I just can’t imagine how hard life would be to be illiterate. And me knowing me, id take it upon myself to learn to read if the educational system and my parents had failed me – I truly believe that. Is illiterate/partially illiterate a result of low IQ in every instance, or whats going on there?
No, it’s absolutely not just due to low IQ - PIAAC did not control for cognative or linguistic difficulties with completing the survey beyond the strict inability to complete the background information (“Name” “Date” style of questions), which even true illiterate people are generally able to recognize through exposure. The study does not make conclusions about it, but it seems reasonable to confirm that the population of non-starters and <Level 1 participants (who made up approx 3/50 of the total US population at the time) would consist of people with very low IQs and all other potential difficulties with completing the survey, such as learning disabilities, dyslexia, language barriers, etc. both of a severity that they could not engage at all and less severe, meaning they could engage very minimally but enough to still be included as a participant.
(The rates at which that was the case are outside the scope of the study though they do propose several reasons for people being unable to participate, but could be looked into country-by-country if you’re curious)
Human meat brains are lazy. They want to do the minimum amount of work to meet their biological needs. Getting them to want to do more involves rewiring their reward structure to associate fulfillment, either internal or external, with doing more. We can talk about the myriad ways that someone can miss the developmental milestones to encourage that, but that’s what’s going on.
I just can’t imagine how hard life would be to be illiterate. And me knowing me, id take it upon myself to learn to read if the educational system and my parents had failed me – I truly believe that. Is illiterate/partially illiterate a result of low IQ in every instance, or whats going on there?
No, it’s absolutely not just due to low IQ - PIAAC did not control for cognative or linguistic difficulties with completing the survey beyond the strict inability to complete the background information (“Name” “Date” style of questions), which even true illiterate people are generally able to recognize through exposure. The study does not make conclusions about it, but it seems reasonable to confirm that the population of non-starters and <Level 1 participants (who made up approx 3/50 of the total US population at the time) would consist of people with very low IQs and all other potential difficulties with completing the survey, such as learning disabilities, dyslexia, language barriers, etc. both of a severity that they could not engage at all and less severe, meaning they could engage very minimally but enough to still be included as a participant.
(The rates at which that was the case are outside the scope of the study though they do propose several reasons for people being unable to participate, but could be looked into country-by-country if you’re curious)
Human meat brains are lazy. They want to do the minimum amount of work to meet their biological needs. Getting them to want to do more involves rewiring their reward structure to associate fulfillment, either internal or external, with doing more. We can talk about the myriad ways that someone can miss the developmental milestones to encourage that, but that’s what’s going on.