Warning: do not read if you are planning on taking the Wais-R and have not done so yet.
Because of issues discussed in my prior entry, I was rather nervous about taking this test, despite the issues I already had with it. The first response I had to my overall score was confirmation of my fear of lack of exceptionality, but given further digging, the results of the test actually do confirm most of my opinions, and I think I've learned from this experience, which is something that I had not anticipated happening.
So, according to this Wais-R test, I have an IQ of 130. However, as you can see by looking at the photocopy, my results on the individual sections were all over the place. The first surprise for me was to note all of the different things that were being tested, which I had not considered to be intelligence. My loose definition of intelligence had been pretty much the things I'm good at: analysis and comprehension.
For reference, I've spoken to several people about it since taking the test about a week ago. I'll give short descriptions here. Erik, Simon's father, lives in San Luis Obispo. Since it was on my way down the coast, I decided to stop off and visit him. I knew that he had a friend who was a psychologist, and asked him if he'd be kind enough to set me up a test with her. Catherine, his psychologist friend, issued me the test during my one day stopover on the road trip. Additional info about Erik: when he was going to college, he went through a week long, extensive IQ examination, using several different tests. I believe that his median score was 192, with a low of 184, and a high in the 200s. I also discussed it with Patri, and Simon, and when I met up in San Diego with Andrew and his girlfriend, Danielle, who goes by Neurogirl on livejournal, I learned that she actually issues an IQ test by Wais at her work (different version than the one I took). Both she and Andrew had interesting insights as well.
Of course I did poorly on the first section, information. As stated, I have a lousy memory! (also, I have little interest in facts in and of themselves: as a true N m-b personality type, I find facts only useful in as much as they can be applied to understanding of concepts) Additionally, I was annoyed at the esoteric nature of many of the questions, for example, one question asked what a book was about that I'd not only never read, but never even heard of! And given the crowd that I hang with, I would bet that I've heard of far more books than most people.
The second section, Digit Span, is also one that tests memory, hence I would not expect to do well on it either. I was surprised at how well I did at repeating numbers back forward, but didn't do so hot on repeating them backward, although of the three I missed, I did so only by one digit.
I was also surprised at how well I did at vocabulary. However, that section (like information) seems _extremely_ culturally biased. For example, if I'd taken it before I'd started hanging out with Simon's crowd, I probably wouldn't have done half as well. And for kids, this is horribly biased toward children with educated/intelligent parents: I have several friends who go through great efforts with things such as vocabulary for their children at young ages. I personally would have probably come out better than average, coming from a better than average public school, but far from exceptional.
Arithmetic. I was amazed by how subjective this test is in general. A lot of your score depends on the personality of the person issuing it and probably how much they like you and/or how well they want you to do. I didn't miss any arithmetic problems by time, although my haste is likely part causality for my errors. The psychologist pointed out to me that for two of the three problems I missed, I had the concept right, but went the wrong direction on the number line: added a number rather than subtracting it or vice versa. And for the third, I did the math in my head very fast, and ended up subtracting 30% rather than 15%.
As Erik pointed out, these mistakes are more an issue of a mental problem similar to dyslexia, rather than ability to figure out the math for word problems, as this area was supposedly testing. He called Catherine and asked if she'd given me partial credit, but she said no. However, when I talked to Neurogirl about it later, she informed me that if someone made those sorts of obvious mistakes when she was issuing the test, she would have repeated the question! And given that sort of hint, I almost certainly would have gotten them right, hence scoring close to 100% on the section as opposed to near average! (I might have missed a point or two on time depending largely on whether or not she counts the time she's taking to repeat the questions)
I topped out the category of comprehension. This section was also definitely culturally biased, but didn't seem as bad to me as information or vocabulary: most of it seemed based on very general knowledge. My main complaint here is that I didn't feel my full abilities were tested: I had a much greater understanding of each topic than what little she was looking for, even off the top of my head. Erik had similar complaints about other sections: when its easy for people to do better than the test tests for, people with lower IQs will score the same as those with higher (a concept that I will examine again in a couple of different areas)
I don't recall what the area referred to as similarities was about, but whatever it was I did reasonably well :) My overall score on verbal comprehension, which Catherine said consisted of three sections (I'd imagine being vocab, comp, and similarities) was 150+ (150 is the max), which Catherine extrapolated out to 154. She told me that for verbal comp, the 150+ range is equivalent to 1 out of 10,000. Hard to believe that I'm actually _that_ high, but cool to hear none the less :) (also as stated, I find the vocab score in particular to be rather meaningless)
I don't have much to say about picture completion, but picture arrangement pissed me off a bit :) This section was timed, and there was more than one answer to two or three of the sections. Particularly on the first of these, I notices all three and went to the end of the time (hence loosing points) trying to figure out which one was correct (she didn't tell me until afterward that there actually was more than one right answer). The additional options slowed me down on the others as well, although not quite as bad. Afterward, Catherine pointed out to me that many people never even realize that there's more than one right answer, hence, people whom are less insightful often do _better_ on this section, since they don't loose points for time!
Despite it being one of the sections on which I did best, block design is where my biggest gripe comes from (Catherine referred to this section as the analytical). As with picture arrangement, it was timed. I believe the total for the 4 block section was around 1 minute, and for the 9 I think it was 2 minutes. However, each time was broken down into smaller chunks, for example, on most of the four block puzzles, if you did them in under 10 seconds you got full points, and from there you periodically lost points. The first question was supposed to be very easy, so you lost your first point at 5 seconds. It was one of the two that I lost points on (the other being the easiest of the 9 block section): I think I took about 11 seconds. However, there were several of the 4 block section that I then proceeded to do in 2-3 seconds, and with the two hardest nine block puzzles, my only limiting factor was how fast I could move my hands.
Catherine pointed out to me that I'd actually been the slowest on the first (and easiest) question for several sections, and that this is typical for someone with ADD. (she also noted that my "comfortable attention span" gave out at approximately 1.5 hrs, and that most of the sections I did poorly on were focus related)
Although I agree that I should loose points for my initial slowness, it seems quite unfair that I'm not getting credit for the extreme quickness on the following puzzles! In other words, the test would be much more fair if done by stopwatch as opposed to increments. When I told this to Erik, he informed me that during his extensive testing at UCSD, they had used a more precise, stopwatch method. He also had an interesting theory about how this may be part of the female/male equalizing process. For example, if men on average take 4 seconds, and women 6, then if you cap at 10, they will score equally well. Hmph.
Anyhow, it was kind of cool to see my learning curve demonstrated. My analysis given experience and the test is that I initially take longer than average for my intelligence to figure things out, but once I do, I'm able to apply what I learn rapidly and accurately. Seems like its probably also related to being a P myers-briggs personality type: putting higher value on taking in information and mapping out an understanding than initial quick decisions.
I don't recall what object assembly was, although digit symbol was another section that I found to be terribly subjective and unfair. As the name describes, you're given a key, which lists numbers and corresponding symbols. You are then given three rows of numbers with blank boxes underneath, and a block of time in which to fill in the corresponding symbols. Unfortunately I didn't think to ask beforehand about how legible the symbols had to be, and decided not to ask during the task, since I wasn't sure what the trade off was between time asking and time writing.
I went for the neatness factor as opposed to speed, hence, didn't end up getting a whole lot done. Afterward I asked Catherine about the grading, and she said that so long as she could make out what it was, I would have gotten credit! In other words, I could have gone significantly faster given that information. Also, Andrew was telling me that for a similar Wais test on this section, you don't even loose points for getting the symbols wrong! Catherine and Erik estimated that I probably would have done around 4 IQ points worth better had I gone for the speed over neatness. Neurogirl told me that she let Andrew take the section over after he complained about the flaw. But this section doesn't really seem like an aspect of intelligence I really care about anyway... How fast one can jot down information they are already given?...
I guess I'm going to have to redefine my opinion of what IQ is, and seriously devalue it. Although I agree that Simon can out think me, and probably so could a few other friends who score higher than me on such tests, I am fairly certain that I have stronger analytical, synthesis, and comprehension abilities than some people I know of with very significantly higher overall scores, and those are the sections that I most care about and think of as intelligence. (I suppose most people would probably be naturally most interested in the sections that they're best at ;) Even if I did find a test which I deemed accurate and fair, it would be fairly irrelevant since that is not a standard that is issued. Perhaps the test Simon's talking about building would do the trick :) He had a good observation, in that although the individual section scores seem pretty relevant, the way one decides to weight them together for the official score seems pretty arbitrary. For example, if one decides to just give everything equal weight, is it really good to have Digit Synthesis (how fast one can jot down a given set of symbols) of equal weight with arithmetic (translating words to math problems and then solving them in one's head)? And how could one objectively weigh the value of picture arrangement as opposed to object assembly?
What this test actually seems most a measure of to me is competence. Someone who is fast and accurate, with a good memory, knowledgeable, and with good analytical and comprehension abilities should excel in whatever they happen to fancy. However, even with competence, it is not a great measure unless the scores are relatively even all the way across.
