Family Tips

First-borns are cleverer than their younger brothers and sisters, but it is explained not by biological, but by social factors.
To such conclusion came the Norwegian scientists who published results of their research in the last edition of Science international scientific magazine.
Peter Kristensen from the Norwegian professional hygiene royal institute and Tor Bierkedal from Medical service of Norway armed forces have analyzed IQ of more than 241 thousand young people drafted in the Norwegian army for the period from 1967 to 1976.
They have found out that the average IQ of the recruit who was born in the family first, surpassed a parameter of intelligence of the second child, who in his turn, was cleverer than the one who was born the third.
Parameters made 103,2, 101,2 and 100 points. Thus younger brothers in families where the first-born died in infancy or children’s age, has IQ in 102,9 points. Scientists came to a conclusion that biological factors - the fact of a birth as the first child - cannot serve as an explanation to higher parameters of intellectual development.
In their opinion, that very social position of “the elder child” in family, who due to the position, is the natural intermediary in transfer of the information from parents to younger brothers and sisters, is their instructor and since the childhood gets used to bear responsibility for them is that factor that has beneficial influence on intellectual development.