I’m getting a little tired of people telling me their IQ test scores (taken from when they were children) or their children’s IQ test scores because most of these people are full of shit.
About three majors ago, I took a few hundred classes in psychology. I’m also the kid of two LAUSD (LA Unified School District) teachers, so let me tell you, if you’re in California, and someone who grew up in California starts talking to you about their childhood IQ scores or their children’s IQ scores, here’s how you can tell when someone is full of shit:
1) IQ tests need to be given by a psychologist or a psychometrist (who is usually a psychologist/statistician). This can be done one-on-one and, sometimes, in a group, but it can’t be taken at your home and it can’t be taken without supervision. They are given usually by schools, but there are also private testing facilities. If you want to be sure of the validity of the test, make sure it’s free. If it costs money, then it’s very often (but NOT always) full of shit. This means that a TON of private testing facilities are full of shit. These are scores that are not accepted by the magnet schools for gifted kids and so forth, but these scores ARE accepted by high-IQ societies like Mensa which, of course, is also an organization for insecure people who want to pay like $15 to take a test to prove their smartness. Mensa accepts a wide range of IQ tests, but they also give their own test.
2) IQ tests are usually given to second graders. People think this is done because this is best for validity. Actually, it’s done because at seven-years-something-months, a kid can still take the preschool version of Weschsler’s. This is sketchy for several reasons, but the main one being that if you’re dealing with a seven-year-old who has been reading for a few years then you’re NOT dealing with the seven-year-old that’s supposed to take this specific pre-literate test. The test is supposed to be for kids who can’t read. If your kid can read well above a beginning reader, ethically speaking, another test should be given. But this isn’t usually done because shitloads of parents would have heart attacks.
3) IN CALIFORNIA, two tests are given to test IQs in children. The first one is a complete-the-matrix multiple choice test. Most people take this one because it’s simpler to give and it doesn’t have to do with math/verbal skills. This makes it great for kids with learning disabilities and autism. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a legit test — it definitely is. Some argue that it is really the only consistently decent IQ test to date. It gives scores in percentages. Getting in the top 98% means your kid is gifted. It DOES NOT give scores like 100, 75, 130, etc. It used to, but it hasn’t since like 1980. Therefore, most people shouldn’t even know their “traditional score” IQ “number” if they took a legit IQ test as a child.
4) That said, many parents aren’t satisfied with this test so they make them take the WISC-III aka Weschsler’s which reports scores in the traditional fashion. How can they brag to their friends if they only know that Johnny got into the 99% range, which is basically 130+? THEY NEED TO KNOW THE SPECIFICS. (Less cynically, sometimes it’s good to know more specifically for actual reasons that aren’t ego-driven, of course. For CA schools, to get the “highly gifted” versus the mere “gifted” label, you have to have your kid take Weschler’s in addition to the matrices test.)
5) Again, remember, there’s the preschool Weschsler’s which most second graders are taking. There’s another test that is used for an overlap age range in the preschool version up to age 10 for kids who can read. And lastly, there’s the “older children” WISC-III, generally given to 10-16 year olds. Again, there’s the problem of people getting their 16-year-olds JUST under the cut-off to get them a chance at getting the “best possible score,” but abuses of this nature are less rampant and less effective, really.
6) The Weschsler’s tests for children — all of them — have a ceiling of 160. YOU CANNOT SCORE HIGHER THAN A 160 ON A WESCHSLER’S TEST THAT HAS BEEN DESIGNED FOR CHILDREN. When someone tells you that they got a 180 on a test that a psychologist administered to them in California, they are almost always wrong.
7) You CAN get scores of like 190 or 220 and so on if you take the WAIS (grownup Weschsler’s) or the Stanford-Binet. But it’s very, very hard to find anyone that gives the Stanford-Binet test. California schools have not been using the Stanford-Binet test for some time. The Stanford-Binet test gives much higher scores in part because it was developed NOT to test gifted children/adults, but to give definitive scores for people with mental retardation. It was good at this for its time, but better tests have been developed (unfortunately, a lot of kids with various neurological problems, learning disorders, and autism were getting very low IQ scores on the S-B when they were actually of normal or above-average intelligence. This was a big fucking oops).
8) Back in the day, LAUSD used to give kids multiple IQ tests — one at seven, one at 12-ish, and one at 16. Also, back in the day, they were using Stanford-Binet or Cattell, which do not have a ceiling of 160. Perhaps surprisingly to the developers of the IQ tests who thought that scores would remain constant, they kind of didn’t. So there are a ton of adults around here who took several IQ tests. Both the schools and the testees will always report their best score to you and to everyone. What all this has done is create a whole slew of studies talking about how kids are getting more stupid these days. These studies are then used for OTHER studies who want to blame whatever modern thing that bothers the researchers for making us all so dumb. In other words, about every fifth study that’s ever been done on the effects of watching TV, playing video games, etc. will cite some of this bullshit.
Just for the record, I don’t blame kids for believing their parents who tell them that they have scores of 190. They just become very annoying adults. I don’t always blame the parents, either. A lot of times, they just can’t read the test scores properly, or are never even given any official test scores, or whatever. Sometimes teachers fuck this up, but teachers aren’t psychologists either, so it’s not completely their fault either. It’s just really messy and annoying, because on the one hand, none of this matters. But on the other hand, IQ scores are given so much reverence and respect for whatever reason and people sometimes use their scores to torture themselves or make themselves feel erroneously better about themselves or what have you. And that’s all bad enough, but it’s ESPECIALLY bad when you’re not even dealing with correct information in the first place.
It just becomes really sad when you’re reading an online parenting community, for instance, and someone is feeling horrible about their child “only” having a score of 140 or something. That is an extremely high IQ, but they don’t realize that. It’s sadder when the parent goes, “I have an IQ of 170 and my sister has an IQ of 192 and my mother has an IQ of 168 and my husband has an IQ of 196, so why does my son have such a low IQ?” It makes me want to go, “LADY, your son is probably smarter than all of you because he is likely the only one with a valid score, but why don’t you just go ahead and make him feel intellectually inferior for his whole childhood and let him grow up to resent you? Sounds like a good plan.”
