Re: IQ and age

[Guy Buckingham <guyb@ionia-mi.net>]

Lurker wrote:
> 
> At 10:47 PM 11/27/96 -0600, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
> >Dale Thorn wrote:
> >> The biggest influence on IQ are the so-called "engrams" (fears, super-
> >> stitions, anxieties, etc.) planted in your brain early in life.
> >>
> >> Some of this can be overcome with mental exercise, and awareness of what
> >> negative influences are holding you back.  Much easier said than done!
> >>
> >> IQ as they attempt to measure it can probably be most easily explained
> >> as pattern matching skills. Unfortunately for testing, and although you
> >> can be every bit as intelligent at 70 as at 10, your pattern-matching
> >> skills change and evolve over time, so any given tests will only apply
> >> (more or less) at the age group they are optimized for.
> >>
> >
> >Would you dismiss strong correlations between IQ and success in life
> >and academia as something irrelevant?
> >
> 
> I would.  If you look at who has the oppertunities to go college you will
> note that those who are good at taking tests (SAT, ACT, or IQ) are those
> who get to go.  You will also note that money also breeds success, or can
> someone give me an argument for the fact that there are more rich kids
> going to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the like than poor kids. (These
> schools almost gaurentee success.)
> 
> If you want to find a correlation look for it in money not tests.  And if
> you are insistant on finding it in tests, ask why the scores are as they
> are (was the test written to the advantage of one group over another or can
> one group buy the "A" with special courses which teach the skills needed to
> score high.)

     I can understand a person's interest in IQ, but if anyone has been
reading the "stuff" posted lately beware that an enormous amount of it
has been wrong.  As an example it used to be that IQs were a ratio
between you chronological and developmental age, but that only works for
people up to the age of 16, using the first tests used to measure
inteligence quotients.  Think about it.  If this ratio was always the
case, as implied, a person would always have to score higher as they got
older in order to maintain the same IQ.  Take a test and you'd know this
was not possible.  As another example "engrams" in pyschology, really
not mainstream pyschology, actually refer to a concept in The Church of
Scientology or an episode of Star Trek.  I think what is being mentioned
is really so-called "crystalline intelligence".  

     These are just some examples.  I am not writing this as a rant;
just don't want the spread of "misinformation".  If someone would like
more authoritative information I could help.  I am not an expert in the
field, but do teach it.