No one cares about the ability to score well on IQ tests. They care about the things an IQ test can predict.
They are good at predicting the ability to do IQ tests!
Seriously though - aren't they still fairly controversial? I have strong doubts on an intuitive level.
Here's a nice short book which cites a lot of literature: https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-Ritc...
There's even a vox explainer on it, hard to believe they would publish this today: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/24/11723182/iq-test-intelligence
1. It seems fairly widely reported that you can practice at IQ tests and get better. Are there any studies confirming or denying this? I presume you'd agree that if true it rather kills the validity of IQ tests dead.
2. I have ADHD and I'm acutely aware of how environmental factors affect my performance in many tasks. How do you square this with the idea that they measure an objective innate quality?
3. How do you account for the Flynn Effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect - are people getting smarter?
4. What's your thoughts on the argument that it's impossible to create genuinely culture free tests? This was something I was taught at college and it made sense to me then. Has it been debunked? Conclusively?
5. Steven Jay Gould wrote an entire book critiquing IQ tests : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man - do any of the points he raises stand up to scrutiny?
(3) is very interesting and there is not yet any agreement as to what is causing it. Flynn seems to have thought our culture is slowly becoming better at training us to think abstractly. There's some evidence for this: one Australian study found that over 20 years the students in a set of schools became better at a vocabulary test but did not improve at all in processing speed. This is not what you would expect to see if the improvements were due to better nutrition or less environmental lead.
For (5), haven't read it. He's stunningly erudite and a careful author though, it's worth taking him seriously. Do you have some examples of points he raised?
2. Environmental factors affect everything. You try to standardise them as much as possible for an operational definition of the thing you're measuring. You will never succeed completely. Nevertheless IQ tests time correlate with performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks.
3. Not sure anybody really understands what's going on with the Flynn effect. Nevertheless IQ tests correlate with performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks.
4. I'm sure it is in fact impossible on some level to create genuinely culture free tests. If we're going to be anal about this, this is a consequence of the various no-free-lunch theorems in statistical inference. For any culture/person/algorithm there are problems where they'll do better relative to others, and problems where they'll do worse. Nevertheless IQ tests correlate with performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks.
5. I'm sure they do, but I haven't read the book and the summary in the Wikipedia article is too vague to tell.
None of these objections actually engage with the parent comment's assertion that "Ability to solve these puzzles correlates with ability in a diverse range of cognitive abilities".
IQ tests, or any standardized tests for that matter, blow up this assumption as do aggregated data showing differentials across groups or even nations, and that intelligence as even crudely measured by IQ tests which is just a proxy for something that isn't so precise, still correlates with general positive outcomes in life such as earning potential, health, career success, national achievement in science etc. It is also not politically correct that this dynamic is largely a biological phenomenon, that intelligence like many other physical characteristics is heritable.
This is why generalized IQ tests were banned from job interviews because not everyone scored the same, which is politically incorrect and unacceptable in our current political climate.
Basically for the liberal "left" which dominates western culture, "equality" is almost a religious belief, in opposition to any acknowledgement or even promotion of hierarchies, or recognition of inequality as an objective reality of human existence. Anything that undermines "equality" and points to natural hierarchy is "controversial" not allowed.[0]
[0] A random example, but there are many, of unacceptable differentiation when it comes to group cognitive outcomes. And elimination of standardized tests or advanced classes in the name of "equality" and against any instances of "inequality"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/04/californ...
They are not controversial at all amongst psychologists. The notion that IQ tests have predictive power is about as settled as the notion that "people get sad sometimes".
/s
For what? (Correlations are interesting scientifically of course, but for everyone else?)
> No one cares about the ability to score well on IQ tests.
Except for Mensa and their applicants.
I don't mind IQ research. I do mind exclusive clubs for the sake of exclusivity, and especially those that are (supposedly and explicitly) genetically determined entry criteria. It smells bad.
What I'm skeptical of is applying stereotyping - and that's what this is, it's s predictive model that's based on averages, not the individual - to any kind of real decision that's any more weighty that letting you into a club. Like education decisions for example.
It is also aversion or even policy regulation against even giving tests and acting on the results towards individuals, as this entails inevitable discrimination when the natural and unavoidable hierarchy of human abilities is observed.
Similar tests, like the SAT and GRE, are designed to work even with practice. They have other problems.
IQ is very much so not genetically determined. See for instance the flynn effect which is happening far too fast to be the result of genetics. IQ is only ~50% heritable.
? what is your stance on, e.g., competitive sports teams ?