I use mapping and age trajectories of advanced cognitive skills to better understand why these skills are more prevalent in some local areas than in others. The study begins by explaining what advanced cognitive skills are. It offers a nonspecialist’s review of recent brain science that indicates that adolescence is the key period for the development of advanced cognitive skills. The paper considers three main explanations for why the prevalence of advanced cognitive skills varies substantially across US counties. Is it early childhood factors which could generate endogenous responses that are important later when advanced cognitive skills are developing? Is it factors whose influence is greatest during adolescence—the period when brain science argues that experience would most directly affect advanced cognitive skills? If so, adolescence is indeed the age of opportunity but also risk. Is the variation among counties explained by migration of individuals toward areas where other people have advanced cognitive skills similar to their own? Evidence based on cognitive skill trajectories, maps at different ages, and longitudinal regressions suggests that all three of these explanations play a role in generating areas where advanced cognitive skills are prevalent and areas where they are not—advanced cognitive skill deserts.

我使用高级认知技能的映射和年龄轨迹来更好地理解为什么这些技能在某些地方比在其他地方更普遍。该研究首先解释了高级认知技能是什么。它提供了对近期脑科学的非专家评论，表明青春期是发展高级认知技能的关键时期。本文考虑了三个主要解释，解释了为什么美国各县的高级认知技能的普及率差异很大。是否是早期儿童因素会产生内源性反应，而这些反应在高级认知技能发展后很重要？是在青春期影响最大的因素——大脑科学认为经验最直接影响高级认知技能的时期？如果是这样，青春期确实是机会的年龄，也是风险的年龄。县之间的差异是否可以通过个人向其他人具有与他们自己相似的高级认知技能的地区迁移来解释？基于认知技能轨迹、不同年龄的地图和纵向回归的证据表明，所有这三种解释都在生成高级认知技能普遍存在的领域和不存在高级认知技能的领域中发挥作用——高级认知技能沙漠。