Looking for more ways of enhancing your child’s IQ? All this week we’ve featured information on ways for parents to help enhance their child’s IQ from information found in a meta-analysis study conducted at New York University. What’s the next tip the study recommends, having your child attend preschool!
Preschool offers novel stimuli, and opportunities to practise problem solving and navigate social interactions – activities that may increase underlying intelligence. “What seems to be happening is that the child’s intelligence seems to be adapting to the new demands placed on it.” Preschools that focus on language development are even more successful, showing gains of more than four IQ points. It’s possible that these gains are due to kids being exposed to the kinds of things that get tested. “Young children cannot define a word that they have not encountered, nor can they identify a picture of an item that they have never seen. Therefore, preschool may raise intelligence test performance merely by exposing young children to the information and vocabulary works included on these tests,” says study author John Protzko.