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I improved my IQ by 20 pts in an year's time. It was pretty simple: study SAT/GRE words, and do a lot of arithmetic exercises. I know that it increased by 20 p

by selmnoo 13y ago

I improved my IQ by 20 pts in an year's time. It was pretty simple: study SAT/GRE words, and do a lot of arithmetic exercises. I know that it increased by 20 pts. because I underwent an IQ test conducted by a licensed psychologist twice.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
eloff 13y ago
Exactly, my logic professor always used to say that studying logic improves your IQ (btw, so does programming.) Well it does, because a bunch of the questions on an IQ test are logical riddles. Math and vocabulary have the same effect.
viggity 13y ago
it was always my understanding that "good" IQ tests should have almost zero variance based on your vocabulary, or hell, even your mathematical abilities. A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities. Example "good" questions would show a sequence of 6 shapes and ask you what the next one in the series should look like. or perhaps a question like "given that all boogles are quinks and some quinks are flets, are all flets boogles?". A question on a "bullshit" IQ test would be: "'Daring' is an appropriate adjective for: A. Rocks. B. Planets. C. Humans.". Another would be "x^2 = 36, solve for x" Now, I know that some standardized tests (ACT, SAT, IBTS), will sometimes try to estimate your IQ by correlating your scores, but that is fraught with problems and shouldn't be taken as gospel.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  > A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities. You can dramatically improve your logic facilities by taking a course in logic. Your boogles, quinks, and flets question is trivial if you know even rudimentary set theory.
  - Smaug123 13y ago
    Not even that - it's the kind of question that becomes dramatically easier to answer if you know how to trick your brain into thinking it's easy. "Given that all cats are animals and some animals are mice, are all mice cats?"
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      It's actually a harder question if you phrase it with cats, animals, and mice! The correct answer is "possibly" (either yes or no), but the cats, animals, and mice question predisposes you to answer with "no".
      - Smaug123 13y ago
        For me, that kind of comes under the category of "know how to answer the question": that is, "remember that you have produced an example, which does not constitute proof but merely evidence". You're right that it's still not easy to distinguish between "definitely yes" and "not {definitely no}", though I do still find it easier with nouns-which-I-know than made-up-words, I think. I should have put in an attempt to make the statement true - maybe "Given that all cats are cats, and some cats are cats, are all cats cats?"
- jre 13y ago
  I think logical reasoning can be improved by training too. In my first year in CS at university, we had a logic course. I was definitely better at solving that kind of problems after the course. They usually become easy once you formalize them and you start to recognize patterns once you've seen enough.
- icelancer 13y ago
  The WAIS-III was multimodal when I took it. Most of it was as you described, but some of it was general knowledge testing as well. Overall it was a fun experience since I like taking tests, but I felt it didn't accurately judge anything, regardless of my satisfaction with the result.
btilly 13y ago
My mother told me the story of a girl whose IQ she increased by 30 points in one day! After observing the first IQ test, my mother recommended that the severely abused girl be tested by a woman instead of a man. Voila! Magic! The IQ increased. (Both IQ tests would have been administered at Stanford back in the 1950s.)
gwern 13y ago
Indeed. Studying vocab is even the example I've used for years on the dual n-back mailing list to explain how a previously valid measure can be rendered meaningless by training: just memorize vocab and boost your scores on the vocab subtest. Of course, if you took a bunch of people who studied SAT/GRE words and looked at the factorization on a battery of tests, you'd find that the g-loading of the vocab subtest had gone way down, but that can't be done in this sort of case and so all you're left with is a meaningless measure. this was in relation to Moody's critique of the original n-back study: he thought that all the n-back training, which involved tracking moving squares in a grid, was effectively training you to be able to manipulate shapes on a grid better than you would normally, and destroying part of the validity of the matrix tests. And indeed, in the later studies which used more than just matrix tests, the n-back training tends to show more limited gains. It's not officially out yet, but an example of this would be "Adaptive n‐back training does not improve fluid intelligence at the construct level; gains on individual tests suggest training may enhance visuospatial processing", Colom et al 2013.

by selmnoo 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

eloff 13y ago

Exactly, my logic professor always used to say that studying logic improves your IQ (btw, so does programming.) Well it does, because a bunch of the questions on an IQ test are logical riddles. Math and vocabulary have the same effect.

viggity 13y ago

it was always my understanding that "good" IQ tests should have almost zero variance based on your vocabulary, or hell, even your mathematical abilities. A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities. Example "good" questions would show a sequence of 6 shapes and ask you what the next one in the series should look like. or perhaps a question like "given that all boogles are quinks and some quinks are flets, are all flets boogles?". A question on a "bullshit" IQ test would be: "'Daring' is an appropriate adjective for: A. Rocks. B. Planets. C. Humans.". Another would be "x^2 = 36, solve for x" Now, I know that some standardized tests (ACT, SAT, IBTS), will sometimes try to estimate your IQ by correlating your scores, but that is fraught with problems and shouldn't be taken as gospel.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
> A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities. You can dramatically improve your logic facilities by taking a course in logic. Your boogles, quinks, and flets question is trivial if you know even rudimentary set theory.
- Smaug123 13y ago
  Not even that - it's the kind of question that becomes dramatically easier to answer if you know how to trick your brain into thinking it's easy. "Given that all cats are animals and some animals are mice, are all mice cats?"
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    It's actually a harder question if you phrase it with cats, animals, and mice! The correct answer is "possibly" (either yes or no), but the cats, animals, and mice question predisposes you to answer with "no".
    - Smaug123 13y ago
      For me, that kind of comes under the category of "know how to answer the question": that is, "remember that you have produced an example, which does not constitute proof but merely evidence". You're right that it's still not easy to distinguish between "definitely yes" and "not {definitely no}", though I do still find it easier with nouns-which-I-know than made-up-words, I think. I should have put in an attempt to make the statement true - maybe "Given that all cats are cats, and some cats are cats, are all cats cats?"
jre 13y ago
I think logical reasoning can be improved by training too. In my first year in CS at university, we had a logic course. I was definitely better at solving that kind of problems after the course. They usually become easy once you formalize them and you start to recognize patterns once you've seen enough.
icelancer 13y ago
The WAIS-III was multimodal when I took it. Most of it was as you described, but some of it was general knowledge testing as well. Overall it was a fun experience since I like taking tests, but I felt it didn't accurately judge anything, regardless of my satisfaction with the result.

btilly 13y ago

My mother told me the story of a girl whose IQ she increased by 30 points in one day! After observing the first IQ test, my mother recommended that the severely abused girl be tested by a woman instead of a man. Voila! Magic! The IQ increased. (Both IQ tests would have been administered at Stanford back in the 1950s.)

gwern 13y ago

Indeed. Studying vocab is even the example I've used for years on the dual n-back mailing list to explain how a previously valid measure can be rendered meaningless by training: just memorize vocab and boost your scores on the vocab subtest. Of course, if you took a bunch of people who studied SAT/GRE words and looked at the factorization on a battery of tests, you'd find that the g-loading of the vocab subtest had gone way down, but that can't be done in this sort of case and so all you're left with is a meaningless measure. this was in relation to Moody's critique of the original n-back study: he thought that all the n-back training, which involved tracking moving squares in a grid, was effectively training you to be able to manipulate shapes on a grid better than you would normally, and destroying part of the validity of the matrix tests. And indeed, in the later studies which used more than just matrix tests, the n-back training tends to show more limited gains. It's not officially out yet, but an example of this would be "Adaptive n‐back training does not improve fluid intelligence at the construct level; gains on individual tests suggest training may enhance visuospatial processing", Colom et al 2013.