Intelligence: hereditary or acquired?
             Is intelligence determined primary by heredity or by the environment? This issue has aroused intense debates because many believe it has a little bit of both, but to what extent? The ones that believe that believe that every person is born with a fixed amount of intelligence argue that there is little one can do to improve intelligence, so special education programs should not be expected to produce an increase in the children's IQ. On the other side, those who see intelligence determined mostly by environmental factors see early intervention programs as crucial in the development of a child's IQ.
             To many, intelligence is defined as the general mental capability to reason, solve problems, think, learn and understand new material, and benefit from past experiences. We usually refer to someone's intelligence as being bright, smart, dumb, stupid, clever or slow. All of this describes intelligence, but are these characteristics acquired by environmental factors or they are born this way.
             Today most scientists agree that intelligence is a combination of both genetic and environmental factors. The child's intellect may be due to the parent's gene or the environment where he or she has developed. The genetic influence constitutes around 40 to 80% of the intelligence and the environmental influence is around 20 to 60% of the intelligence. Those who believe that intelligence is hereditary, especially scientists have made many studies to prove their positions. They define the heredity of intelligence as that part of the IQ scores that is linked to the genetic factors.
             Scientists have conducted hundreds of studies to determined if intelligence is all hereditary. One of the most specific studies that prove this theory is that of identical and fraternal twins. They have found that the IQ's of identical twins that are raised together are very similar to each other...