5 Interesting Things You Never Knew About IQ
Have you heard parents coming out of a school meeting discussing their children’s IQ scores? Are you wondering what this term ‘IQ’ is all about? Nothing too complicated – IQ or ‘Intelligence Quotient’ is an assessment of one’s ability to think, reason and respond. Wondering how to know what your IQ is? Well there is a fairly standardized way of getting to know this – if you take an IQ test, and get a score between 90 and 109, you would be considered ‘average’. If you score 140 or higher, then you’re a ‘genius’ and with a score below 70, you would be labelled as ‘mentally retarded’. The concept sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it? Let’s find out more:
1. What is the test all about?
These tests measure intelligence through language based reasoning, problem solving, visual-spatial reasoning, logic, general knowledge and much more. Confused? Worry not. There are tons of IQ tests available online and otherwise. In fact, each IQ test will have its own scoring system. I’m not a big fan of this really – because I believe that every test has its own context. But anyway, if you still want to go ahead and get your kid to take a test, I suggest you trust tests like the Stanford Binet, Wechsler Adult and Children Scales and the Otis-Lennon tests.
2. There are certain influencing factors
Imagine if your kid is sitting for an IQ test when he/she is not in a good mood or down with a tummy upset, how are they going to perform? Okay, forget sickness, what if your child doesn’t feel motivated enough? What if he/she has never been inclined towards academic pursuits? Or what if your child had a fight with their best friend the previous day? This is the reason IQ scores are not always 100 percent reliable.
3. Does IQ reduce with age?
I’m not sure about how true this is, but apparently scientists say that although you may have got an IQ of 125 in your fifth grade, you may end up with an IQ of 120 in your sixth and 100 in seventh grade. Sounds weird doesn’t it? But again, we come back to the fact that IQ is contextual. When you give an IQ test in the sixth grade, it is bound to be more challenging than the fifth grade. I think it’s almost impossible to tell that your highest IQ score is one of your good IQ scores. Now, that’s one point to note.
