Early Tests Predict Adult IQ

[Ixtab]

Early Tests Predict Adult IQ

Melinda Wenner, LiveScience, April 16, 2007

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Researchers administered IQ tests to 219 adults in their mid-40s and compared each person’s IQ score to how well he or she had performed on elementary school achievement tests. They found that 41 percent of their IQ scores could be accounted for by the school achievement tests, a very strong correlation (slightly higher than the correlation between height and weight in adults, an unrelated pairing that is also strong).

How well the people did on their tests also predicted, to a lesser extent, their income as adults, their occupational status and the level of education they ended up attaining.

The findings suggest that achievement tests and IQ tests aren’t all that different, and that IQ remains consistent over time. “IQ is typically a very stable trait,” said lead researcher Ruth Spinks, a behavioral and cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Iowa.

The study also raises the question of how education influences accomplishment. People seem to be “locked in” to outcomes at early ages, said Douglas Detterman, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who was not involved in the research. “It means we don’t know very much about education and optimizing education for particular individuals.”

{snip}http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070416_achievement_iq.html

[Angler]

The findings suggest that achievement tests and IQ tests aren’t all that differentThat's actually been known for quite some time. Many IQ tests use rote knowledge (e.g., vocabulary) and acquired intellectual skills (e.g., the ability to solve geometry problems) to gauge intellectual functioning. They attempt to predict future achievement simply by broadly measuring past achievement. This works a good part of the time, although there are certainly cases where people haven't learned as much as they were capable of learning (due to laziness, lack of educational opportunity, etc.). Age tends to reduce this latter factor, however, because the longer someone lives, the more he is exposed to all kinds of knowledge and concepts until a saturation effect occurs in his advanced age group. This would lead us to believe that the older a person gets, the more his IQ is determined by heredity rather than environment. That does turn out to be the case.