Paul-- I am way overdue for a response to the question you asked about
chat and nature/nurture issue as indexed by the discussion of Jensen.
Its a very complicated issue. When writing Cultural Psychology
I touched on it just briefly in the guise of the standard criticism
of LSV that he undertheorized the "natural line."
In the 1930's Luria, Morozova and others conducted a giant
twin study. There is a chapter devoted to this work in *Making of
Mind* (still, in my mind, an excellent entry level text) by Luria. They
had the advantage (for THEM) of creating a giant boarding school wiht
identical and fraternal twins where, obviously, they could control
a lot of environmental variations orthogonally to the monozygotic/
dyzygotic twin variation. One article was published in a now defunct
journal in English around 1939 (!) which is referenced in *Making* which
is not to hand right now.
The substance of their conclusion was that genetic variation is more
important early in ontogeny and becomes less so with the acquisition of
culturally mediated/higher psychological functions. They reached this
conclusion by presenting tasks that they thought reflected (say) natural
memory (rote recall) versus one that required cultural mediation (I
forget the task). The pattern of correlations across ages/type of twin/
task were the warrant for their conclusion.
This work was stopped for ideological reasons and the head of the
institute shot.
Work on genetic variation in human intellectual function began again
in Russia, but not until about the 1980's. Ravich-Scherbo is one peson
who has done such work, and I believe some of it is published.
In this frought field I warmly recommend the work of Douglas Wahlsten
who works in Canada and has written on behavioral genetics in ways that
appeal to me and you might find interesting too.
mike
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