Nearsighted people are smarter

Factual Questions
1

Or are they? Years ago, I remember watching the news report on some “study” that proved that nearsighted people are smarter. At the time I was twelve or so, and I went to school the next day and did some hack verification. In my “gifted” class, about 10 out of 15 of us had glasses or contacts. I distinctly remember asking around, “Nearsighted or farsighted?” Every one that had corrective lenses was nearsighted (including myself).

So, is there a correlation? And: Are nearsighted people smarter, or are smart people more likely to be nearsighted?

I doubt some scientist will wander by with statistical proof, but let’s try and cut down on the empirical blabbering (besides mine, of course ;)).

2

If there’s any connection, and that’s a big if, my guess would be that it is due to reading a lot. I got nearsighted when I was in graduate school, possibly because I was always reading.

3

I would second Gassendi. I can say that certain professions tend to have a higher proportion of the nearsighted. Programmers and engineers, for example. Both professions require a lot of reading, and graduate school is an exercise in reading. Some professions, are the opposite. Piloting for example, and since most pilots in the military have technical degrees, I doubt that their native intelligence (if there is such a thing) differs from that of engineers and programmers. I suspect it is that as children and young adults, pilots have more hobbies requiring distant vision, and cut their eyes more slack.

My current job involves writing a program for training pilots. Our boss has a Ph. D. in statistics, and is pretty bright. He is also a former pilot, and has never needed glasses. He is pushing 60. Genetics clearly plays a role, too. I have a Ph. D. in physics, and have never needed glasses. (My right eye did become slightly nearsighted in graduate school, but I still see better than most people with corrected vision.) My dad had a Ph. D, and he got reading glasses when he reached 50 or so (farsighted), but otherwise had fine vision. I believe most of my dad’s brothers, who most all have advanced degrees (there are 7 of them - brothers, not degrees), and I can only recall 1 that wears glasses and he must be in his 70’s. I think we can all claim to be brighter than average, but not nearsighted.

So, if there is a correlation between intelligence and vision, I would propose that it is that people more intelligent than average are more likely to read extensively than average, and hence more likely to be near sighted.

4

I’m nearsighted and I’m certainly smarter than you are.

So there’s one data point. :smiley:

5

I failed to find any evidence for this by googling, but I am sure that nearsightedness occurs more frequently amongst younger people. I cannot recall ever meeting anyone else farsighted in school. I am slightly farsighted but it does not warrant glasses at this stage. At the risk of sounding arrogant, my intelligence is certainly above average; I am at least smart enough to know it needs backing up with good ol’ hard work.

Why are there less farsighted youths? People can correct for farsightedness by focusing in a different manner, but lose this ability as they become older. Again, this is substantiated only by what I have heard

This said, I do not think the fact that everyone with glasses in your gifted class was nearsighted demonstrates much. Maybe the fact that many people had glasses does.

I can think of people who read often and are shortsighted and many who read often and are not. Likewise with intelligence. I would like to see some more evidence before I believe this.

6

According to this link:http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.cfm?DocID=85

it is reading in low light that can cause nearsightedness.

7

Uhh… I´m not sure, let me look at it closer. :smiley:

SlowMindThinking, seems that my mother was vindicated… I hate to admit it, but she was right the gazillion times she told me to not read in low light. :frowning:

8

Ahh Ale, my mom was/is more the “Careful, you could poke an eye out with those!” mom. She may have been right, but has yet to be vindicated. :wink:

9

I gotta call bullshit on that cite, because of the following:

[quote]
So the eye gets a signal to grow longer, so the image will hit the right place on the retina. That is not how the eye focuses. It’s the lens, located behind the iris that does that, changing its shape to bring the image to focus on the retina.

10

Going back to the OP, and the incidence of nearsighted people in a Gifted class, that’s not a valid conclusion. You’d get about the same results in the general population. Lots of people need glasses, and almost all of those are nearsighted.

11

My optometrist always told me it was extensive reading coupled with genetics that probably led to my extreme nearsightedness.

In later years, my husband claimed that was bs. But there was a study, I think on Hasidic Jews, that seemed to correlate extensive reading with nearsightedness.

However! I can’t find the study.

So, this may all be a really strange figment of my imagination. Sorry!

Julie

12

Cecil Adams on Will sitting too close to the TV, reading with bad light, etc., ruin your eyes?

Alfie Kohn says in his 1990 book You Know What They Say there is a fairly strong correlation between myopia and verbal ability, but a weak or non-existent correlation between myopia and spatial or mathematical ability. (I don’t own a copy of the book, so I don’t know if he provides a citation). If true, this suggests some sort of link between myopia and reading, which is strongly correlated with verbal ability. Since reading is one of the things that comes with civilization, this relationship is consistent with what Cecil says.

13

So correlation present. Please to show causation, now.

MonkeyBoy: 20-80 and smart as a whip…

14

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Q.E.D. *
**I gotta call bullshit on that cite, because of the following:

Yes, it is the lens that focuses, but it is not unbelievable that the size of the pupil impacts the size of the image on the focal plane. I won’t claim to know for sure, but I can take a stab at it :smack: (really weak reference to my poking an eye out statement).

When you read, or perform other close work, the light entering the eye is diverging. The larger the pupil, the more it diverges. The muscles controlling the shape of your lens must work hard to create a sharp image. (Human eyes, at least, are relaxed when focused at infinity.) The focusing can’t possibly be perfect, and the light least well focused is probably the light diverging most strongly. That light still hits the retina, and encourages growth there.

Now, that is my rationalization of the quote. I don’t really know if it is true. I will say that the optometrist I went to when my right eye became nearsighted said that it was not uncommon for those with very good vision to become nearsighted as a way for the eye to adapt to the strain. (I am one of those that can read the manufacturer on an eye chart.) He also claimed it was the light hitting the retina that caused growth, causing the problem.

Frankly, you’d think this kind of thing would have been figured out by now, but I found a NIH site claiming that the causes of myopia are not understood.

15

This site discusses the apparent heritability of myopia (nearsightedness) and the correlation with IQ scores averaging eight points higher than non-myopics.

“4. An obvious explanation for the high correlation between intelligence and myopia, both within and between populations is that high intelligence leads to more reading, and this leads to greater myopia. The chief obstacle to accepting this theory is the very convincing evidence that myopia (whose proximate cause is a difference between the focal length of the lens and the length of the eyeball) has a very high heritability (Curtin 1985, Francois 1961). However, there is also evidence that near work can lead to myopia (Young, 1975, Working Group on Myopia Prevalence and Progression, 1988, Kinge, Midelfart, Jacobsen, & Rystad, 2000; Parssinen & Lyyra 1993). Close work cannot be the whole story because refractions at six to twelve months (well before the start of schooling) predict later myopia (Pacella et al. 1999).”
This abstract and others can be read at the linked site -

http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000104/

16

Probably not in the way you think. Changing the size of the pupil mainly effects brightness and depth of focus. A dilated, large pupil, makes for a narrow depth of focus so focus is more critical. A small pupil makes a deeper field of focus, giving more margin for focus error while retaining sharp image. Decreasing to a pinhole eventually makes everything in focus. This is why squinting can sometimes sharpen vision slightly.

17

Well, as pointed out in the Straight Dope article, hunter-gatherers with excellent vision who have settled down in a sedentary lifestyle often end up with nearsighted kids, which leads scientists to wonder which environmental factor is responsible for the change (since, after all, genes can’t change so rapidly in just one generation).

Besides all the reading and squinting at computer screens we moderns do that could be ruining our eyesight, scientists theorize that a “civilized” diet could also play havoc with our developmental chemistry. That is to say, a diet high in starch-riddern food like potatos, rice, and maize (i.e. the staples of an agriculturally-based diet) could somehow interfere with the proper development of children, giving them a greater predisposition to nearsightedness. Oh well, I think it’s a fair trade, and glasses and contacts aren’t really that onerous to wear.

18

I remember reading once that the reason so many people become nearsighted from excess reading was the lack of periperal stimulation when reading. ----Somehow that tended to deform the eyeball, expecially in children who are still growing.

The article suggested all books have a colorful border pattern around each page to stimulate peripheral vision while reading.

Not sure if it was BS or not—just thought I’d bring that one up.

I think it has been determined that taking a break from reading every 10 minutes or so and spending a couple minutes looking at faraway objects is definitely good for the eyes.

19

Well, I had the corrective laser surgery about a year ago.

No increase in dumbitude is apparant.

20

In addition to what is provided and linked below – there was a study done records in Iceland by JL Karlsson using monozygotic twins, fraternal twins, siblings, unrelateds, and family that showed that myopia tended to express itself in related persons (and more so the more the comparators were related) with a result that looked as if myopia is genetic – I looked but didn’t find it on the Net, instead, finding this. The link (below) takes you to the full paper – it uses some technical language (which I don’t understand) but the general information provided should be clear enough -

*“…Research by Olmedo, et. al. has led to two particular genetic markers that seem to be particularly important in the search for the gene that controls myopia: Rh factors and erythrocytic enzyme acid phosphatase (ACP), whose locus site is 2p23. (Olmedo, Munoz, Rodriguez-Cid, Carracedo, Gomez-Ulla and Salorio 1992, 198) An association with ACP shows the existence of some genetic information in the short arm of chromosome two in highly myopic people. This could be the alteration present in only one type of myopia, or common to all high myopias….

“The heredity of low myopia is “beyond doubt” according to Francois. (Francois 1961, 195) Genetic information common to myopic people with low refraction defects also exists in the short arm of chromosome one. (Olmedo, 198) This information may refer to an ocular trait, such as axial length, or a mechanism, for example a special susceptibility to environmental factors. …”

“…A family history of myopia is associated with the likelihood of developing the condition. For example, a greater prevalence of myopia exists among the children of myopic parents than among the children of non myopic parents; (Zadnik, 1323) the probability of myopia in offspring of myopic parents up to three times higher than when neither parent is myopic. (Yap,Wu, Liu, Lee and Wang 1993, 316) It is unknown, however, to what extent these familial patterns are due to genetic or environmental factors.

According to Francois, myopia is directly transmitted, but not as a unit, because many genes are involved. (Francois, 196) The peaked distribution of ocular refraction is consistent with the multipleÑgene hypothesis. (Bear 1991, 58) The precise mode of inheritance of each component has not yet been clearly established. It is still unknown whether individual refractive components are inherited independently or if there is a hereditary correlation factor active.”*

http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~jahavsy1/Norman.html