Is true that if you take the IQ test as a 12 yr. old...?

Question

and receive X score, and then retake the test as an adult in your late twenties your scores will actually drop even though, because of higher education, and life experience it should actually be higher?

Answer 1

I.Q tests are measurements of a particular type of intelligence, namely the logical/analytical intelligence. Psychologists have identified several kinds of intelligences including musical and artistic ability, social skills and several others that I can't think of off hand.

As a child you take math classes which train you and assess you on your ability to solve logic problems. In most schools in America, students spend between an hour and 90 minutes a day, five days a week receiving instruction and then probably an additional 5 hours a week of homework.

I.Q. tests not only measure how well you can solve a problem, but it assumes that as you get older your ability to solve these problems will increase. Basically this boils down to the idea that if you could solve a problem in 1 minute as a 12 year old, you can solve it in 30 - 45 seconds as a 25 year old. The problem with this assumption is that at 25 years old you probably aren't doing as much math as you were when you were 12. Your skills most likely have increased, but they haven't increased continuously and by the time you reach 30, well you probably aren't solving too many logic problems anymore. You may still be very good at it, but you aren't really getting much better at this point. The test works on the principle that your skills should continue to improve with age. The result is that your I.Q. score drops.

The good news is that while you were focusing less on analytical skills, you were focusing more on other forms of intelligence. Think of how much more skilled you are socially now then you were as a teen. You're probably a better speaker and communicator in general than you were as a 12 year old. Those things that you enjoy doing or are required to do because of circumstance have helped to increase your overall intelligence. The I.Q. test just doesn't measure these things and so it appears that you've gotten dumber. The reality is that you've just gotten smarter in different ways. :)

Answer 2

In theory, cognitive scores should remain the same throughout your lifetime, regardless of your educational experiences. In actuality, the scores of kids from underprivileged backgrounds tend to rise as they are educated and learn to express themselves. Also different IQ tests measure different aspects of intelligence, so you will often get different results with tests designed for different purposes.

If you look at the way IQ is calculated, your mental age is divided by your chronological age. In other words, a kid who is ten years old, but thinks like a twelve-year-old would have an IQ of 120. A ten- year-old who thinks like a seven-year-old would have an IQ of 70.

There are tests for estimating the IQ of adults, but these same calculations don't make sense for adults. The brain continues to grow (mostly in the way it processes emotions and solves complex real-life problems) until a person's mid-twenties. After that, some people develop some specialized knowledge and experience about, say, tax law, automobile engines, or how to read X-Ray films. But there's nothing new that can really be compared across populations, and most 40-year-olds probably do not know twice as much (twice as much of what?) as most 20-year-olds for instance.

Plus, there is no need to predict an adult's future success in school, and that was the reason IQ tests were developed in the first place. When you're an adult there are other numbers that become much more important than IQ: annual salary, golf handicap, number of children, and expected lifespan, for instance.

Answer 3

It is because with a higher education level they excpect you to know more and score better. So when you are 12 years old, your education is some highschool, and when in your twenties it is probably at least some colleage or graduated college. Meaning that after college you should know alot more so they expect alot more from you.

Answer 4

my iq was 136 in 6th grade and is still 136 when i tested a year ago. So, for me it's the same.

Answer 5

not necesarilly....kids automatically think more a certain way so they can answer better but ppl who train themselves to think so in their adult years also do better in these yrs

Answer 6

I think that is true because when I was 12, my IQ was 143 and now it 121. WTF? I am 27.