When James Flynn (1984) first reported that American children and adolescents scored higher onIQ tests than did their peers from an earlier generation, that finding generated few ripples in theliterature or in clinical practice. Indeed, how would any other result have made sense? The firstsets of data compared children from the mid-1930s with the early 1970s on the Stanford-BinetForm L-M and from the late 1940s with the early 1970s on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale forChildren (WISC). The advent of television, the mass media explosion, the increasing awarenessof the importance of a stimulating early environment, and other societal changes during the inter-vening years provided a simple and handy explanation for the 3 points per decade gain that Flynnobserved in the United States.
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