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IQ test
Ignus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
For a research project we'd like to determine the IQ of 24 persons. But after google searching for a while I've come to the conclusion that official tests(WAIS, Stanford-Binet 5)are way to expensive.
Does anyone know or official tests like the ones above are stuff that's commonly avaible for free use at an university?
And how reliable are the sites that claim to have FREE IQ TEST!!!!! ?
Does anyone know or official tests like the ones above are stuff that's commonly avaible for free use at an university?
And how reliable are the sites that claim to have FREE IQ TEST!!!!! ?
Ignus on
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Does no one else in your department do any testing with these tests that you could get copies from?
The research isn't official, so the free ones'll be fine for a last resort. I'm going to ask around at the faculty of psychology&social sciences tomorrow though, maybe they've got a copy I can use.
I'm highly skeptical of what sort of research you plan on doing with IQ results from 24 people. That isn't enough for any sort of representative sample, and with that small a population, your standard deviation is going to be massive.
I suspect the IQ is only a piece of the research. And I suspect that this is probably a class project or something. While 24 people certainly isn't a large enough sample to be drawing conclusions in any sort of official sense, it is a reasonable sample size for a random class research project that's just designed to teach you the basics of research experiments.
I doubt that Ignus is trying to draw any huge conclusions from the IQ scores of 24 people.
We're trying to find a relation between intelligence and axial length of the eye. Based on the theory that larger eyes mean larger brains and larger brains mean a higher intelligence. We'll probably find no correlation whatsoever, but its still way more orginal than what the others thought up.
*: intelligence here most likely defined as IQ or a similar test/task depending on the research... so not actually intelligence.
Edit: Alright, it looks like it's more up for debate still than I thought. Scratch my previous "well established" comment.
Larger brain mass is associated with more intelligence.
Just use this one, it's pretty awesome.
Well it's volume, not mass. But yes, contrary to what I thought there is a persistent correlation between brain size and IQ/other measures in many studies, though at least one study found that this correlation completely vanishes when looking within families and others have reported no correlation in similar samples. The wikipedia article on IQ has a link to a good meta-analysis article on the topic. The largest study included in the meta-analysis was only around 100 people (and showed no correlation) and the total sample from all the combined studies was around 1500. It's certainly not a done deal that big brains==smart, and there are more promising measures (specifically of gray matter, or even more specifically of frontal cortex areas), but I was wrong in my earlier post, yes (which was why I edited it).
Though as always, interpret correlations cautiously.
It's more like surface area... That's why your brain looks folded up and wrinkly instead of a big solid ball. But, unfortunately (or, fortunately) our brain is really complicated, and doesn't work how you'd naively expect.
I don't know what the expected uncertainties are on IQ tests, but they definitely do measure something. However, their scores may or may not directly correlate to something you want to correlate it to, even if there is a correlation between what you're measuring and what you want to call intelligence. And I wouldn't take the scores as more than ballpark estimates unless they're administered by people who know what they're doing.
Yes, but I believe (and I'll double check) that the measure typically used in these studies is brain volume, because that's the measure that they can easily get from an MRI. It's possible to flatten an MRI scan and get a measure of surface area, but from the couple of studies I glanced at this is not what they were doing. Basically they get an MRI scan, calculate the total number of voxels within the brain (or in some cases within gray matter or whatever) and correlate this number to IQ.
Edit: And I resent your implication that I'm naive about the brain
That said, I still think it would be interesting just to see a comparison of IQ to eye size. That sounds more interesting that my project for Stats class (learning style preferred by members of different majors)!
Also, I've heard that online tests (if you're going to use them, anyway) tend to overestimate their results. I haven't seen any comparisons, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me; has anyone found this same thing?
Of course, overall a correlation is entirely useless except as a starting point for further research to actually identify the relationship.
Did they check shoe-size too?
Well, there are a couple of problems with this oversimplified analysis. One is that large brain size may be necessary for high intelligence, but not sufficient. And, in fact, this seems most likely. Think of a computer; a huge supercomputer is needed if you want to do some crazy numerical simulation of something, but if you have a badly written program, it's still not going to help you.
There is also the (very likely) possibility that correlations would be different between members of the same species and members of different ones. That is, in one species there may not be a strong correlation, but between species there may be a general trend.
At any rate, I wouldn't say there's enough evidence to make any clear empirical statements. Particularly considering how difficult it is to come up with an accurate metric of intelligence.
I meant the analysis was naive, not you
I don't think anyone here is talking about between species brain size.
But I agree, there really isn't enough evidence one way or the other to reach consensus.
No, but understanding that correlation would do a lot to help us understand how it works with a single species.
On topic though, there are quite a bit of articles about the relation between myopia and a high IQ. For example; IQ and the association with myopia in children. So if myopia is caused by a to long axial length of the eye, the theory might not be complete bull.
Mostly cause when youre a kid, its hard to play sports and do physical stuff if you're wearing a couple a coke bottles on your face. Later, because you're a nudge ahead on the reading thing, having done it more often, you get pegged as being smarter, when in turn creates an expectation, which in turn creates results. People treated smarter become smarter, interestingly enough.
I'll toss my chips in with the 'size doesn't matter, it's all in how you use it' crowd.
Advice: Ya, the Facebook one is pretty decent. But as with most IQ tests, suffers from the same cultural literary bias, and does little to measure actual cognitive ability.
IQ =/= knowledge. You fail at both.
That's not entirely true though. You can learn problem-solving techniques and different ways of thinking that will improve your score on IQ tests. In other words your education can pretty easily impact your score on an IQ test, to varying degrees depending on the design of individual tests. I always score high on IQ tests but I know damn well I'm not actually that smart, I've just been taught some very effective approaches to solving problems and finding answers. And a lot of IQ tests I've seen include a bit about 3D figure rotation, which is a learnable skill.
Don't your eyes stay the same size for most if not all of your life, hence why kids appear to have huge eyes?
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That just means it's a crappy test, which has nothing to do with IQ. And internet/book IQ tests with random pictures and patterns you look at aren't exactly accurate.
There are IQ tests that aren't crappy?
Not really, no. People would just like to think there are so that they can get a single number that quantifies how intelligent someone is.
Amusing fact of no real value: every time I've taken an IQ test I come up with the same number. This includes one administered by psychologists when I was really young, facebook, other silly website-tests, and the trick people used to do with the SAT when scores were out of 1600 where you just drop the ones-place digit.
Most tests administered by professionals don't just give you one number, you realise that right?
Also, they’re pretty much the only way to measure intelligence for surveys such as this, so unless you can suggest some superior method it would seem that this would be a discussion better suited to D&D.
Though now my biggest question isn't how the OP is going to measure intelligence, but rather how he's going to measure eyes.
Sure, they give you more than one number on differing subsections of the test, but they still give you an IQ score that they'd like to think is a measure of intelligence.
And no, I can't suggest a superior method because it's ridiculous to think that a single score measured on an easy to take test can somehow give you an indication of someone's "intelligence" which is a very ill-defined and amorphous definition anyway. I have no problem with people using an IQ test to measure IQ. The problem I have is when they try to term that as intelligence in a general sense.
GPA alone measures work-ethic more than intelligence. You have someone take easy classes and do all the homework and they'll have a 4.0, have them take advanced classes and maybe forget a couple assignments and they might end up with a 3.0. That doesn't mean they got dumber.
Agreed. Also, a lot of smart kids slack. When everything is easy, nothing is interesting.
God I hate when I slack. The lower the grades I get the smarter I am. But for reals, guys should be careful, this is turning into a D&D thread.
We're pretty much done with the project now, and haven't found any relationship what so ever.
IQ and anterior chamber depth (ACD) of the left eye had a significant relation, but not after correction of a very strange datapoint. Someone had an average right ACD but a very small left ACD and happened to score low on the IQ test. Since right and left ACD normally don't vary much, we figured it was measuring mistake and dropped it.
Well, at least not all of it. Most people with significant and debilitating frontal lobe injuries don't actually end up doing worse on IQ tests, because frontal lobe injuries affect areas of mental processing not measured by IQ tests. For instance lacking bits of your frontal lobe makes you make terrible decisions due to a lack of impulse control, and you fail to recognize or correct patterns of responses.