Slashdot Mirror
IQ 'a Myth,' Study Says
An anonymous reader send this quote from The Star:
"The idea that intelligence can be measured by a single number — your IQ — is wrong, according to a recent study led by researchers at the University of Western Ontario (abstract). The study, published in the journal Neuron on Wednesday, involved 100,000 participants around the world taking 12 cognitive tests, with a smaller sample of the group undergoing simultaneous brain-scan testing. 'When we looked at the data, the bottom line is the whole concept of IQ — or of you having a higher IQ than me — is a myth,' said Dr. Adrian Owen, the study’s senior investigator... 'There is no such thing as a single measure of IQ or a measure of general intelligence.'"
"If there is something in the brain that is IQ, we should be able to find it by scanning."
The test group consisted entirely of politicians and the control group was Slashdot readers?
dreaded scurrilous bit-twiddler from Oklahoma
I have an IQ of 150, am a member of a 3 sigma IQ society. But I cannot remember names, and if I had to do manual skilled labor, I would starve to death. There are people with a much lower IQ who I admire greatly for their skill sets and abilities that I will never have
-- MyLongNickName
... there are obvious trends that some people learn more and learn faster then others and I'm certain this can be measured at a gross level. I bet there are methodological flaws with the study that will be debunked soon.
> Rather, the study determined three factors — reasoning, short-term memory and verbal ability — that combined to create human intelligence or “cognitive profile.”
And IQ tests test 2 of those factors... reasoning (through math), and verbal (through written). They've just discovered that "memory" is important to "cognitive ability."
Saying that IQ is a myth is hyperbole. They've identified that it exists and that it has 3 (instead of 2) components.
Yeah, again. Seems every five years or so there's a book, article, or study saying that IQ is not a single thing.
Yawn.
The professor in my "introduction to psychology and brain science" course said "IQ is defined as what is measured by IQ tests." So it's not that it doesn't exist. The question is, what is it, and does it matter?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I thought this was common knowledge. IQ tests pretty much only measure your ability to do simple math and recognize patterns. It says nothing about how creative you are, whether you can critically analyze a painting or Goethe play, or if you can recognize historical catalysts. It was always just a forced number that seemed to correlate well with intelligent people.
Raters gon' rate.
When I was a child, I was diagnosed with having a really high IQ. As a result people have been telling me I'm a "genius" for most my life and always pushing me to "achieve my full potential" and crap like that.
It's nonsense. Maybe I'm smart, maybe I'm not. I think trying to measure that is crazy and impracticable. I'd rather be judged by what I do, not what some test says about me.
And frankly I don't really want to be judged at all. I think I'm doing OK with my life, and that's really all that matters. All this unnecessary categorising of people... it's all kind of pointless.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
The IQ test was not designed to be an absolute measure. It was developed by Alfred Binet as a way to rank between a group of children in a special education context. It gives only a relative measure between that group and does not give any absolute measurement of intelligence nor is it valid to compare IQs between different groups. The IQs assigned are only valid within the tested group.
The transition to it being an absolute measurement was pushed by the US military to test and measure recruits. This was a colossal screw up.
Google it. It's all there.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I am a MENSA member but I hardly consider myself very smart. I mean, I'm kinda smart but I see lots of people that blow me away when it comes to various mental abilities. And none of them are MENSA members.
Let's start with something easy: cats vs. dogs.
Dogs can be trained to do a lot of things, and therefore can be very "useful". So people feed them.
Cats almost can't be trained, they sleep or play around the whole day. An yet people feed them as well.
Which is more intelligent, cats or dogs?
I once taught a mixture of kids from so called "3rd world environments", who also had very low IQ scores compared to the typical "exposed" American kids.
In my 11 years of teaching, not once did our American kids score better than the "3rd world" kids at all! This was despite the fact that these poor kids had to learn English grammar. Heck, one of them even reminded me of a few math tricks that I employed myself while in school.
I once escorted one such kid to her parent, and it was a shock to hear her switch to some foreign tongue before switching to English in order to introduce me. This particular kid is now at BP in Texas, and still writes to me. Incredible!
by a single metric, what use is doing to the human brain, other than to have another pointless number to have people boast about. (Nearly every person I met who bought up their IQ almost always claims to have 130+ points.... and I'm too polite to say it to them, but apparently underapplying themselves like crazy).
I almost never see a car rated just by it's mpg nor do I ever see CPUs rated just by their GHz.
I think one of the highest designated IQs belonged to Goethe and couldn't do math beyond some trig iirc for shit. Great writing though. Obviously a different type of intelligence than Einstein.
Modern tests don't actually present single-measure IQs anymore, for the most part. Even the old Stanford Binet test is using multiple scales these days, and any more modern test such as the Wechsler scale will use many different measures. Anyone with a moderately reasonable IQ (/sarcasm), would realize that intelligence can't be quantified with a single number.
There was a good point made that only people who aren't thought of as smart have anything to gain by joining MENSA. For example, if you found out Stephen Hawking was a member of MENSA you might just about manage a "well, figures" but if you found out Sarah Palin was in it you'd go "wow, never expected that".
I've always looked at it like processor speed. I've taken a few "IQ tests" in the distant past, and I've come out to around 130 to 140ish. But that's really subjective and I understand why people think IQ is bullshit. I could be just average, who knows.
But when dealing with most people it just feels like I'm thinking faster. Like they are able to reach much the same conclusions, it just takes them longer to formulate thoughts and ideas. I get impatient that conversations are taking so long when I can already predict where we're going to end up. I sort of feel "overclocked" if you will. When I find someone who seems to think at my speed, it's awesome. We usually have a great conversation - that happens relatively quickly.
“If there is something in the brain that is IQ, we should be able to find it by scanning. But it turns out there is no one area in the brain that accounts for people’s so-called IQ."
Wow, the study's senior investigator said something this mind-numbingly dumb? Just because you can't find it using a machine that measures blood flow does not mean it isn't a meaningful concept. IQ definitely exists - it is a measurement. The question is whether it measures anything meaningful. But we wouldn't necessarily expect to be able to confirm that by sticking people in a magnet; it's a statistical question, not a question of blood flow in the brain...
Even the people that "invented" IQ didn't believe in it. It was designed to be a simple and useful measure of relative "intelligence" between people. Intelligence wasn't fully defined at the time, and the test was rigged to try to be fair, even when it was found to not be. Just by changing questions, I can change the relative performance of identified groups (woman and minorities two common groups to target). That was always known, and there are other limitations. This isn't a new position, and I didn't see anything interesting in the article.
Might as well be saying that shoe size is a myth because people have different widths for a particular size. That doesn't make the size a myth.
Learn to love Alaska
IQ was for finding children with learning disabilities.
That's all.
The US Army are the ones who took it and turned it into a measuring stick and subsequently the US educational system followed suit.
See The Mismeasure of Man for a concise history.
Then there is the fact that there is 0 correlation between success in life and IQ
Tell that to an intellectual disabled permos (defined as IQ 75 in Australia).
It is a long way from a perfect correlation, but to claim there is 0 correlation is rubbish unless you are choosing some fairly bizzare measures of 'success'.
.to everyone who's pride was hurt when MENSA rejected them.
Did they refuse you for confusing "who's" and "whose"? ;)
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
They should just call it Pattern Matching and Spatial Reasoning Quotient. "Intelligence" is too ambiguous a term.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
The paper doesn't mention IQ anywhere. It's about intelligence. IQ is just a (very bad) way of measuring intelligence. The paper makes the claim that there is not generic problem-solving ability (intelligence), but different people excel at different tasks. It's a much stronger claim than saying that IQ is bullshit.
I was a MENSA member for a very short while. They told me I had an IQ of 158. I didn't know what it meant, so maybe I wasn't that smart. I was smart enough to work out within the first 12 months that the overpriced annual subscription bought me nothing but a mag full of spam, and the opportunity to associate with a bunch of people who like to feel smart.
http://www.uwo.ca/its/brain/iqmyth/Hampshire%20Owen%20IQ%20Neuron.pdf
How do you know someone is a MENSA Member? Do worry they will tell you.
[quote]
Rather, the study determined three factors — reasoning, short-term memory and verbal ability — that combined to create human intelligence or “cognitive profile.”
[/quote]
Now the important question is: Did they find any correlation between the 3 different areas?
A high number on an IQ test correlates to someone with a more agile and efficient mind. That is all. Would you hire someone as a programmer who had an measured IQ of 100 over someone who had an IQ of 120? We have no absolute measure for intelligence. If we did we would be able to identify intelligence in other animals as well as in humans. We just have a few tests whose results are correlated to something resembling intelligence. I would think those with higher IQ have already figured out that once money is given to do a study a paper has to be written and it better be a good one.
MENSA has plusses and minuses.
For me it was a chance to solicalized, to be long to group that was like me. Think, what others did in high school, I did post college.
I meet many different poeple, from guys to could not tie their shoes but could talk about Choas Theory for hours, to wonderful people who open their homes and their lifes to stranges that only had a card or newsletter annoucing an event.
Myself, I hosted a monthly movie "night" in my apartment. It started on first Friday of month and lasted until the last person left or Monday. Via that meet many people, including one that became my wife. My freinds in Mensa found out of our weddings plans when we both changed our addresses and my wfie to be changed her name on month newsletter. It was nice receive a hand written note congratlating us in each of our newsletters.
I left Mensa after I figured out that I out grew the it. I gradulate from that part of my life.
On a side note - since I also was at one time part of the management of the local group, membership was broken down to about 5-10-85 split.
5% wanted the membership to prove themselfs. They did want the newsletter or any assocation, just a proof of making it.
10% as active. The came to events, helped with fund raising and other programs.
85% getting the newsletter and reading it and filling it aaway. These were the ones we kept trying to join in with 10% - it took me almost 5 years to start going to events and meeting people and become found I liked being with the 10%.
I found the time enjoyable. I was traveling alot, and found events in other parts of world that I drop in on while killing a weekend in a city that I did not know. Oh, and in Slashdot fashion - my mom, while I as living at home, found the test weekend and suggested that I take it.
I am a MENSA member but I hardly consider myself very smart. I mean, I'm kinda smart but I see lots of people that blow me away when it comes to various mental abilities. And none of them are MENSA members.
As a Mensan, you should know that it's not an acronym and should not by typed in all caps.
This is not a dig, but several of the people relating their experiences with MENSA seem to have some real difficulties with spelling, context, syntax, and the lot.
I really mean it when I say that I'm not fucking with you. It's just interesting.
And by the way, maybe this might make some of you self-appointed geniuses understand that many of the people portrayed by the media as idiots - aren't.
That is simply propaganda; and of course some public figures make it easier than others to stick them with that tag. But anyone with a track record of success has intelligence. Denying it because you don't agree with them politically is simply being completely intellectually dishonest.
And while you cannot control what people think or do - you can control your own actions. So, maybe not repeating or reinforcing obviously incorrect things might be something you can do to move public discourse forward.
Because if you are one of the ones out there that like to hold on to the fiction that George W. Bush or Sarah Palin are unintelligent; that is just stupid on the face of it. Arguing that they're stupid because it's an easy way to propagandize people is not helping *anything*.
I remember when W. was running the first time and I had a very intelligent friend (and actual former MENSA member) who believed this hook, line, and sinker.
All it took for me to completely convince him how intellectually dishonest he (and the media) was being was for two weeks to point out every time he misspoke. That's all it takes. Speaking like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan in public is a inborn talent that VERY few people have. It is NOT simply a function of high intelligence.
And if you are being completely fair about it; for a national level politician, George W. Bush is at least a better than average speaker.
And before you knee-jerk your reply - how many "smart" people do YOU know that could do as well as he did, under the kind of scrutiny and digging for flaws that was going on?
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
I've noticed that people who are underachievers in school often compensate with high social intelligence, seeming to know every trick in the book.
"Rather, the study determined three factors â" reasoning, short-term memory and verbal ability â" that combined to create human intelligence or âoecognitive profile.â
Uh... pardon me, researcher guys, but WTF do you think IQ tests typically MEASURE??? Hint: short-term memory, reasoning, and verbal ability!!!
The idea that IQ is bullshit, is bullshit. There is a very long and well estblished, very strong statistical correlation between high IQ and all three of these factors.
From what I read of TFA, whoever did the study doesn't know squat about prior research into IQ.
Granted: no one number can measure everything. And IQ doesn't pretend to. There is still a great deal of debate about what IQ actually means, in regard to a person's overall intelligence. But what is known is that the statistical correlation is very real, and no single, shoddy study, no matter how many participants, will make that go away.
Here's the holy grail of arguments against IQ, the single most convincing evidence is that you can TRAIN to get a higher IQ score, without actually becoming what anyone would call smarter. The first time I took an IQ test, I got little above average (110ish); I didn't know what kind of thing they were looking for, specially on those "what comes next?" (which are really dumb questions, btw). I studied for it and on my last one I got 148. I didn't feel any smarter from the first to the last, just better at answering those specific tests... On the other hand, that was a few years ago, but I'm sure if I took one today I would get a lot less than 148, but I AM smarter than what I was those many years ago. I'm obviously slower, sure, and probably my memory isn't as good, but I understand the world much better. Isn't that what smarter means? I know many people who are way smarter than me but who are SLOWER thinking (but deeper), and so don't do very well on all sorts of tests... I'm fast, so I usually do well.
The only consistent correlation of intelligence to IQ has always been that only idiots believe that intelligence can be measured by a single number.
The original idea wasn't vacuous. The researchers who coined the term, particularly Spearman, honestly thought they had found statistical evidence for a single common factor that could be called "intelligence." But I thought that had all been thoroughly exploded by the 1950s.
There was a guy way back in the 1960s who worked out a sort of abstract block diagram, 6 by 6 by 6, of 216 different "thingies" that represented some aspect of intellectual performance. What was it called? "Structure of Intellect." Google, click click, J. P. Guilford. So he spent a chunk of his career devising psychological tests that ought to detect each of those 216 intellectual abilities and then doing the correlations to show that each of the tests was really, truly measuring something different from the others. When I encountered his stuff, he had successfully demonstrated the existence of about 150 of those 216 skill or talents. In other words, intelligence isn't one thing, it's at least 150 different, independent, things.
And that was in the 1960s. I'd have hoped that by now IQ was lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Spearman. Whatever was keeping it alive? Racism? The standardized testing industry?
I don't quite see how this goes much beyond what was known a half-century ago, though it's helpful to see it confirmed. But if the officials want to test intelligence, they will just go on testing intelligence, whatever the science says.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It is an undeniably obvious fact that some people are smarter than other people. So any study that says intelligence differences between people are a myth is obviously flawed and contrary to obvious everyday data.
I do not have a degree in English. My wfie does, but does not try proof my writing any more, too many fights. I also have a hardtime with the language becuase I do not hear the differences in sounds of words like most people would have a hard time spelling to, too and two without "use" contect. But for me, I have that same problem many words like specific and Pacific. I use to leave on the west coast and if some says "go to Pacific." I would ask "Specific what?"
About proof reading, I proofed that first post for over 10 minutes. But I can not read what is written, my head fills in and fixes to what I "wrote". My wife as a "love" card/note from me, that say "Wish remain your face". I know I wrote more than that!
My favorite saying "English is my second language, I am still looking for a first." Made my college professor in English just crack up.
how would we measure height anyway
Take an engineering approach ... allow me to illustrate.
One day in the academic common room at my university an engineering academic and a mathematics professor were dissing each other. "You engineers, you just don't care that the "mathematics" you apply is an inaccurate bastardisation, it's a wonder your bridges even stand up!" "You mathematicians, you are so impractical, you spend your whole life fiddling with meaningless symbols."
A philosophy professor intervened. "Gentlemen, gentlemen ... no need to argue, I'll devise a way to resolve your dispute. Meet me at the oval at three this afternoon."
When the mathematician and the engineer turned up at the oval that afternoon, they discovered that the philosopher had placed, at the other end, a comely and rather buxom young PhD candidate in Zoology. "Gentlemen, what I want you do to is to measure out in your mind's eye half the distance between you and the young lady on the other side of the oval. When I say "now" walk to that point, measure out the half way mark from there and so on ..."
After a time the philosopher called out "now!" The engineer proceeded to walk to the spot, while the mathematician stayed frozen to the starting point. Again the philosopher called out "now!" and again the engineer moved forward leaving the mathematician right where he started. After the third turn the mathematician finally lost his patience. "You stupid engineer! Don't you realise that you can never arrive at the final point!"
"Oh I know that," replied the engineer, his face breaking out in a large grin, "but I can get close enough for all practical purposes."
As it happens, we do have the technology to measure height to at least within the closest cm, in almost any frame of reference where determining height as a datum (or 'data-point' if you prefer) of a multi-factorial prediction of basketball performance might want to be undertaken.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Yes, the idea of multiple intelligences which cannot be captured or conveyed by a single numerical result has been brought up before. I just last year read a book called Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner which talks about the Theory of multiple intelligences.
.
In fact, I believe that Gardner came up with the idea of multple intelligences in 1983 when he published that book. Gardner broke down the "intelligences" into:
-- 1.1 Logical-mathematical
-- 1.2 Spatial
-- 1.3 Linguistic
-- 1.4 Bodily-kinesthetic
-- 1.5 Musical
-- 1.6 Interpersonal
-- 1.7 Intrapersonal
-- 1.8 Naturalistic
-- 1.9 Existential
I am assuming that a "score" can be generated in each of these categories, and thus your "IQ" according to Howard Gardner would actually be a point in 9-dimensional space rather than distributed along just a one-dimensional axis. I've skimmed through the entire book and read the first 5 sections almost thoroughly. I highly recommend it.
I don't know what is worse. The fact that they don't understand intelligence testing or that they think that unless there is a center for it in the brain, then it doesn't exist.
Modern IQ tests consist of multiple sub tests - 15 for the WAIS IV. General intelligence "g" or a combines score is a weighted sum of the abilites in all these sub tests. A competent psychologist will look at the sub test scores for a richer interpretation, but that doesn't mean that the combined score is useless. General intelligence is based on the observation that people who are smart in one area tend to be smart in other areas (unfair though this may seem). Of course, this isn't always the case and sometimes people who are smart in one are are not smart in other areas. It is more accurate to think of modern IQ tests as a combined measure than as a single measure.
Think of it like CPUs. A combined benchmark like specmark or passmark can not fully characterise CPU performance, and sure, if I want a precise comparison, I need to define exactly what my load will be, yet you will be hard pressed to find a work load which a Pentium 3 performs better than an I7. So it IS useful to have aggregate measures of performance - so long as they are no over interpreted.
Some people don't like IQ tests because they see them as discriminating against socially disadvantaged groups, or racial groups. It is true that there is an issue of cultural bias in IQ tests, which people try an eliminate but can never do so completely. However, used properly, IQ tests can actually help people from disadvantaged backgrounds by identifying those with academic ability which may not be manifesting itself as academic performance for other reasons.
- is not so much about the existence of intelligence, but the idea that we have understood it well enough to have pinned it down some 100 years ago, or that it would be a feature that could easily be seen in a brain scan. I didn't bother to read the article - it hardly seemed worth the effort - but I somehow doubt that any serious study of intelligence or brain funtionality would be as superficial as this; it is probably an artifact of whoever popularised the results.
What one has to understand is, that the concept of intelligence is an abstraction - a measure of 'ability'. But the human brain has a large number of abilities, most of which we don't know, and we don't have any clear picture of which ones are 'fundamental' and which ones are derived from a combination of fundamental abilities.
If I were to guess at what the study actually looked at, I would say that it highlighted the fact that our current IQ concept is useless because it does not produce consistent results. The right way forward, if we want to define IQ, is to first understand what we mean by 'ability', which ones are fundamental and how we can measure them. Once that is in place, we can start defining any number of reliable IQ measures.
there's a shit-ton of stupid people out there, the dumbest of whom enter the Darwin Awards contest; the non-qualifiers usually end up in the "news of the weird. or in my home state, Indiana.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.