
IQ Isn't Set In Stone, Suggests Study That Finds Big Jumps, Dips In Teens - llambda
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/10/19/141511314/iq-isnt-set-in-stone-suggests-study-that-finds-big-jumps-dips-in-teens?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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Homunculiheaded
I love when people ask "what does your IQ score measure". The only thing it
can possibly measure is your ability to perform an IQ test. Now you can ask
the question "What does your IQ score strongly correlate with", but I'm pretty
sure as it stands 'intelligence' is not well defined enough assign it a
quantitative value (or even know if one can be defined).

I used to hate standardized tests (and still somewhat do in principle) but
when you can show that a test score correlates to performance it does make
sense to assist in making decision when there are very large sets of data to
process (like college applications). It turns out that SATs do correlate
somewhat to freshman year performance. It doesn't really matter if it's for
the right reason, if you have thousands of similar applicants it makes sense
to use that data point if there are no other options. This is the logic of
machine learning too: I don't really care why 2 variables correlate, if they
do it can help me make decisions.

The issue for me is that I have yet to see anything interesting about what IQ
really correlates to. Pretending it is a test that measures intelligence is
completely asinine if you take 2 minutes to think about what that claim means.

~~~
byrneseyeview
I'll take the other side of that bet!

What kind of odds would you give me that a group of people in the 10th
percentile will have a higher average income than a group of people from the
90th percentile? If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I
think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well
as the top 10%. So, would you up up for 1:1 odds on that?

If you're willing to bet consistently with your beliefs, please get in touch;
my email address is in my profile.

~~~
Steko
"If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be
pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top
10%."

Unless the top 10% has some systemic advantage at taking IQ tests. Type words
into a search engine for further inquiries in this area.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Doesn't that seem kind of redundant? "People who do well on IQ tests have
systematic advantages which allow them to do well on IQ tests, but IQ tests
are meaningless."

Obviously, it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely
heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ
numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better
jobs (even though IQ testing from employers is basically illegal).

But we can adjust for that. I'd be happy to do the same bet controlling for
parental socio-economic status.

~~~
Steko
"it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in
which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then
the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs"

You don't need to _imagine_ that world, we live in it. Kids who go to private
schools with SAT prep classes and practice the test dozens of times are at a
several hundred point advantage to kids who don't. This gets them into better
colleges which gets them better jobs and gets them better income.

~~~
throwawayday
I beg to differ: I grew up in a trailer park, with an alcoholic carpenter for
a dad. We certainly didn't have the money to send me to prep classes or
private school. I did have one thing going for me: a love of books. I read
more books than an whole classroom of kids at my school. As a result, my SAT
scores were in the top 1%. I make well above the average now, and my family
enjoys the type of lifestyle that I could only dream about as a child.

~~~
Steko
Observing that preparation generally improves scores =/= you can't score well
without preparation. Moving the bell curve a little to the left or right
doesn't cut off the tail on the other side.

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ellyagg
Suggesting that IQ is not set in stone also implies that IQ exists. That they
don't claim otherwise, and in fact show structural brain changes in accordance
with the measured changes, should be well noted by folks who make a habit of
discounting it. It should also be noted that IQ was already thought to be
malleable into the teens, so I'm not sure why the researchers were so
surprised.

~~~
tomlin
It's not that people deny it exists, or discount it all together - it's just a
terrible indicator or measurement of one's capabilities. Measurements should
be accountable. A few cups of coffee or a bad sleep shouldn't matter if IQ is
as reliable as some like to believe.

Since it is used to _judge_ one's abilities, it's hardly fair to use it as a
practical measurement, just as BMI is impractical to use for judging a body
builder's fat percentage.

Anecdotally, medication which I take for ADHD/PI doesn't permanently alter my
brain's chemistry, yet my IQ takes a noticeable dive without it.

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alphamale3000
Nonsense.

Of course bad sleep will affect your IQ, and it doesn't make it less reliable.
Why? You brain is less reliable when you had bad sleep, and IQ is a
measurement of its peak performance. If you're not at peak performance any
given day, your results will show.

~~~
tomlin
Sure, but what is the upper limit for peak performance for each individual? If
you can't use IQ to compare to other people's IQ (because of innumerable
variations imposing on peak performance) and you can't use it to compare to
your own potential peak performance (because you don't know if you've attained
it yet), then how or why is IQ relevant at all?

No one who does well on an IQ test likes to be told an IQ test means very
little, keeping in mind that high IQ doesn't determine your success, or
guarantee you any specific lifestyle.

IQ is more of a _horoscope_ than it is a method of science.

~~~
alphamale3000
If one is not able to reach his peak potential, then his own problem and not
an IQ measurement deficiency. I'll read the IQ value that you're able to
reach, not the value that you might reach potentially if you make an effort.

Being able to reach your peak IQ potential consistently is part of the daily
hygiene of eating well, sleeping well, exercising well. And it's also a
question of making the effort. If I can't measure it, it means you don't reach
it. Or at least not often enough.

On the other hand, I agree that it might be overstated. But having worked with
people that don't have the best minds, you start to believe IQ is not just
crap.

~~~
tomlin
If you've suffered with a disorder of any kind that effects the brain, _make
an effort_ holds no meaning to you, other than possible ignorance.

If I use a measuring tape to record the length of a piece of wood - unless I
cut the piece of wood, or damage it in some way - this measurement will always
be the same. In the cold, it might shrink and in the heat it may expand - but
I can measure those variations and account for them using the basic laws of
math. Can you do the same with IQ?

> But having worked with people that don't have the best minds, you start to
> believe IQ is not just crap.

It's not that I don't believe intelligence varies, I just don't think we have
the ability to measure it - yet.

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tomjen3
Why is it that people are so fixated on IQ? We already know that things like
whether the child can wait 20 minutes on a marshmallow at age 4 is a better
indicator of scholastic success than IQ.

I fear people use IQ as an excuse for a (lack of) their success rather than
face up to it and improve (or just accept and move on).

~~~
pjscott
Setting aside the possibility that the delayed-marshmallow-gratification thing
has been exaggerated by people wanting to downplay IQ, and taking it at face
value: the fact that IQ is not the single most important predictor of
scholastic and/or life success does not make it unimportant. It warrants
discussion, especially if it can be improved.

For example, eliminating childhood malnutrition can improve IQ significantly
across whole populations. Isn't that something to be excited about?

~~~
cema

      eliminating childhood malnutrition 
      can improve IQ significantly 
    

I suspect it can improve the marshmallow-related behavior as well. But I could
just be excited about the elimination of malnutrition.

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winestock
The following two paragraphs are from the article:

"Price and her colleagues used brain scans to confirm that these big
fluctuations in performance were not random — or just a fluke. They evaluated
the structure of the teens' brain in the early teen years and again in the
late teenage years.

"We were able to see that the degree to which their IQ had changed was
proportional to the degree to which different parts of their brain had
changed," explains Price. For instance, an increase in verbal IQ score
correlated with a structural change in the left motor cortex of the brain that
is activated when we speak."

So, if there were structural changes in the brain that correlated with change
in IQ score, then IQ likely tells us _something_ other than "this person does
this well or badly at IQ tests." Many people are very skeptical about IQ
tests. As depressing as it is, the basic science behind psychometrics has been
mostly stable for decades. Look up the work of Linda Gottfredson (sp?).

As for this particular study, psychometricians already knew that generalized
intelligence (the so-called _g_ -factor) crystallized in adolescence or early
adulthood. The surprising thing about this study is how much change some of
the subjects showed. Going from the fiftieth percentile to the ninety-
something or, worse, going in reverse, is a big deal. The researchers behind
this study should get more funding to continue their work.

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ern
Link to original study:
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10514.html)

~~~
llambda
Nature is paywalled so only the abstract is viewable for me.

~~~
asolove
"Nature is paywalled" is a sentence I fear I will see again, with a different
meaning, at some time in the future.

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rflrob
Any idea how reliable a single IQ score is? If you repeat the test a week or a
month later, too soon for changes to reflect a significant change in cognitive
abilities, but far enough away to get rid of effects like a poor night's
sleep, stress from school or relationships, &c., by how much is the score
expected to vary?

~~~
vacri
A proper IQ test done under the same conditions (well rested, etc) will give
the same results. It's vulnerable to poor conditions - if you're not well
rested, you're not going to do as well as you could otherwise.

~~~
hugh3
In my childhood I did enough IQ tests [1] to be able to say "Oh, it's one of
this class of problems again". I assume that people taking repeated IQ tests
get better at them, because there's a limited selection of problem types.

[1] Only three or four. I'm sure there are lots of kids out there getting far
more over-tested than I.

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rhizome
Well of course IQ isn't set in stone, IQ is based on the results of a test
that babies can't take. QED.

~~~
technomancy
Honest question: do people actually believe something like that could be hard-
coded? It just seems like a horribly depressing worldview to believe that
you're stuck with whatever INT points you rolled at the start... not even to
mention being trivially disprovable.

~~~
pjscott
I think there's some semantic confusion here.

1\. There are degrees of mutability; "changeable" versus "hard-coded" is a
false dichotomy. For instance, I can increase my arithmetic ability with
practice, but I'm never going to be able to improve it so much that I can
diagonalize huge matrices faster than a computer.

2\. Whether or not a belief is depressing has no bearing on whether or not it
is true.

So I would reframe the question a bit: to what extent can IQ be changed? How
reliable are the tests? And if we can improve IQ, what's the best way to do
it? For example, childhood malnutrition can lower IQ, so improving childhood
nutrition can pay off big. The Flynn effect -- the rise in IQ scores over time
-- suggests that there are other things that can raise people's IQ as well, so
if we can find and exploit those, and they actually raise intelligence, then
that would be great.

~~~
vacri
Yes, you can improve your intelligence or IQ. For example, one subtest of the
IQ test is a spatial reasoning test - you have a series of split-colour cubes
and have to arrange them to match a card you're shown.

Now, there is a flaw in the point that you can train for tests - if you
trained in this task, then the task has no diagnostic meaning for you. But if
you genuinely start working with more spatial reasoning gear - say you become
a mechanic of some sort - you get better at recognising how things fit
together spatially. You have, in effect, trained yourself to be better at
spatial reasoning in general, and would do better at the subtest.

But the important thing to note here is that your intelligence _has_ improved
in that way - your ability to reason spatially has improved; you are actually
able to cognitively do more than you could previously.

Likewise with the (culturally-referenced) verbal tests. Someone might get an
IQ test at 20, then 'find books' and become a voracious reader. Tested a
couple of years later, their vocabulary and verbal reasoning has been
significantly exercised and improved. With an improved vocabulary, you are
better able to express or consider more advanced concepts, so again, that
aspect of your intelligence has actually improved.

~~~
eurleif
>Now, there is a flaw in the point that you can train for tests - if you
trained in this task, then the task has no diagnostic meaning for you. But if
you genuinely start working with more spatial reasoning gear - say you become
a mechanic of some sort - you get better at recognising how things fit
together spatially.

Has it been tested whether training for the spatial reasoning tasks on an IQ
test will make someone better at other spatial reasoning tasks (like being a
mechanic)?

~~~
vacri
There's been lots of testing, refinement, and correlation for each subtest and
what real-world aspects they're meant to represent. The test derives from a
number of psych tests and concepts which have been well-researched over the
years.

I don't know if you could say "would mean you would make a good mechanic"
based on that one test because that involves other aspects, not just spatial
reasoning, but being a mechanic would mean you (probably) deal with spatial
reasoning more often than say a journalist or call-centre worker.

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gwern
Very interesting; for me, the cool thing is not the variations (after all, we
have long known from childhood IQ tests that there's a lot of variation along
the way to one's adult IQ) but the nailing it down to the structural brain
changes as opposed to more transient or environmental stuff like, say, having
a bad day or test-retest effects or something.

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Tycho
How many other people here have avoided taking an IQ test there entire life
thus far?

