League of Legends Rank Predicts IQ, Study Finds (plos.org)

limbicsystem writes: A new publication in the journal PLOS ONE shows that your rank in League of Legends (LoL) correlates with your intelligence quotient (IQ). Games like LoL and DOTA II apparently depend on the same cognitive resources that underlie tests of fluid intelligence. That means that proficiency in those games peaks at the same age as raw IQ -- about 25 -- while scores in more reaction-time based games like Destiny or Battlefield seem to decline from the teens onwards. The researchers suggest that the massive datasets from these online games could be used to assess population-level cognitive health in real-time across the globe. The authors have a nice FAQ (and open datasets) here.

Comments

Re:IQ measures your ability to test for IQ

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not true that IQ (more commonly 'g' in professional literature) means nothing, there is extensive psychometric studies about what it means and what is in it and what isn't. Some aspects of it is observable in biological measurements.

https://source.wustl.edu/2012/07/brain-imaging-can-predict-how-intelligent-you-are-study-finds/

It means that performance across a wide, but not comprehensive, variety of cognitive tasks is correlated in individuals, i.e. if you are good at some of them, it is highly more likely than chance you will be above average on the others. There are of course many other tasks and demands on human performance which aren't related.

Nevertheless, it is true that people who boast about their IQ are losers.

IQ Test Question #1: Is this study a gimmick?

[Tablizer]

I smell a marketing gimmick: play-our-game-to-feel-smart