The human brain is a powerful tool, and with it comes the power to do just about anything. How a person chooses to use it, however, depends upon several factors in which they are introduced throughout their lives. Genetics, socioeconomic status, and education are all factors that a person will not have control over, but affect their category of intelligence. Various types of intelligence can arise from exposure to these factors, allowing individuals to acquire skills in specific areas. This is why some people can take apart a car and put it completely back together, while others can solve complex math equations in their head. Each person responds to factors in a different way. Multiple experiments have been conducted to investigate how factors affect intelligence creating a dynamic structure from which a person can decide where they stand and why. 

From a scientific standpoint, the human brain is an intertwining network of cells, called neurons, that transmit signals very quickly throughout the brain. These signals allow a person to function in everyday life. However, the human brain is much more than an object of collective cells and tissues. A person’s ability to adapt to his or her surroundings is considered a significant reflection of intelligence. Identifying information, learning what it means, reasoning, committing it to memory, and being able to solve problems are all qualities correlated to this reflection. Intelligence cannot be labeled by a singular process of thinking, it is rather an intertwining of many cognitive processes by which a person sees a situation and comes to a conclusion on how to solve it. 

Intelligence is most commonly measured in terms of a person’s IQ, or Intelligence Quotient. This is a score given to a person after completing an exam, testing skills such as reasoning and comprehension. The Stanford-Binet test was the most commonly used exam to measure IQ, though it has undergone multiple revisions since its development in 1916. The test measures a person’s problem-solving skills in varying situations. However, the test does not include how a person developed those problem skills throughout his or her life. It does not include the genetic and environmental factors that influenced these problem-solving skills, and it does not include more than one type of intelligence. Biological influences such as genetics are the least controlled factor influencing intelligence. From each parent, a genetic exam can be conducted to see which traits would be passed to the offspring. Though it cannot yet be definite as to which genes will be passed down, the options can be narrowed through careful testing. The pairing of parents is completely random, therefore, which genes most likely to be passed down to offspring are usually not selected. very significant environmental factors that influence a person’s intelligence as an adult. Similar to the genetic influence, these factors are most likely not in the control of the developing child. 

 Explaining the effect of inherited traits on intelligence can be done so through the examination of “heritability estimates”. An article titled, “Child Development Theory: Middle Childhood Resources” describes how the heritability estimate is used. The article states that, “Heritability estimates are a mathematical way of representing the extent to which genetics contribute to individual differences in observed behavior such as IQ test scores. Heritability is represented as a numerical proportion that ranges from 0.0 (a case where genes do not contribute at all to differences) to 1.0 (a case where genes explain all of the observed differences between IQ scores). A heritability estimate of .40 would suggests that on average, about 40% of observable differences on a particular trait are caused by genetics” (Oswalt, 2010). From these mathematical estimates, scientists can explain the effect of genetics on a person’s intelligence. Genetics play an important role in every person’s life and careful testing can be useful to predicting what a child could inherit from his or her parents; However, scientists are now discovering that environmental factors will play a more significant role in the development of intelligence. The way that parents communicate with their child is now considered an important factor to a child’s developing skills. An article named, “Genes Vs. Environment: What Influences Your Intelligence Most”, examines the possible factors from both the genetic and environmental standpoint (Dovey, 2016). In the article, it is stated that, “While it’s clear that parents have a large influence on their children’s intelligence, how they raise their children may be just as important as which genes they pass on. For example, a 2012 study from Washington University in St. Louis found that having a loving and nurturing mother significantly contributed to a child’s eventual intelligence. In the study, the team observed that children whose mothers nurtured them early in life had a larger hippocampus, an area of the brain linked to learning and memory” (Dovey, 2016). A child who experiences the love and nurturing of the parent rather than the criticism or lack of interest, will have more confidence in their talents and acquire the ability to perform better when learning new skills. Another article by the name of, “Effects of heredity and Environment on Intelligence”, states that, “the same gene pool (albeit with an occasional mutation) is passed along from one generation to the next, and so the cause is almost certainly environmental” (Ormrod and McDevitt, 2010). Genes are significant to offspring features in many ways, however, environmental factors play the major role. 

Varying environments is a much broader topic because many different kinds of environments exist. Socioeconomic status, and education are two very significant environmental factors that influence a person’s intelligence as an adult. Similar to the genetic influence, these factors are most likely not in the control of the developing child. A person does not get to choose who raises them, what social class they get to grow up in, or the type of education they receive as they grow older. Both genetic and environmental factors play an important role in how a child develops into an adult and what types of intelligence they acquire through life experiences; however, environmental factors play a more significant role. Certain environments are assumed to produce “office working” adults with college degrees while other environments are assumed to produce “labor working” adults with a laborious job right out of high school. These are not the only two types of working adults that exist, however, the assumptions made are based upon the idea that the type of environment a person is born into will determine who they will be as an adult, whether it be a post-secondary graduate working as an office assistant to the CEO for a large company or a construction worker responsible for the development of the roads and bridges people utilize every day. Distinguishing these two types if adults is most commonly done so by which environment they experienced growing up. The socioeconomic status of a person’s parents and the education a person received will affect them in different ways. 

Socioeconomic status is an environment classified by the financial status of a person’s parents. A child growing up in a lower social class is more likely to have less opportunities for success in later life.  This does not mean that they will not acquire success, but that it is much more difficult for them to reach that point in life given the set of circumstances in which they were born into. An article titled, “Socioeconomic Status and the growth of intelligence from infancy through adolescence”, investigates the correlation between socioeconomic status (SES) and IQ scores in children (Stumm and Plomin, 2015). In the article, it is said that, “Low socioeconomic status (SES) children perform on average worse on intelligence tests than children from higher SES backgrounds, but the developmental relationship between intelligence and SES has not been adequately investigated” (Stumm and Plomin, 2015). This can be the result of many factors, including the relationship between low income schools and the education a child receives. 

 A child of a lower class is more likely to attend a lower income school, which puts a lot of pressure on teachers to make sure each of the students do well given the lack of emphasis on education. This does not mean that children of low income schools do not attend college and obtain degrees useful to their jobs. Families of these low-income areas may put more emphasis on acquiring a job when graduating high school rather than spending money on college. Children may have parents who both work to support the family or even a single parent who works full time. Acquiring a job after graduation would benefit both the parents and child. After so many years of working, a person gains knowledge in certain areas related to their occupation. Mechanics are knowledgeable about all or most parts of machines such as cars or large operating equipment for construction. Their intelligence tends to lie in the hands-on category. People that attend schools in higher income areas tend to rely more on their education to obtain a job later in life. Post-secondary education is encouraged over acquiring a job right out of high school and a bachelor’s degree is almost expected. This puts more pressure on students to perform well academically. Standardized tests are used to measure intellectual readiness for higher educational purposes, such as college and certain graduate school programs. Students prepare themselves for these tests by increasing their ability to comprehend and solve complex problems. This results in a person more likely to favor a job that requires critical thinking skills rather than a hands-on type of job. Both hands-on and critical thinking skills are very important to the working classes. Both types of jobs require skill and practice over a course of many years, and both types of jobs provide stability in many aspects of a person’s life. Everyone is good at doing something and they should pursue that goal, however, socioeconomic status does affect the route that most people tend to take. 

Education varies throughout the nation. Most schools are public, meaning they get funding from the government to educate children from grades kindergarten to twelfth grade. Other schools are private and require parents of the students to pay a tuition that funds the school. The difference in school curriculum between these two types of schools is that the government has control in public schools and not in privately funded schools. Most private schools adapt their curriculum to produce well educated graduates. Each individual private school has an ability to make these decisions individually. Public schools on the other hand, all follow the same required curriculum. The implementation of these general guidelines is more solely placed in the hands of the educators. A teacher can follow the curriculum, staying within the guidelines, while implementing the curriculum in a more comprehensive manner allowing his or her students to better understand the topic. With that being said, two teachers in two different public schools may teach differently depending on the type of environment in which they are employed. A teacher in a lower income area school may find it more difficult to implement the curriculum than a teacher in a public school of a higher income area. This could result in two very different graduating classes. 

A student in a lower income area might have an after-school job as a server or a mechanic to help out his or her parents. Their access to a free tutor might be limited. They might have to go home and finish their homework as they babysit younger siblings or help take care of a sick relative. They could be practicing a sport that they need to get accepted into college on a scholarship so they can afford it. All of these factors would influence that student’s ability to study or completing assigned homework on time. These students might have the ability to fix any car brought to the shop, but that complex math formula or anatomy exam with two-hundred terms to memorize might be more difficult to accomplish. A student in a higher income area, however, might have access to a free tutor whenever they need, they may not need to work after school to help support their family, they might not have to perfect a sport to pay for college, and they might not have to babysit younger siblings or take care of a sick relative every night after school. Their primary focus can be school and they would have the ability to study the complex math formulas as well as the two-hundred anatomy terms. The significant difference in education all over the nation can affect a person’s ability to accomplish a certain task. Some are driven by the many factors that hold them back and some take advantage of the situation they were born into. Others will see school as less important and prioritize their manual labor skills. Both situations result in different types of intelligence.  

Overall, both genetic and environmental factors affect a person’s intelligence; however, environmental factors play a more significant role. By simply looking at a person’s IQ score, it can be interpreted that they do or do not surpass certain levels of intellect. This, however, does not mean that they lack intelligence. The IQ test is a written test that measure a person’s cognitive ability to comprehend presented information and think critically to solve problems. A test that measures only one type of intelligence does not define intelligence as a whole. Intelligence is not a spectrum, but instead a system of many parts. Some parts, or people, are good at doing one thing, while the other parts are good at doing another. In simpler terms, a person who maintains a manual labor job from a young adult throughout their lives will acquire the ability to perform manual jobs more efficiently. This is equally as important as those who attend college after high school and acquire specific cognitive abilities to perform more cognitive-related jobs. The difference between these two people is not the level of intelligence, but the type of intelligence. Inherited traits can be examined to describe how certain aspects of intelligence are passed down from parent to offspring; However, environmental factors such as socioeconomic status and education are more significant to a person’s intelligence. Someone who has experienced life as a child of the lower social class will most likely attend a lower-income school. This will affect the environment in which the student learns, ultimately affecting the interest in post-secondary education. Children of the lower social class tend to come from families who prioritize work over school after graduation. The need for an income or the lack of interest in college results in more graduates with manual labor jobs throughout their lives. Children who grow up in a higher social class are more likely to attend a higher-income school. These schools tend to prioritize furthering education after graduation, resulting in a higher number of students with degrees and more jobs that require a demand for more cognitive work. Both jobs are important to the world, but in different ways. The world as a whole could not function without the labor of both types of people. Some people have both types of intelligence, with the desire to perform both manual and cognitive labor. Playing sports can be used as an example of someone performing manual labor so that they can attend college to acquire cognitive abilities. This is a very common situation with college athletes. Although the two categories of intelligence are different in the type of work involved, they are both significant to everyday life. From building roads, to solving complex math equations, intelligence appears in many forms, all important to the world. 
