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#81
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 13, 12:09�pm, Ericka Kammerer wrote:
So, when one puts on one's parental hat (this is, after all, a parenting newsgroup) and asks what factors one needs to influence in order to provide children with the best start in life, coughing up some high-IQ gametes just isn't anywhere near enough. This expression made me giggle. Maybe there's another reason we call them "eggheads"? ;-) --Helen |
#82
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
" wrote in message ... On Nov 13, 3:23?am, Chookie wrote: .. Actually, I have a problem with these definitions. ?For most of the research I've seen, gifted means either the top 10% for IQ or (more frequently) IQ130, which is the top 5%. ?THe definition of 'bright' is rather too broad here, and I wonder how the stats would look if the authors had used a better-accepted definition. Small nitpick: an IQ greater than 130 puts you in the top 2 percent on any modern test, not the top 5 percent. (Well, slightly over 2 percent -- I forget the decimal, but definitely not more than 3 percent.) I've seen a lot of gifted programs that started at the 90th percentile, but most of the literature calls 90th percentile either "bright" or "mildly gifted." I also wonder if it's more demoralizing to be considered far less bright than one's sibling than it is to grow up in a family where no one stands out much. I can't help wondering if some of those less successful kids got a lot of hassle about "Why can't you be like your brother/sister ..." My mum was considered la lot ess bright than her older brother. I don't know why this was decided but it lost her a lot of confidence and gave him too much confidence. It wasn't true either. He dropped out of uni in the second year, and she's MA (oxon). I think it also effected the next sibling to her, in regard to confidence in her own ability, in that if she didn't do something as well as mum then she felt that she must be terrible. From my own experience, my older sister is a very good allrounder. She could have done anything well except music (she's tone deaf) or games. I'm very one sided (maths) and am much better than her at that, she was better at the rest (except music and tennis). I don't remember it ever being said at home, just it was obvious. It made me lazy at other subjects. If I wasn't going to do as well as her it was less humiliating to do less well without working, than to work hard and still not do as well. Debbie |
#83
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
"Welches" wrote:
" wrote in message ... On Nov 13, 3:23?am, Chookie wrote: . Actually, I have a problem with these definitions. ?For most of the research I've seen, gifted means either the top 10% for IQ or (more frequently) IQ130, which is the top 5%. ?THe definition of 'bright' is rather too broad here, and I wonder how the stats would look if the authors had used a better-accepted definition. Small nitpick: an IQ greater than 130 puts you in the top 2 percent on any modern test, not the top 5 percent. (Well, slightly over 2 percent -- I forget the decimal, but definitely not more than 3 percent.) I thought one had to be higher than 140 to be in the top 2 percent (??) I'm not sure what you mean about a 'modern test'. DD#3 was 135 and she was no accepted in to the gifted program, although I never saw any real significant difference between her and her best friend who was admitted except that her best friend was more of and artist which wasn't surprising because her dad was a professor of art. I've seen a lot of gifted programs that started at the 90th percentile, but most of the literature calls 90th percentile either "bright" or "mildly gifted." I also wonder if it's more demoralizing to be considered far less bright than one's sibling than it is to grow up in a family where no one stands out much. I can't help wondering if some of those less successful kids got a lot of hassle about "Why can't you be like your brother/sister ..." My mum was considered la lot ess bright than her older brother. I don't know why this was decided but it lost her a lot of confidence and gave him too much confidence. It wasn't true either. He dropped out of uni in the second year, and she's MA (oxon). I don't think the finish point of one's education has very much to do with defining the intelligence of a person. DD#2 said when she graduated from HS that her goal was to have a higher rank in class than DD#1. She did (dd#1 was 7th and dd#2 was 3rd), but when she said that, dd#1 commented that she didn't know it was a competition. I think dd#3 is by far the most intelligent, but her rank in class was much lower because she was interested in other things other than grades. My mom's mother graduated from college and her father had only an 8th grade education. That was due more to the family situation than to the innate intelligence. My mom's mother's father was a college graduate and I think most of his nine children had some college. My mom's dad's mom died when he was barely 15, and his father was a harness maker. His 6 years older brother graduated from college and then seminary, but he apparently did this mostly on his own. Also, depending on the age of your mom, there is still a lot of places where the education of women is considered less important. I think it also effected the next sibling to her, in regard to confidence in her own ability, in that if she didn't do something as well as mum then she felt that she must be terrible. From my own experience, my older sister is a very good allrounder. She could have done anything well except music (she's tone deaf) or games. I'm very one sided (maths) and am much better than her at that, she was better at the rest (except music and tennis). I don't remember it ever being said at home, just it was obvious. It made me lazy at other subjects. If I wasn't going to do as well as her it was less humiliating to do less well without working, than to work hard and still not do as well. Debbie The family dynamic is pretty complicated. From something my sister said, I've concluded that she thought I was smarter than she was, and my mom told me that was correct because her score on an IQ test was lower than mine. I don't think it was a hugely significant amount although Mother didn't say exactly and I think it is primarily because I'm a good test taker. |
#84
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 18, 6:13�am, Rosalie B. wrote:
"Welches" wrote: " wrote in message ... On Nov 13, 3:23?am, Chookie wrote: . Actually, I have a problem with these definitions. ?For most of the research I've seen, gifted means either the top 10% for IQ or (more frequently) IQ130, which is the top 5%. ?THe definition of 'bright' is rather too broad here, and I wonder how the stats would look if the authors had used a better-accepted definition. Small nitpick: an IQ greater than 130 puts you in the top 2 percent on any modern test, not the top 5 percent. (Well, slightly over 2 percent -- I forget the decimal, but definitely not more than 3 percent.) I thought one had to be higher than 140 to be in the top 2 percent (??) �I'm not sure what you mean about a 'modern test'. � The really old tests had ratio scores, so there were no stable percentile scores, but there were predictions given for the general prevalence of certain scores (140 and up was about one percent of the population under that scoring system). The Stanford Binet was later reformatted to give percentile scores (with an extended scoring system for scores above 164 that was basically a modification of the ratio scores). For a long while the SB tests had a standard deviation of 16 and the Wechsler tests had a standard deviation of 15, so you had to do some dancing around with the different numbers. (For instance, 148 and up on the Stanford had the same rarity as 145 and up on the Wechsler -- both being a little more than a tenth of a percent.) These days, both the major IQ tests (the WISC-IV and the S-B V) have the same scoring system: 100 is the median, 15 the standard deviation. In reality, the test isn't actually normed at all well for scores above 130 or so -- we really have little idea of how common incredibly high scores truly are, except that of course higher ones are rarer than lower. They don't necessarily fit the bell curve all that well. Certainly there are more scores above 150 than the bell curve would predict. --Helen |
#85
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 13, 3:23�am, Chookie wrote:
�For most of the research I've seen, gifted means either the top 10% for IQ or (more frequently) IQ130, which is the top 5%. � I think I figured out where you got the 5% figure. Going by the bell curve, most of the population (about 95%) falls within two standard deviations from the mean, or between 70 and 130 -- but the other 5% is *divided* between the below-70 group and the above-130 group, it isn't all on the upper half. --Helen |
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 12, 11:52 am, "
wrote: On Nov 11, 2:35?am, Chookie wrote: In article , "Donna Metler" wrote: My totally uninformed guess is that you'll probably find more "successes" in the second band of IQ-the high achievers for whom things were easy in school, but who weren't "out there" to the point of being misfits. Leta Hollingworth defined the IQ band 125-155 as "socially optimal intelligence" back in 1926! However, the IQ scores she was talking about aren't directly comparable to today's scores, They're pretty comparable. The overall statistical rise in scores is small, and while it can be explained away as stastical drift, even if it is significant, it's not that significant. The range of socially optimal intelligence remains the same, by the usual measurements. and there is no simple way to convert them to today's scores (as in those days ratio scores changed with one's age). As they do, still, in many of today's tests. My housemate spent 10 years (around 1991-2001) testing for a living, in various settings. There are still lots of different tests. How do you know what tests people are talking about here? I'm assuming we aren't talking about online tests, but Stanford-Binet or the like. It's still given. If I were going to figure out what figures Leta Hollingworth would use today, I'd have to see what age most of the children she was working with were tested at, and find out what the standard deviation was for the scores for that age. She incorporated the standard deviation into the range. That's one reason there's a range, and of course, the figures were age-adjusted. No one would report aggregate IQ stores on an age-adjusted test without accounting for that fact, unless they were stupid, and Hollingworth wasn't stupid. Just to take a wild guess, I'd say socially optimum intelligence these days would be roughly one to two-and-a-half standard deviations from the mean, or 115 to 137. But I suspect that "socially optimal intelligence" varies a great deal by circumstance -- a severely unintellectual environment being hard on persons of almost any level who actually care about learning. It isn't the tests (or IQ) that's changed, if you're right. It's society. Stupider is better. Remember what H.L. Mencken said about Americans eventually getting their way and having even their president be stupid? "Socially optimal" depends on the society you're in. I think we have several societies now. Personally, the people I know (and myself) aren't in a society that has a "socially optimal" range of 115 to 137. I agree with Ericka about the difference in average IQ levels between breastfed/formula-fed populations not being the real concern. To me, it's a question of whether something, who knows what, is happening that affects brain development adversely in formula-fed children. The other thing that always bothers me is that you can't tell from an *average* difference how large the *maximum* effect might be. I mean, obviously in this case it's not possible that 9 out of 10 are unaffected and the 10th takes a hit of 70 points, but there's nothing in the *numbers* that eliminates that possibility. Good words. Incidentally, 7 points sounds high -- I thought once confounding factors were out of the question, and when you weren't talking about premature babies, it got down to more like 3 points? But there are of course a bunch of different studies around. There are indeed, I'm off to ask my roomie about this, she'll know more. We are subscribed to several medical and nursing journals and synopses services, and the subject of formula comes up all the time, but I haven't heard any convincing studies about the relation to breastfeeding per se. Hard to isolate that out from the things like frequent ear infections. Pili --Helen |
#87
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 17, 3:26 am, Akuvikate wrote:
Well, I think you and Beliavsky would be a poor father-daughter match long before the reproductive years. If I recall correctly you have some issues with cerebral palsy, and I think a lot of the worldview he's stated in this thread would indicate to me that he'd be someone who might have particular difficulty adapting to having a child with disabilities. Why? I think one can reduce the chance of one's children having problems by marrying someone with good genes, but I also understand that there are no guarantees in life. Some of one's kids will be smarter/better looking/more charming than others, but a parent should support all of them and encourage them to do their best. A parent who minimizes the importance of genetic differences can easily fall into the trap of berating a child who is not doing as well in school as his or her siblings for "just not trying hard enough". Granted, I'm sure he'd do better dealing with physical disabilities rather than cognitive ones, but even so I'd think that eugenic tendencies and "imperfect" children wouldn't happily coexist in one family. Over time I'd hope that it would be the eugenic tendencies that suffered the most, but still. snip Getting lead out of gasoline has done more to improve social IQ than any smart couple's large family. Maybe, but a couple has much more control over how many children they have than over any social policy. It's egotistically satisfying to think that making more people like oneself is the way to improve society, but there's a much deeper satisfaction and more measurable impact from rolling up ones' sleeves and tackling social problems. I'm quite interested in tackling social problems the Right way, but we have very different ideas of what that entails. |
#88
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 18, 4:31�pm, Pili wrote:
On Nov 12, 11:52 am, " However, the IQ scores she was talking about aren't directly comparable to today's scores, They're pretty comparable. �The overall statistical rise in scores is small, and while it can be explained away as stastical drift, even if it is significant, it's not that significant. They're not comparable, period. Ratio scores change with age -- the standard deviations for the 1937 Stanford-Binet scores varied from 9 to 32! That means *some* 1937 scores of 118 were the same as today's 130, and *some* 1937 scores of 164 were the same as today's 130, depending on the age of the people who took the test. Of course Leta Hollingworth made the most meaningful generalization she could in the context of the scores she was using at that time. I'm just saying that you can't repeat it today in a different context without footnoting the change in scores. The Flynn effect (which I think is what you're referring to in "the overall statistical rise in scores") is not even a consideration when you're looking at scores with such different metrics, and incidentally measuring such different abilities. (Indeed, if I remember correctly, Flynn first noticed the effect on tests of nonverbal ability such as the Naglieri -- very different from anything assessed on the early IQ tests, which were mostly verbal.) --Helen |
#89
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
In article
, " wrote: On Nov 13, 3:23?am, Chookie wrote: ?For most of the research I've seen, gifted means either the top 10% for IQ or (more frequently) IQ130, which is the top 5%. ? I think I figured out where you got the 5% figure. Going by the bell curve, most of the population (about 95%) falls within two standard deviations from the mean, or between 70 and 130 -- but the other 5% is *divided* between the below-70 group and the above-130 group, it isn't all on the upper half. Quite right; I was having a Senior Moment! -- Chookie -- Sydney, Australia (Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply) http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/ |
#90
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
In article
, Beliavsky wrote: On Nov 17, 3:26 am, Akuvikate wrote: Well, I think you and Beliavsky would be a poor father-daughter match long before the reproductive years. If I recall correctly you have some issues with cerebral palsy, and I think a lot of the worldview he's stated in this thread would indicate to me that he'd be someone who might have particular difficulty adapting to having a child with disabilities. Why? I think one can reduce the chance of one's children having problems by marrying someone with good genes, but I also understand that there are no guarantees in life. Some of one's kids will be smarter/better looking/more charming than others, but a parent should support all of them and encourage them to do their best. A parent who minimizes the importance of genetic differences can easily fall into the trap of berating a child who is not doing as well in school as his or her siblings for "just not trying hard enough". One might debate whether that is better than having poor little Tarquin stagnating because after all, his IQ is a bit low, so we won't push the little guy too hard. Most high achievers put in a lot of effort to achieve their goals. Really, I don't think either extreme is helpful. You don't berate children for failu you put them where they have some successes (to build their confidence) and some failures (to build their resilience) and you encourage them to have a go at everything and to be gracious in defeat. To do that, you have to know them well, and knowing them won't be just a matter of a test result. -- Chookie -- Sydney, Australia (Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply) http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/ |
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