I read somewhere a few years ago (sorry, no cite, it was in a book) that your I.Q. stays the same mostly throughout one’s life.
However, talking with my roomate about it, he said that that would have to be impossible. That as you grow and live life, your I.Q. would have to change as you’re able to process new info and learn reasoning/logic and all other kinds of things.
So which is it? I’m sorry if this question has been asked and answered already but a search on “I.Q” and combos thereof didn’t go so well.
The way I.Q. testing was described to me many years ago was that it was like measuring a cup - not what was in the cup (i.e. how much knowledge you had), but what the cup would hold (i.e. how much you could learn).
The last time my I.Q. was formally tested was many, many years ago - I was still in high school. I know for a fact that I am more capable of learning now that I was when the test was done - so would my I.Q. have changed?
Yeah, that’s what I’m asking (and that now makes sense to me as my roomate put it). I’d think if I did an IQ test now that I’d score much better than say, a few years ago.
In a few more years I’d probably score even higher than if I took it now. Is this because my IQ is changing and getting higher?
From what I remember reading about it, IQ tests, at least, are configured for the expected rise in knowledge as someone gets older. A six-year-old with an IQ of 100 and a twelve-year-old with an IQ of 100 will not know the same things. The twelve-year-old has more knowledge. I’m looking for articles, but it’s hard to find the exact question you’re trying to ask.
As you get older, your “cup” of possible knowledge gets bigger, but the cup, if I understand this properly, generally stays about the same proportion full. Like this:
500 mL container, containing 250 mL=50% full
1000 mL container, containing 500 mL=50% full
So your IQ may go up and down by a few points, but not enough to show a significant difference.
I’m sure someone who actually knows about these things will come along and make a lot more sense, though.
A couple of years ago one TV network in Australia did The National IQ Test. Answer sheets were printed in papers, you could do it online while the show was on and they had various groups doing it in the studio. Everyone had to answer each question within an alloted time. When the answers were given you tallied up your score and looked it up on a series of tables. Once you got past a certain age the same score resulted in a higher IQ. For instance the top score was about 55/60 questions and the guy who scored that online was evaluated at 162. I scored the same but at my age came out as 166. This scaling would seem to indicate that the test creators feel that IQ falls after 50.
I’ve just remembered my son did the test too although he was one year under the age at which it became reliable. As I recall the younger ages also derived better IQs for the same score. This would indicate that with knowledge and experience we are smartest (IQ wise) from say early 20s to 50s.
It does change in that your ‘raw score’ will change over time and yes it does go down as you get older (cant remember exactly when sorry).
Final IQ scores are calculated on how you scored versus other people in the same age range and gender though, so in practise it shouldnt change too much unless other factors are involved ie education, brain injury etc.
So if you scored 130 vs your age range at 18 it should in theory be similar at 30, ie you’d be in the top 2% of test scorers each time for that age range and gender unless something else happened.
Don’t read too much into the rebuttals here. It is still quite a stable score. People don’t usually bounce around outside of a small range and the conversion factors don’t come into play much from early adulthood until many years later. People criticize IQ scores a lot without realizing that it is pretty incredible that they can measure a fairly young child and be pretty confident that the converted score will be very similar 20 years later. This applies if you move to another major IQ test as well.
I have taken 3 real professionally administered IQ tests at age 9, 10, and 20 as well as the ACT, SAT, and the GRE test twice. Despite how dumb, or smart I thought I had gotten, the percentile scores were almost exactly the same for all of them. I don’t know if that is comforting or disconcerting. Most people don’t move much on these measures unless there are other factors at play.
