Explain my IQ(s) to me

[Primaflora]

Shoshana

the WISC III is valid up until the teen years but it’s not useful for IQ’s over 140. You can go over 140 if the kid is 8 or younger but once you’re dealing with an older gifted kid, the ceiling effect comes into play pretty fast. I shouldn’t have said hitting ceilings purely because of age because that’s neither accurate nor what I meant. Obviously a 11 yo kid with an IQ of 120 has probably not hit ceilings on the WISC III.

Blech. Am I getting any clearer or just digging myself a deeper hole?

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/SBLM…

has a pdf which goes into what I am trying to say.

[CasperQ]

*Originally posted by Achernar *
**Well, they don’t seem to be selling you stuff like most places at least, but only 20 questions? I think it was a little too lenient, since I got a 144. I’m not that smart. Still, it was kind of fun. **

But really, they are selling something… see this:

Membership Registration

Once you’ve chosen your membership package you have the option to either pay by credit card online or complete your registration through the mail using a check or money order. All credit card transactions take place over our secure servers using state-of-the-art 128-bit SSL encryption technology from Verisign. To learn more about SSL encryption technology, click here. Memberships are a one time non-refundable purchase.

Of course, I’m obviously not dying anytime soon since it wasn’t a significant increase, decrease of my IQ. IQs are a ya-ya measure of potential, though - its what you KNOW, not what you COULD know… YMMV

[Skott]

*Originally posted by Shoshana *
**The discrepancy between what you were told by the examiner and the neurologist, if based on the same test, can only be attributed to error on the part of one of them. If you’re really curious, ask that a psychologist sit down with your and your medical record and go over the scores. The WAIS breaks out IQ into three categories: Verbal (VIQ), Performance (PIQ) and Full Scale (FSIQ, a combined category). If the test was a WAIS, it is possible that one or both of these folks reported a VIQ or PIQ rather than your FSIQ, which is the one you think of as “IQ.” VIQ and PIQ can be very different. **

That would explain a lot. The main purpose of the test was to see if the head injuries I substained had effected my memory (as I felt they had). Someone, either the tester or the neurologist I forget which, mentioned that my memory scores were more inline with someone with an IQ of 100. If the tester gave me my score based on the part that didn’t include the memory test, and then my neurologist gave me the full scale one, then the two scores make a little more sense to me.

I did extremely poor on the memory test and the tester got very irritated with me. I think he thought I was deliberately trying to fake a bad memory (I wasn’t). He ended up giving me a hint: I was trying to memorize a string of words; he said to think of them in categories instead. Without that hint, I probably would have scored lower in that portion of the test.

**I don’t know why your neurologist wishes he had an IQ of 111. Perhaps he’s misunderstanding the scoring, or perhaps he wishes that he were less intelligent so he didn’t have to work as a neurologist. The average IQ of a US college graduate is around 110 IIRC. **

It confuses me as well and it was what led me to theorize that the 111 score was an “adjusted” score.

[Tigers2B1]

I have also heard the average IQ of college graduates given as 115 - with graduates in law, medicine at around 120 - 125. The last may have more to do with getting in than getting out - especially with medical school.

[Musicat]

Quite by accident, I just happened to run across this relevant info in an article about breast feeding’s effect upon children’s I.Q., by Iain Murray:

IQ, however, is not that useful a measure. The basic concept behind it (mental age) has fallen into disrepute, and what is left is a narrow measure of a very specific set of skills. Psychologists generally agree now that intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, is merely one factor in deciding whether a person is gifted or retarded. Intelligence has also been shown to be malleable. Two identical twins raised separately, for instance, may score very differently on IQ tests. Although about 70 percent of intelligence depends on heritability, much depends on factors beyond infancy…

Furthermore, IQ is distributed normally, i.e. its distribution follows a bell curve pattern. About 70 percent of people have an IQ between the ranges of 85-115. The difference between an IQ of 99 and one of 106 is simply not that great. While the difference might be statistically significant, in practice it means little…