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NOISE AND INTELLIGENCE

Long-term effects

Intelligence is a concept with many definitions and fashions. There is continuing research about what makes it possible for us to think, and how it could be improved.  

But where is the research on unmonitored mass experiments on involuntary subjects, that might be for the mind what thalidomide and asbestos have been for bodies?

It may be socially unwise to inflict on a whole population, indeed, the whole global culture, willy-nilly, some sorts of noise, defined as interference, not just as decibels, that are increasing in all broadcast media.

This concern arises from personal experience.  BBC and ABC government broadcasters and documentaries, not just the commercial radio and TV, operators, increasingly obscure speech by overlaying it with musical backgrounds.

This is hard on the elderly and those with hearing impairments, which are probably around 15% of the audience; however, complaints are rejected on the grounds that it gives pleasure to others. It is especially bad when the noise is metronome-type drumming and percussion 

But other media interferences, visual, auditory, and other ways of  disorienting content, also prevent connected thought and access to ideas.            

A useful definition of intelligence is the ability
to work out what to do in a situation.   

This includes the abilities that standard intelligence tests try to measure -   practical and verbal reasoning, comprehension and judgement of situations, speed of mental operations, memory, vocabulary and range of concepts,  ability to learn (which includes curiosity), awareness and attention to detail, attention span and persistence, abstraction, analysis and synthesis, sequencing and range of concepts.  

IQ scores are reported to be rising the world over in areas of pattern manipulation, but not in other forms of reasoning, understanding and connecting ideas  

 Clues to intelligence in operation might be in the dramatic changes over the past forty years in public behavior and interests. These include the content of the mass-market women's magazines narrowing to soft and even hard porn and celeb gossip; loud music that prevents conversation in restaurants and at parties; the success of advertising that openly targets emotions not reason, and derogatory attitudes to knowledge and book literacy even in classrooms and among teacher educators.            

 The 'Nature or Nurture?' question about intelligence is usually answered by 'Both'.   Eugenics, as the name implies was originally mainly concerned with 'Nature' and whether in the past 'natural selection' had weeded out the less intelligent, and whether now humanely-impelled social welfare might imbalance society by fostering the greater fecundity of the congenitally less intelligent.   As often happens, as for example with euthanasia, the inhumane and extreme applications of this concern, particularly by Nazism, have rendered even thinking about eugenics in reproduction to be immoral. The emphasis has turned to the environmental factors - health, education, early childhood -   that could help or hinder everyone from fully developing whatever their potential intelligence might be. Those who would improve intelligence usually focus on schools or pre-school, and forget continuing environments.            

But 'Intelligence' is now a loaded word. It is given implications of favoring elitism, and valuing dangerous cold reason over warm emotions; 'emotional intelligence' is now a field to include in aims of school curricula.  

At a time when individuals are more than ever concerned about improving their physical health there is surprisingly little concern about conserving their precious brains, their most valuable resource.  

Decisions are made about taking drugs or taking risks in driving, or about alcoholic bingeing, without any pause about possible long-term impairment of thinking.      

I have been looking without success for research on whether there are any long-term effects on intelligence of features of modern entertainment that increasingly emphasise temporary stunning of thinking and distortion of consciousness.  

There are studies of short-term effects of music, but I cannot find research on the long-term cognitive effects of repeated exposure to high decibels, heavy-beat repetition in drumming, and in background noise to speech. So-called savages in jungles, and religious groups have used rhythmic drumming with discretion, for arousing mass emotions and group behavior or blocking out the world; speculation cannot be checked out as to whether this contributed to lack of inventiveness and social progress.  

However, the drumbeats of today's culture can be more like repetitive factory-hammers, electronically enhanced, and hard to avoid, especially by youth - what are the effects of so much exposure for so many?    Nor can I find studies of the long-term effects of habituation to visual distortions, fast collages and epileptogenic flashing of light and fire, as well as non-consequential brief sequencing which are increasingly common features of mass entertainment, including television, films, and rave parties.  

It is still not certain whether there may be permanent sub-clinical effects on connected thinking from the direct input of heavy electronic noise into the ears through Sony Walkmans and the like. Some people claim it helps them to think; others reckon that they use the music to avoid thinking.            

These are all mass experiments, subject to no monitoring as for Food and Drugs.   Few young people are spared.   It can be considered good and cool (or hot) to be mind-numbed or mind-blown.   There are reasons for desiring these bemused states, rather than be aware of current affairs that we can do nothing about. However, does the brain really bounce back unimpaired after repeated assaults?            

 I can find websites about the purported positive intellectual effects of listening to Mozart, but the only references I have found to effects of rock or heavy metal music are apparently unanswered appeals from students who have to write essays about them, and report that they find conflicting evidence.