Is there a relationship between IQ and how much a person was read to as a child?

Note: This is a section of a longer article. To go to the start, click here.

Yes. We asked our participants how much they were read to as children (with answer options ranging from never to nearly every day) and correlated their response to IQ. This correlation turned out to be r = 0.17 (n = 652) which indicates that participants who were read to more often during childhood ended up being slightly more intelligent in adulthood. Importantly, this correlation did not change once we statistically controlled for childhood wealth or class in society, meaning that childhood reading frequency is not related to IQ only because it is a proxy for wealth or higher societal status. Here is a graphical illustration of this correlation.

What do the other studies say?

A recent randomized control trial (Weisleder et al., 2018) that tested the effectiveness of a parental program that included giving parents access to children’s books and enrolling them in monthly reading workshops resulted in an increase in reading quality and quantity compared to a control group of parents who were not enrolled in the program.  Importantly, children of parents who were enrolled in the program scored significantly higher on IQ test and the effect size of this difference was similar to the effect size we obtained. 

Takeaways

• People who say that they were read to more in childhood also score higher on IQ tests in adulthood, and this effect does not appear to be due to childhood wealth or childhood social class.

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