Your IQ as a child vs your IQ as an adult

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I had my IQ tested as a child, but wasn't told the result, only that I had "done well", which could mean anything from having tried my best to having gotten a score in the gifted range.

My current score is about what would be expected of an engineering student, with the scattered subscales that are typical of autism. Whether that's an increase or not, I don't know. My percentile score on the ACT (an academic achievement test) is lower than my percentile on the IQ test, meaning that I am what they call an "underachiever" (i.e., the IQ test is inaccurate for me partly because it overestimates my academic abilities). Similar reports exist of people whose IQs are measured as relatively low, but who have completed advanced degrees; and there are a great many people who score in the sixties or lower, who are nevertheless completely independent and have never needed assistance. (This is why the diagnostic criteria for "mental retardation" include not just a <70 IQ score but difficulty in daily living--it's to filter out the many cases where people's IQ test scores don't match their adaptive skills.)

Remember that the IQ test does not measure intelligence. It measures performance on the specific tasks on the IQ test. The idea of "intelligence" being a single quality is quite doubtful in the first place; apply that to a child with atypical development--the IQ score is based on the presumption of typical development--and an IQ test score approaches meaninglessness. And if that weren't bad enough, communication impairments and difficulty sustaining concentration and effort will often block a child's ability to demonstrate her abilities, whereas splinter skills can inflate scores in one area while leaving others untouched, an effect that gets averaged out in the final score and throws off the accuracy pretty dreadfully.

As far as intelligence and autism are concerned, it's very common for IQ scores to change unpredictably, either upwards or downwards. IQ predicts outcomes only weakly.

You are probably best advised to take your daughter's skills as they are, to try to find out what she is good at, and to let her use those strengths. That is what she'll use to find herself a job later on. If she is good at one thing and gets a job doing it, then it doesn't matter if she's horrible at something totally unrelated to her job.

Haha, yes. IQs are measured, if done correctly, against everyone else in that age group. So they can actually change drastically from year to year, combined with the fact they tend to lower as you grow older. At age thirteen, my IQ was 154. Now, it's closer to 135 and ever-dropping it seems, because I don't keep my mind in the shape I need to. Logic is something you can strengthen through practice and stimulation, or allow to atrophy, and unfortunately in my years of confusion and depression and attempting to fit in and be someone I was not, I abandoned stimulating my mind like I needed to and my IQ suffered as a result compared to those in my age group. This effect is pretty clear in how I discuss now; my arguments are not even nearly as well put together as they were when I was a teenager and I don't use even near the clarity of logic I somehow had back then (pretty disheartening, but I also used to pore through Philosophy textbooks every day as a child).

IQ does not measure intelligence itself, though, it measures your capacity to learn and be logical according to the questions on the test. It tests your ability to make connections other people may not normally see, and the efficiency with which you identify those connections give them some insight as to your "intelligence" as a whole. There is some trend of IQ following intellect, in that students I worked with in the Gateways program all had IQs under 85 and some were confined to wheel chairs and couldn't speak, while those in the Gifted programs were obviously much more intelligent and logical than average students and had IQs over 125. They've also followed a trend where higher IQ generally involves a greater grasp of emotional spectrum as well, whereas those below the average have more difficulty with emotional empathy.

But that isn't a dead ringer that the child will or won't be intelligent. They've actually identified eight different forms of IQ, from kinetic to spatial, interspective, introspective, logical-mathematical and scientific, et cetera. I would definitely not be too worried. Instead, measure her by what you know she can or can't do. IQ doesn't mean anything in the long run. I'm sure she will be a-okay.

With your current trend, you'll have an average IQ at the age of 78

People lie about this sort of thing more often than anything else. As is age, IQ is only a number, especially in youth.

Then why is it that I have never gotten along with anyone with under 130 IQ? Explain that with your IQ is only a number theory.

I don't know the IQs of any of my friends (nor my own IQ). If you know the IQs of everybody you get along with then it is still only a number. It's just a number that you use as a screening parameter for who you will get along with and who you won't.

It's only a screening parameter if you know beforehand, I learn months into my friendships usually.

bold is mine.

http://www.prometheussociety.org/articl ... iders.html

Last edited by Mdyar on 13 Sep 2010, 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Think about it this way:

A birth under normal conditions conceives a normal, healthy baby. There's no gene (that we know of) in normal babies that affects one's ability to sustain or accumulate a body of knowledge. A baby whose parents spoon fed him/her possibilities at a young age are many times more likely to develop a foundation of those essential neurological connections in the brain early. Information can then be logically collated and built on.

Outside of the 'knowledge/information' portions of the IQ test, it also records:

Attentiveness

Reaction time

Intuition

Working memory

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How someone tests on an IQ test created by humans for humans measuring desirable qualities is very subjective.

I believe anyone without a serious mental disability can learn and improve most qualities. As long as they have the drive they can acquire the aptitude.

Richard Feynman IQ was 125, and to quote Wikipedia "was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model)" He got the Nobel price of Physics in 1965
And this is one example among countless others...

In my opinion the field of what the IQ analyze is so narrow and the conclusions so subjective, yet with so much consequences in our lives that I consider it a total scam.

I score 12 in Sodoku and 27 in crosswords...
(Sodoku and crosswords significantly low and high scores also might be relevant)

EDIT: George Bush IQ: 125

RICHARD FEYNMAN WINS.
But do you know if his IQ was actually tested, SuperApsie, or if this is just another thing where someone chooses some random number and claims it to be someone's IQ? I know that Einstein never took an Intelligence Quotient test, so whenever people claim Einstein's IQ to be so-and-so, one shouldn't count it as credible.

It was tested when he was in highschool. It has entered folklore because it's below the cutoff to be one of Terman's Termites (a gifted group of the time with a cutoff of 140) but none of them have a Nobel prize. I don't know if he was trying to get in or if people just made the connection after the fact. But the number is real, not apocryphal.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp2412252.html#2412252

Thanks Janissy for the precision.

His IQ went up dramatically, fine. But it does not contradict the fact that the IQ score is not a reliable way to meter someone's intelligence capacity

He was 124, in high school, this is a miserable fail to discover his potential

Meh. Above 120, IQ becomes irrelevant anyway. There are too many other factors that overshadow it, like the ability to persevere, organize your activity, work in groups, and specialize.

I can tell you why Feynman's IQ score increased. Practice, simple as that. People claim you can't practice the IQ test, but you most certainly can. If you spend years using critical thinking and logic skills, you will also improve at doing related things on an IQ test. Do you really think that somebody who spends decades doing advanced mathematics won't improve at answering questions that ask you to calculate the price of a coat on sale, or spot the pattern in a row of designs? After years of practice, anybody's IQ improves.

IQ isn't an intrinsic property of the person taking the test. It's a test score. Saying "I have an IQ of 143" is like saying, "I got an A on my algebra test," not like saying, "I'm 5 feet 3 inches tall."

(I'm curious to know how in the world they measured a 180 on standard intelligence tests, because you start hitting multiple ceilings at 130. Above that range, the error margin is huge--twenty, thirty points above 145--and there just aren't any more questions.)

My IQ dropped (very substantially and steadily) with age, having been tested three times. Some people's IQ rises with age. IQ is meaningless though. It affects how people perceive you, but it means nothing about who you are other than how you compare at taking a test compared to most people. I think the reason autistic people's IQ can vary so much is that we develop along a completely different rate and direction than other people. In my case, my early IQ was influenced by hyperlexia (both the good and the bad -- my receptive language score was the lowest score on the test), and so it was artificially high compared to most children who can't read in any form at the age I was tested. But hyperlexia also caused my reading to come "as is", and while other children were going from no reading to adult-level reading, I was going from some reading to some more reading, still with major comprehension issues. So it's as if I started at a high level in some areas, but learned from that point on at a slower rate than other children. So it's like getting a head start but walking more slowly so everyone catches up to you and surpasses you in those areas that are tested on the test. My most recent IQ (8 years ago, age 22) is barely higher than your daughter's, despite a "gifted" IQ at age 5 and an "above average" IQ at age 15. Although my subscores were all over the map, from the lowest range to the slightly above average range (on my last test -- they were always all over the map, but the lowest and highest have varied).

At any rate, don't take IQ too seriously, and more importantly, don't let anyone else who helps your daughter take it seriously. It may go up or down over time (both are common for autistic people), or it may stay the same, but it shouldn't matter. It doesn't measure what most people think it measures.