形曲线》所引发的争议
,
再次引起了人们对先天禀性和后
天培养这个问题的争论：
智力是可练习的仍是遗传不变的？人类的思维是生成的还是发明出
来的？经由几十年
的研究，绝大多数智力科学家的论断是，两者兼而有之，分量大抵均等。
So
it was perhaps inevitable that someone somewhere
would begin the search for
genes. That
someone is Robert Plomin, a 25-year veteran of
intelligence research who is currently
stationed at the Institute of
Psychiatry in London. Last year, Plomin published
the first evidence of
a gene linked to
high IQ. This year, he reported the locations of
three more smart genes. And
within the
next several months, he expects to find at least
two dozen of the most important genetic
determinants of intelligence. Already,
his work has provoked visions
－
and fears
－
of DNA
doctors tinkering with the gears of
cognition.
do it,
因此，某处某人会开端寻找
“
聪明
”
基因，兴许
是不可防止的，
。那个
“
某人
”
就是罗伯特
?
普洛明
，
一个从事智力研究已有
25
年之久的
有教训的专家，
他目前在伦敦的精神
病学学院
工作。去年，普洛明公然了一个基因与高
智商
相联系的第一个证据。今年，他又
发布发现了
三个聪明基因的位置。
在尔后的几个月里，
他盼望发现至少两打最为重要的智力遗传决定因
素。
他的工
作已经引起了和认知器管打交道的
DNA
医生的想象
??
以及不安。
“
我知道
，
不别
的人会发疯，甚至来做这件事件，
”
他说。
Plomin's quest
is one of the most audacious in the field of
behavioral genetics, a discipline
dedicated to finding hereditary factors
that influence human behavior. One type of study
traces
patterns of inheritance by
comparing identical twins reared together and
apart. Another method
compares the
traits of adopted children with those of their
biological and adoptive parents and
siblings. Done well, these studies
determine the heritability of a trait: to what
extent the
differences among
individuals are due to genes, rather than to
environmental forces such as
upbringing, nutrition, and schooling.
Once a heredity pattern for a trait is
established, researchers
can home in on
the genes responsible.
普洛明的摸索，
是行为遗传学范畴中
最为勇敢的探索之一。
行动遗传学是一门致力于发
现影响人类行
为的遗传因素的学科。
其中一项研究是通过比较双胞胎儿一起豢养和离开喂养
的情形，
来发现影响人类行为的遗传因素。
另外一
个方法是比较收养孩子的特点与他们的生
父母
、养父母及亲兄妹和非亲兄妹的特征比拟较。如果进行得顺利，这些研究能决议一种
特征的遗传性：
在多大水平上个人之间的差异是因为基因的关联，
< br>而不是教养，养分，
和教
导这样的环境因素的作用
,
一旦一个特征的遗传模式树立起来，研讨者们就能够断定有关的
基因。
But the search gets
complicated when the genes in question are for
smarts. On one hand,
intelligence as
measured by IQ tests is a reliable and stable
component of human behavior. It
doesn't
change much over a lifetime, and different tests
tend to produce the same results.
Intelligence is also the most highly
inheritable mental attribute known: Twin and
adoption studies
suggest that 30 to 70
percent of the differences among people's IQ
scores can be attributed to
genes. Many
experts, including Plomin, think 50 percent is the
most likely figure. (Physical
attributes such as height and weight
can be up to 90 percent heritable.)
但是当要寻找的基因是聪明基因时
，
研究就变得复杂起来。
一方面，
智商
测试所测量出
来的智力是人类行为中牢靠而稳固的局部。
终生中
它变化甚微，
不同的测量往往得出相同的
成果。
智力也是所晓得的精力特征中最能够遗传的：
双胞胎和收养儿的研究表明，
人们之间
百分之三十到七十智商的差异可归因于基因。
很多专家，
包括普洛明，
认为百分之五十是最
为可能的数字。
（像身高和体重这样的特征的可遗传机能高达百分之九
十。
）
But intelligence is a
complex phenomenon, governed by hundreds or even
thousands of genes.
So patterns of
inheritance aren't obvious. Nor is the discovery
of any one gene for intelligence
likely
to be earthshaking, Plomin concedes.
但智力是一个庞杂的景象，它受到数百个甚至
数千个基因的把持。因而遗传模式并不
显明。任何一个单个智力基因的发现都不
可能会有太大的影响，普洛明否认。
he
says. But any of the majority of smart genes
probably accounts for less than 1 percent of the
heritability of intelligence.
“
任何动物或动物中任何一个复杂的特征，
我们都不知道它涉及了多少
基因，
”
他说。
但
是大多数聪明基因中的任何一个都有可能占
不到百分之一的智力遗传性。
Scientists link
genes to traits by using DNA markers: stretches of
DNA whose positions on
chromosomes have
been precisely plotted. The sequence of each
marker can vary, just as the gene
for
blue eyes varies slightly from the gene for brown
eyes. These different versions of each marker,
called alleles, correspond to different
versions of nearby genes. If people with a
particular allele of
a DNA marker
possess a trait and people without the allele
don't, then a gene for that trait is likely
close to, or even the same as, the
marker.
科学家们通过使用一条条在染色体上的地位已被精确地调配好了的
DNA
标记，
把基因
和特征接洽起来。
每一个标记的顺序可以变化，
正如蓝色眼睛的基因与棕色眼睛的基因稍稍<
/p>
有所不同。
每个标记的这些不同形式称作对偶基因，
与四周不同情势的基因绝对应。
如果带
有一个
DNA
标记的特定对偶基因的人具备一种特征而不带有该对偶基因的人
不拥有此特
征，那么此特征的基因就可能紧邻着那个标记，甚至与那个标记雷同。
Using this approach, Plomin compared
two groups of children: 51 with an average IQ of
103,
and 51 with an average IQ of 136.
He used 37 markers on chromosome, which was chosen
because it has already been implicated
in reading disabilities. His tests revealed
differences in one
site located in a
gene for a hormone receptor that may be active in
learning and memory. Plomin
thinks
variations in this gene or another nearby could
account for 1 to 2 percent of the variance in
IQ scores.
应用这种措施，
普洛明比拟了两组孩
子：
一组
51
人
,
连连看
，
均匀智商是
103
，
另一组
51
人，平均智商是
136
。他应用了一个染色体
上的
37
个标志，抉择该染色体是由于它与浏览
才能的损失有关系。他的实验发明了激素受体基因内部
在一个部位上的差别。这个激素受
体可能在学习跟记忆方面很活泼。
< br>普洛明以为，
在这个基因或邻近那个基因中的差异可能阐
明了智商分数百分之一到百分之二的变更。
To detect even
smaller genetic contributions across the entire
human genome, Plomin would
need a lot
more people and a thousand times as many DNA
markers. Such large-scale studies
seemed impractical until Plomin's
colleague Michael Owen suggested scrapping the
laborious
genetic profiling of
individual subjects. Owen proposed pooling
subjects' DNA instead and