For some reason many people believe that the old SAT (pre-April 1995) was a much better measure of IQ than the new SAT (post-April 1995). I started believing this too when I found research showing high SAT people regressed much more to the mean on the new SAT than on the old SAT. However this evening I read that the correlation between the old SAT and the new SAT is virtually identical to parallel forms of the old SAT, so the trend I noticed was probably just statistical noise.
The reason people think the new SAT is less like an IQ test than the old SAT is that originally the SAT was explicitly intended to be like an IQ test, the hope being to give opportunity to bright people from socially deprived homes who wouldn’t be able to attend a good college without a test of natural ability. However as IQ tests became more and more politically incorrect, the test makers wanted to distance themselves from IQ, so the test became increasingly about what you learned in school, and less about abstract reasoning.
However what made the SAT correlate with IQ was never the fact that anyone was trying to create an IQ test, it was the fact that the skills you need in college (reading and math) are closely linked to cognitive ability.
A similar case was when David Wechsler created the WAIS explicitly to measure intelligence, but created the WIAT, specifically to measure academic achievement. I doubt he was trying to make the WIAT a measure of intelligence, since he had already created an IQ test; the point of the WIAT must have been to show clinically significant differences between the two constructs, allowing the diagnosis of learning disabilities. And yet a recent study found nearly a 0.9 correlation between the two tests.
I don’t know what the general U.S. correlation between the SAT and IQ is because there’s never been (to my knowledge) a study that correlated the SAT with IQ in a sample of ALL Americans (not just the college bound elite). All the studies I’ve seen involved students at the same school, sometimes with correction for range restriction (which can be misleading because students at the same school are range restricted on more than just test scores). I have tried to estimate the correlation in the general U.S. population indirectly, by seeing how much samples of high SAT folks regress to the mean of all Americans, but the results have been inconsistent.
Some here believe that the correlation between IQ and SAT is so high that the SAT should be called an IQ test. However the brilliant Chris Langan understood the value of verbal precision, and argued that not even the Mega Test, on which he earned the World record should be called an IQ test. In a landmark 1998 article, Langan wrote:
To avoid the problem of rendering a specific a priori definition of what any such test will measure, it suffices to create a generic alternative description covering all tests which differ in structure or protocol from ordinary IQ tests, and for which high positive correlation with IQ has not yet been established. This new term must refer to a measurable quantity that is specific to the tests it describes, and that may or may not equate to that which is measured by garden variety IQ tests.
Pumpkin Person 
the new sat has or had dropped antonyms and had more reading comprehension questions.
the belief of the smartest guy i went to school with and my own is that the reading comp was the most subjective part of the whole test…really the only subjective part… and that it helped a lot if you were able to guess the correct answer without even having to read the passage.
This is an interesting observation. I took several practice tests before taking the PSAT, and then took the SAT twice in my last two years of high school. By the time I took the SAT for the last time, I could literally guess the answers to the Reading Comprehension questions without reading the passages. And I would be 99% correct…
When I later took the GRE, I found that I had similar guessing capabilities on the Verbal section (verbal score was 168/170), but on the LSAT and GMAT reading passages my guessing abilities seemed significantly reduced…
Speaking of the GMAT, do you know anything about this test PP, and it’s correlation with IQ? It’s verbal section is a weird hodgepodge of SAT Verbal-type questions, SAT Writing questions, and LSAT Logical reasoning questions.
I don’t know much about it & there’s probably very little research on its correlation with IQ, but all these college admission tests sound similar and likely share a similar correlation with IQ.
I would guess the SAT is the best, because as Chartreuse has noted, it’s been given to the most people, and thus the most well researched, but more importantly, it measures at least three major cognitive domains (Tenn has argued five): verbal ability (vocab), working memory (reading comprehension and math), and spatial ability (geometry). When you measure multiple domains, strengths and weaknesses in specific areas cancel out, allowing the composite score to be a potentially good measure of general intelligence or (if you don’t believe in g), intelligence in general,
Of course it’s likely also biased against people who didn’t study math or attend good schools, but since skipping math and attending bad schools is a sign of low IQ (parents), it’s biased against dumb people, which might increase its g loading, but for the wrong reasons.
By contrast, it sounds like the LSAT and GMAT measure verbal ability and working memory, but not spatial ability. But they, like the SAT, measure yet another ability which has not yet been identified by factor analysis but which I’m sure exists: logical ability. For example, I have a relative who is incredibly brilliant at pure measures of working memory (backwards digit span, N back), yet she’s mediocre at arithmetic, which is thought to measure working memory. So I think logic and working memory can be teased apart.
And of course as you’ve noted, the logical games on the LSAT appear to be much more coach-able than other college admission tests.
Well, the GRE is basically the SAT except with a verbal section that is much harder, so I’d imagine that if the SAT is a good test of IQ, the GRE would be just as good, if not better.
Yes reading comprehension tests can be very subjective. I took one such test in the 7th or 8th grade and it was about a boy who had stole his father’s chocolate bar, or something like that. The test asked what was the most likely reason why the father knew the boy stole the chocolate bar, with a series of answers to choose from.
I chose “because the boy was acting strangely”, but the correct choice was “because he noticed it was missing”
At the time I thought it was terribly subjective, but in retrospect I think it was an excellent item, and it showed a lack of social IQ (not reading comprehension) for me to have failed it, even though the test was intended to measure the latter
If you dislike subjective tests, you would hate the Similarities and Comprehension sections of the WAIS. And yet it’s precisely because they’re subjective that they can measure something subtle.
Interestingly, I sucked on Similarities, but did great on Vocabulary and Information.
Sucking at Similarities doesn’t prevent me from having great reading comprehension.
I got into several arguments in high school with people who felt the SAT reading comprehension was highly subjective, and didn’t indicate any real ability above a certain point. This made me mad, especially so when the students with perfect math SAT scores received recognition and I didn’t for my perfect SAT Verbal 😠
But it turns out that reading comprehension is one of the most g-loaded activities. At least Arthur Jensen said that. I don’t have my books with me right now so I can’t cite my source.
Semi-related: I did some digging to find some apparently genuine high-range tests, tests which are industry-standard yet test over 4 sigma.
The Cattell 3 Culture fair A tests to 183 SD 16, 178 SD 15. The Miller Analogies test is accepted at the Prometheus society (IMO the highest scoring legit society) with a score of 500, yet the ceiling of the test is 600.
Thought it might be interesting to mention, as both of these tests deliver adult-scores of 4 sigma +
A person I know who is 42 or so, named Danny has an IQ of 148. He is a famous rapper and worked on an oil rig. He stayed at my house for 6 months. I liked talking to him. I could relate to him. He liked Voltron: Defenders of the Universe.
I like Ray Kurzweils books:
How to Create a Mind
The Singularity is Near
The Age of Spiritual Machines
I think know how to create A.I.
It has to do with modulating the wave form library. Conflict monitoring when expectations are met or if they not. The feedback signal is randomized when not met. Otherwise the feedback signal is constant. Unrecognized patterns become recognized. And the recognized patterns are accessible through a frequency. So memory recall is buffered and compared with reality. Complex wave-forms are generated in relation to each memory. Wave-forms are created in the buffer and tested for their results. Longer sequences allow self reflection in combination of overriding smaller sequences. It is a cascade of sequences that becomes complex in a nested loop. Wave interference of high and low frequencies allow shifts in attention. Intuition then is the ability to self monitor higher levels of attuning with the environment. This is Gnosis. Meta Intelligence. Each node in the network has a waveform. The parallel nested loops structures determines shift of attention. It directs what goes into the buffer and at what speed. And it determines how each nodes waveform is modified from feedback.
My wave-forms are very complex. The way I shift my attention allows me to self monitor and access the right memories and organize them to solve problems compensating for low working memory and processing speed. It is better to be right than to be fast.
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mental age = physical age × (IQ ÷ 100)
Full Scale
31.64 = 28 × (113 ÷ 100)
General Ability
36.4 = 28 × (130 ÷ 100)
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Facebook Analytics
43.4 = 28 × (155 ÷ 100) Post Formal operational stage
Trialectic reasoning
27.9 = 18 × (155 ÷ 100) Post Formal operational stage
Relativistic operations:
Reflective judgment:
18.6 = 12 × (155 ÷ 100) Post Formal operational stage
Dialectical reasoning:
Problem finding:
12.4 = 8 × (155 ÷ 100) Formal operational stage
7.75 = 5 × (155 ÷ 100) Concrete operational stage
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The Metavert state of Mature Intuition is not a transpersonal state; there is no sense of union with the Infinite and God. One, however, is illuminated in a certain sense. In the Metavert state one operates at a higher harmonic of intelligence, that of Certainty. Most of a Metavert’s thinking is intuitive; by this I mean that one perceives, poses and resolves problems intuitively. Most of a Metavert’s thinking is transverbal and visual; one is thinking in meanings rather than words; one only needs to think conventionally when one makes conclusions and in order to explain things to another person. One can do this easily, because one retains access to all the skills of Formal and Postformal thought, so much of one’s experience at the Metavert level can be translated into words.
At this final stage of mind development the intellect is integrated with feeling and both of these functions are put on automatic. The remaining active thinking continues the level of the Ego or conscious self. However, the functioning of the Ego itself becomes witnessed – a higher and transcendent state of consciousness. One of the hallmarks of this state is that the self is not involved with the world. Thinking, feeling and perception can function below the level of conscious attention, just as muscular motor coordination is generally automatic and apparently unconnected to attentional processing. The entire brain literally runs in parallel, and attention ceases to be a bottleneck in any cognitive processes; attention moves to the witnessing meta-intelligence.
Do you know of studies comparing the predictive validity (whether academic or non-academic) of the SAT and WAIS?
No I don’t know of any studies but my guess is that the SAT is more predictive of academic success and the WAIS is more predictive of life success. I can think of multiple successful people (Bill Cosby, Bill O’reilly, Rosie O’Donnell, Howard Stern) who claimed to have done relatively poorly on the SAT, but who I think would do well on the WAIS, though Cosby’s low SAT score is starting to catch up with him.
On the other hand there are several billionaires who did spectacularly well on the SAT, but they made their money in very mathematical fields..
I should probably say life success independent of education, because I do fear that high SAT folks might do better than high WAIS folks partly because their SAT scores became a self-fulling prophecy because the SAT is an Ivy League gatekeeper.
Bill O Reilly claimed poor SATs? All of the reporting I’ve seen on him indicates an exceptionally high score.
I know some will say that’s ridiculous given his apparently ignorant beliefs and behavior but smart people believe strange things sometimes.
I don’t think there’s been any reporting on Oreilly’s SAT scores, just people on the Internet making up numbers. He cited those fake numbers as a reason to be skeptical of Internet claims.
Can you point me to the article?
It’s not an article, it was part of the “Tip of the Day”; a closing segment on his show.
Can you say more about why you think these individuals would do better on the WAIS than on the SAT?
Also, there’s tension between the following:
versus
From the second quote above, it seems that you think that the effort to create an IQ test, reaching beyond skills needed for college, would create a stronger correlation with IQ.
Can you say more about why you think these individuals would do better on the WAIS than on the SAT?
Because the WAIS just seems to better measure the abilities you need in the real world as opposed to school, such as social understanding (Comprehension and Picture Arrangement), common sense arguments (Comprehension), organizing your thoughts before you speak (Comprehension, Similarities), the lateral thinking required in humor (Similarities, Picture Arrangement), executive function (Similarities, Digit Symbol), short-term memory (Digit Span, Digit-Symbol)
The people I mention tend to be broadcasters and entertainers where some of them display a lot of talent in these domains. I’m speculating of course, but there are a lot of entertainers, especially comics, who seem quite clever, despite having been terrible students, and thus potentially bad SAT performers, and in the individuals I mentioned, they specifically said their SATs were not good, in some cases abysmal
I also think there’s a social class bias on scholastic type tests that you don’t see on the WAIS to nearly the same degree, as observed in the Minnesota Trans-racial Adoption study where adoption boosted scholastic test scores but apparently not WAIS scores
From the second quote above, it seems that you think that the effort to create an IQ test, reaching beyond skills needed for college, would create a stronger correlation with IQ
Yes but I think both the old SAT and the new SAT both measured the same skills, it’s just the old SAT tried to make the items more g loaded, without significantly expanding the range of abilities measured. I’m speculating though so I could be wrong.