High I.Q. linked to spectacles

Press, 30 December 1988, Page 5

High I.Q. linked to spectacles

NZPA-AFP London Near or short-sighted people are slightly more intelligent than people with 20-20 vision, according to a Danish study published in the British weekly medical review, the “Lancet.” On average, myopics score I.Q. points higher than those with normal sight, although intelligence does not increase in proportion to the severity of the eye defect, the report said. The study was done by a three-man team headed by Professor T. W. Teasdale of the Institute of Clinical Psychology at Copenhagen University. Using a sample group of 15,834 Danish conscripts, 62.5 per cent of them normally-sighted

and 37.5 per cent myopic, the researchers found that the short-sighted soldiers did better than the rest in army tests and had better school records. The researchers acknowledged that “near work, particularly reading, can provoke elongation of the eyeball in genetically susceptible individuals.” But the}' said: “Had reading been the primary cause of the association one might have expected to find a stronger relation of myopia to educational level than to intelligence test scores. “Yet we found educational level differences cannot account statistically for the relation between intelligence and myopia.”