Seeking Information on IQ

[Zander]

It's been a long time since I formally studied intelligence testing but back then the research suggested that IQ was not, in fact, heavily dependent on education. Longitudinal and twin studies showed that within any given advanced industrialised society such as the US or UK, high IQ tends to lead to higher educational achievement, not the other way around. It is possible to improve one's IQ through training but the improvement is small and the training has to be specific to the test, i.e. general education doesn't by itself improve IQ.

The standardised higher education tests (SAT, GRE etc) that are used mainly in the US are correlated with but not the same as IQ tests. It is easier to improve one's test scores than one's IQ.

Personality, eloquence, manual ability and a host of other qualities may make someone productive or interesting but these are not kinds of intelligence.

 

[Huw]

There are also a variety of IQ tests, and a 130 on one isn't the same scale as a 130 on another.

Quite. The only common factor is that the average is 100. When I was tested, the maximum score was 155.

I remember one of the questions was "What is the main ore which aluminium comes from?" The answer was "bauxite", and I remember thinking that that was nothing to do with intelligence, it was just something you either knew or didn't.

 

[Zander]

Quite. The only common factor is that the average is 100. When I was tested, the maximum score was 155.

Most IQ tests don't have a maximum. Doesn't sound like a widely used test.

I remember one of the questions was "What is the main ore which aluminium comes from?" The answer was "bauxite", and I remember thinking that that was nothing to do with intelligence, it was just something you either knew or didn't.

Sometimes IQ tests include general knowledge but your answers to these questions do not contribute to your score. They're included as a proxy for education or simply to see if there's a relationship. If general knowledge questions were indeed counted as part of the test you took, then the test is not one that is accepted by psychologists who formally study intelligence.

 

[Infiniti2000]

The standardised higher education tests (SAT, GRE etc) that are used mainly in the US are correlated with but not the same as IQ tests. It is easier to improve one's test scores than one's IQ.

Very loosely correlated, as you yourself point out that general knowledge is not part of an IQ evaluation and SAT tests are largely general knowledge. GRE tests are even moreso.

Unfortunately, IQ tests are not entirely standardized, so it's hard to say for certain how they all work, but most certainly they are all age-normalized. Your IQ right now would be based on how well you scored compared to everyone else at your age. Once you get older, your score is no longer valid.

Another factor that skews the results is who takes the test. Since everyone is normalized to 100 as an average, then the accuracy of the scores requires a good sample of subjects.

 

[Sidekick]

well call me silly but I'm always suspicious of the word 'correlation'. That just means they're related. I prefer causal relationships established.

Anywho. As everyone's said IQ is in no way indicitive of intelligence. In fact I'm more likely to get a high IQ score solely because I'm a white, middle class male. This "status" confers on me educational advantages such as better schools with more funding and so forth etc etc.

Generalising here - people from ethnic minoritiesor lower classes or poverty ridden inner city areas or also for some reason females (I beleive it has something to do with the spacial sections of the IQ tests) do worse that males from semi-priviledged background who are from the ethnic majority. Combine any of those sociodemographic factors and the scales begin to tip against certain segments of the population.

The thing that really makes me curious about these tests is that if you ASK people from ethnic minorites (eg African americans) their ethnicity before they do the test, they score worse than they do if you don't ask their ethnicity.

There seems (this will not shock you) a prevailing sub-context in western societies that say that black people (or other enthinc minorities) aren't as intelligent as white people. Of course that's complete cr@p, but for some reason this subconsious attribution actually seeps through into things like SAT & IQ tests.

I'd encourage anyone interested in the oddities of subconsious though and how it influences us to read "Blink". Its s great book written by that guy who wrote "the tipping point". its got an angle (so does everyone and thing) but it's still an interesting read that's for sure.

Made me think about the way I look at other poeple and how views and opinions that I don't beleive or share can still slip into my mind unwanted...

 

[Umbran]

well call me silly but I'm always suspicious of the word 'correlation'. That just means they're related. I prefer causal relationships established.

And, let's strengthen that to note that they are related in a mathematical sense. Meaning that as one changes, we can mathematically predict changes in the other to some degree of confidence. Which is not what real-world people mean by "these two things are related". Correlation can be simple coincidence, or causitive, or due to a confounding bias, or...

 

[Zander]

As everyone's said IQ is in no way indicitive of intelligence.

I didn't say that.

In fact I'm more likely to get a high IQ score solely because I'm a white, middle class male.

That's factually wrong: you don't get bonus points (or penalties for that matter) on IQ tests for your ethnicity, class or sex. That's why ascribing intelligence solely on the basis of someone's categorisation in those sociological variables is racist, elitist or sexist.

Generalising here - people from ethnic minoritiesor lower classes or poverty ridden inner city areas or also for some reason females (I beleive it has something to do with the spacial sections of the IQ tests) do worse that males from semi-priviledged background who are from the ethnic majority.

That's wrong too, I'm afraid. The mean (average) IQs for men and women are the same. However, the male distribution is flatter and wider than the female, i.e. it's more platikurtic. Therefore there are more men at the top of the IQ distribution but also more men at the bottom. People from the ethnic majority are not the highest average scorers on IQ tests either in the US or the UK.

 

[Umbran]

That's factually wrong: you don't get bonus points (or penalties for that matter) on IQ tests for your ethnicity, class or sex. That's why ascribing intelligence solely on the basis of someone's categorisation in those sociological variables is racist, elitist or sexist.

Um, yes and no.

If a particular test is well-designed, and actually performs the job it is supposed to do, then ethnicity, class, and sex don't enter into the scores. However, constructing an exam that does not accidentally favor some set of people is excrutiatingly difficult.

This is one of the reasons why the test is best used as it was originally intended - to help screen for kids who might be at risk of falling behind in school, rather than a claim to "intelligence". The younger you are, the less impact purely social biases will have. Anbd inherent biases towards what schools do is particularly bothersome for this use.

As soon as you claim it is for "intelligence" though, the biases become wicked beasts...

 

[Cutty Sark]

I have no idea what you're planning to do with this information, Frukathka, so maybe it isn't a big deal, but bear in mind that that book was written,

1. For testing children (the subtitle is Scoring for Ages 5-11), and

2. in 1977.

Children, adolescents and adults score differently on tests; as someone else pointed out, they're age-normalized. Test writing has also evolved quite a bit, and a 130 on a test written in the 70s means a very different thing than a test written in the last decade.
Further, several theories have developed in the last few decades that suggest IQ is a poor model at best for intelligence. Howard Gardner's 1983 book Frames of Mind argues that there are seven forms of intelligence and that the IQ test measures only verbal and math/logic intelligence.

In short, I don't think an IQ of 180 allows a person do much more than have a well-developed vocabulary and some skill at higher math.