IQ tests

[cariboo]

How accurate are IQ tests for indicating a child's intelligence?

Well, the real question, I suppose, is what is it that IQ tests measure? They certainly aren't the bias-free, non-culturally-specific instrument that they were originally perceived to be. I think how accurate they are depends on what you are using them for.

Not very.

My son has been assessed by an Ed Psych using IQ tests and part of it was general knowledge.This seemed odd to me because it totally depends on what you have been exposed to.

However, in his case they were accurate as they showed a big gap between his potential and performance. Mind you it could be that he is just a lazy .

Dd (9), who has nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy, suspected ADD & who recently has been rebellious, moody, aggressive, inattentive and generally unhappy and not at all "herself", is seeing a psychiatrist. He gave her an IQ test on Monday & the results showed her IQ to be on the low side of average. Her academic performance has been consistently good up until about 5 months ago. What should I do?

Mine at age 8: 88 points
Mine at age 13: 132 points
Mine at age 20: 109 points
Mine at age 22: 157 points
Mine at age 25: 102 points

All educational psychologists' tests. To be fair, three of them said frankly that IQ tests are useless. The profile stays the same: I still look, relatively, good and bad at the same things. So a decent ed. psych. test can be great for flagging strengths and weaknesses, but it isn't great for telling you anything about so-called 'intelligence'.

DS has had quite a few IQ tests over the years (ASD) and all have been fairly consistent. The profile has always been spikey though - as LittleRedDragon says, with strengths and weaknesses always falling in the same areas.

Is the IQ test made up of different sub-tests? Do some of the sub-tests score much lower than others? It can show weakness in areas like verbal ability, processing skills. Weaknesses in these areas can indicate specific learning difficulties and that can affect school performance and attitudes to learning.

Having knowledge of the areas of weakness/strength can help with adapting the curriculum in ways that are more accessible to your DD - e.g. more use of visual instructions. I would have thought with ADD, that short-term memory might be affected?

It's also useful to know your DD's IQ so that even if attainment is falling, underlying ability is good (i.e. within the average range). So you can argue that your DD should be capable of achieving at least average attainment - if she is not then she needs the support in school to enable her to do so.

IQ tests are great for measuring how well a kid can do in IQ tests. That is all!

That's incredibly reassuring!

Good!

I think you can trust your gut feeling that this result was a little off, especially since you know she has been doing well academically until recently. Besides which, there are bits of the IQ test which affect your score, but which you maybe don't really need to do well academically.

Agree about the sub tests being improtant - ds has an "uneven learning profile" in that his verbal score significantly outperforms other areas such as numeric and spatial. Overall he is pretty average or below according to the CAT's/PIPs he sat aged 7) but this demonstarted where his strengths lie and gave the school a bit of a wake up call.

They are correlated reasonably well on the whole with academic success - which is not necessarily the same as intelligence - because academic success tends to rely on many of the specific skills that are tested in them. That doesn't make them necessarily good at predicting academic success, either, if there are specific learning disabilities or other factors that affect how potential turns into performance. But they can be useful in showing that a child has more potential than his or her results seem to suggest - in which case it's worth investigating further - and the pattern of subtest scores can be important in identifying learning difficulties. Although differences between subtests don't have to mean a problem - more just that you are better at certain areas than others - really extreme differences are worth noticing because it could mean that overall ability might be being masked, or that a child is compensating for one skill with another (like very good visual memory compensating for poor auditory skills). I would be more concerned if the IQ test showed a really bright child who was not performing well in school. If a child is doing ok academically but has a poor score on an IQ test, I'd be more inclined to suspect that it was something to do with conditions on the day. However the IQ test might still point out areas of weakness that may cause problems later on in school, when different skills are needed - it could be that she is able to cope without support at this level, but might need help in other areas later on.

I'm hopeless at IQ tests because I always get sidetracked into seeing if there is an alternative answer, something else about the words that means you could group them in a different way. This mindset has not stood in my way academically; it's precisely the questioning attitude you want to write a good PhD.

Cory, that's exactly what my dad does - if you give him one of those 'odd one out of four' he will automatically find a rationale for each of the four being the 'odd' one.

Mum reckons he just likes arguing.

Thanks so much! I think dd's real problem is poor self-esteem (change of school - bad decision on our part! - and then abrupt change back to original school at Easter). I 'helped' her with her homework this evening by just sitting at the table with her & doing some of my own paperwork rather than breathing down her neck. Harmony & cooperation for the first time in months. I hope I've found the solution!

Thanks so much! I think dd's real problem is poor self-esteem (change of school - bad decision on our part! - and then abrupt change back to original school at Easter). I 'helped' her with her homework this evening by just sitting at the table with her & doing some of my own paperwork rather than breathing down her neck. Harmony & cooperation for the first time in months. I hope I've found the solution!