Commenter illuminaticatblog wanted me to comment on his his most recent Wechsler intelligence test scores:
Illuminaticatblog is a treasure trove into the long-term stability of the Wechsler scales because he’s been tested so many times.
One thing that jumps out about his scores is that you see a large 15 point gap (a full standard deviation) between his General Ability Index and his Full-Scale IQ.
Both scores are intended to summarize a person’s intelligence level, but the GAI excludes certain cognitive functions that are considered unfair to neuro-atypicals such as Working Memory and Processing Speed.
Which of the two scores you want to go with depends on your definition of intelligence. I define intelligence as the adaptability to use whatever body and environment you’re in to get whatever you want, and since working memory and processing speed have huge adaptive value, I prefer the full-scale IQ, since it includes them.
Indeed my income and occupational status depend deeply on processing speed. I have a government job where after negotiating with clients, I must rapidly type reports full of facts and figures. The faster I can type, decide, and retain stats in short-term memory, the higher my productivity and the more likely I am to get my lucrative contract renewed. Half my job is like one long Digit-Symbol subtest, though physical energy can be just as important as cognition. I’ve found myself cutting carbs to stay alert and pan-handling pink caffeine pills from a co-worker.
This blog attracts a lot of high IQ people, but it also attracts a lot of neuro-atypicals, which is why commenters tend to score higher on the SAT than on more holistic tests like the Wechsler. I also suspect commenters here in general would do better on GAI than full-scale IQ.
Pumpkin Person 
I have to disagree with you, Pumpkin. SAT is a lot more fair and probably suits neurotypicals best in ter.s of IQ tests. There’s a lot of cultural loading due to the test mainly coming from schooling. Other tests factor in knowledge that is obscure to the point that only neuroatypicals would get it.
I’m surprised Kitty’s verbal comprehension and working memory scores aren’t more strongly correlated.
On high-level VC tests like the LSAT logical reasoning section, working memory definitely accounts for a great deal of the combined item variance—especially among the hardest questions.
Reading for overall reasoning structure puts a lot of strain on your short-term memory.
The wechsler VC is more about subtle insights & knowledge than the brute processing power of the LSAT
That’s the reason the LSAT was so much more challenging than GRE verbal to me. Having a yuge vocabulary wont help much on the LSAT, although a high general knowledge level definitely can.
In my mind, I cannot separate WM from PS. I forget things quite fast when holding them. I can formulate ideas like math problems quite easily but not sloths of data. It could be I am an expert in long term data extraction but not short term memory. I am not a human calculator. But I have highly complex ideas.
It might be a reasonable comparison also ith perceptual creativity that long term memory would be used. Drawing requires combining things together. IQ doesn’t quite measure this I suppose?
I would be able to combine more things together if I did have high PS and WM. But I am not so limited I cannot create what I do now in my own head. It just takes time for me to combine things and the specific things PS and WM afford.
You are awesome PP. You do that kind or cognitively demanding job and also write the highest quality articles that are also original on hbd. And you reply to comments on your site and take part in high quality arguments even lengthy ones and win more than 90 percent of them.
wait why did my comment appear here.
https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/FSIQ/
Does this test correlate well with your FSIQ?
Verbal 154
Spatial 87
Working memory 128
FSIQ 116
“GAI excludes certain cognitive functions that are considered unfair to neuro-atypicals such as Working Memory and Processing Speed.”
“unfair”
“…fair”
LOL
Pumpkin, are standardized tests taken in school (during 8th grade) like the smarter balanced and parcc (the main standardized tests taken in American school) similar is content and type of questions asked in the SAT? Would studying for those tests artificially increase you SAT score if you took the SAT some 6-8 months after you took the standardized tests?
What gets in and out of the brain is very important to IQ. Especially because the brain reorganizes itself in response in order to what is happening. The brain once reorganized recognizes more and can use that crystallized intelligence to do more. Jordan Peterson said the frontal lobes are the programmers of the brain. They determine the rate crystalized intelligence forms. Processing speed is like a filter that brings clarity to what gets in the brain.
I have a low rate at which information gets in clearly. And so I have a low rate at which things get out clearly. It is hard for me to hold thoughts clearly as well (WM). PP could tell me is these two things go together? Regardless of my input-output problem, my frontal and parietal lobes work just fine. I am able to program my brain just lacking input-output. I have a perception problem basically.
I appreciate PP making this post. It helped out alot.
I feel like I would score similar to you, though inverted for verbal and perceptual reasoning. If SAT scores are strong indicators of IQ, my real IQ should be around 115. Incidentally, that’s about what I got on the Mensa wonderlic. It’s starting to seem like my intelligence is coming from my GAI rather than FSIQ.
Wow, you strike me as much smarter than 115. Like maybe 130. Imteresting.
I scored 98th percentile on the RAIT for crystallized intelligence. That might give the appearance of smartness than actual productive capability.
I wonder why differences in IQ is such an unacceptable thing when differences in height or beauty or health or money are our normal environment.
Yesterday, at a posh party, I was looking at people face, and the average was much higher than normal, but the differences among people are really extremes. Some have such symmetrical and perfect face that it is like a gravity atttaction. Others are so ugly that you want to avoid looking at them. It’s very « unfair ». Because for IQ, nobody is conscious of what he lacks, but with beauty, it’s obvious for everyone.
Some might say it’s because intelligence is such a valued trait. In a ’94 C-SPAN interview, Murray said that parents value intelligence the most out of all their childrens’ traits.
This is probably still true, but I think most people value their own appearance more than their intelligence. The contestants on Love Island are dumber than shit, but they’re happy as clams because people think they’re attractive.
Maybe it’s because finding out about latent traits is so surprising.
Pumpkin person, would getting the correct concept on similarities but wrong knowledge still get you the points? [redacted by pp, aug 5, 2019]
Also, is the similarities subtext designed so that most people (including bilinguals) know the definitions of all the words presented?
Any untrue answer is considered wrong
But would correct conceptual understanding be more indicative of your reasoning abilities, while the others underestimate it?
Anyone has seen « Grammar of happiness » ? You see Dan Everett who is a Chris Langan type of person except he went from preacher to atheist university professor. He challenged Chomsky universal grammar theory by saying that an Amazonian language he studies lack recursion.
The claim was tested by Edward Gibson, an MIT colleague of Chomsky but from the cognitive science and Technology lab, that tested the hypothesis on 1100 sentences (with IT tools detecting recursion) and found only 5 possible instances of conjunction (that could be juxtaposition) rending Everett thesis plausible.
Chomsky saying that the hypothesis has not been properly tested but also that recursion is not a main feature of’his theory. I d like to hear more about this because recursion is the basis of Turings machine and this is the basis of
Chomsky thesis.
In the soft documentary, you see how theory become a religion because so much power (jobs, money, recognition, work meaningless) is involved.
All that to say that it is a pitty that Langan couldn’t insert himself in the scientific debate as Everett did. Everett also was from blue collar background. And for Pumpkin database, he seems to have also a very huge head 😊
Higher neuroatypicals probably do better on the SAT vs Wechsler, but only if theyre stable/conscientiousness enough to make it thru a standard high scbool curriculum.
Which WAIS subtests do you think are the best? I know that more g-loaded doesn’t necessarily equal better or more valuable, but I found the easiest subtest to be Arithmetic, which apparently has the strongest g-loading. If you were to ask me, I’d say that the best measures of intelligence on the WAIS-IV are:
Similarities 19*
Matrices 16*
Coding 10*
Arithmetic 19*
my scaled score*
I like blocks the best. The most fun & the most culture fair
That one does correlate strongly with overall IQ, but I find it almost too easy seeing as one can just mentally segment the gestalt. I think that I could have gone well beyond the ceiling in that and arithmetic.
Do you think that vocabulary correlating so highly with other batteries undermines the argument that “culture fair” items and IQ tests as a whole reflect innate ability as opposed to upbringing and achievement, or are personal lexicon and articulation just a manifestation of the inborn ability to make sense of the world? My doing well on the verbal subtests (ceiling on 3 core and 99th percentile on supplementary comprehension) can be partially explained by luck and my interest in lexicology/tendency to look up unfamiliar words when I come across them. In my opinion, though, vocabulary acquisition is somewhat of a lifelong intelligence test in that it demonstrates retentiveness, concept mastery, and intellectual curiosity.
Yes the high g loading of vocabulary & information might be a red flag
The strongest g-loading subtests on the WAIS-IV are vocab and similarities. Arithmetic relies on working memory, which is low g.
Arithmetic is highly g loaded though.
Why is working memory tested? Is it solely because it predicts G, or is it because WM affects efficiency or processing power?
Hi pp, could you calculate my FSIQ based off the following index scores: VIQ 114, PIQ 110, PSI 105, WMI 98
Also looking at pursuing graphic design as a career, I’d like your take on that. Cheers.
Testing separately for processing speed and working memory is not just unfair to those who are neuroatypical, it’s unfair to everyone and reduces accuracy in what IQ tests are supposed to measure, namely intelligence as opposed to sole mental quickness or ability to remember useless strings of information. And sure, you might argue that mental quickness is important, e.g. a person who solves x battery of problems quicker is probably more intelligent (emphasis on probably), but that is already accounted for in that these IQ tests are timed. To then weigh-in processing speed again but as a standalone factor is asinine. It’s clear that only a timed, pure reasoning test that correctly weighs in spatial, quantitative and verbal abilities can claim to come close to being a precise intelligence test. The fact that the WAIS test mostly consists of things other than problem-solving disqualifies it as an intelligence test, this is why there are so many people boasting very high IQs who yet appear to be largely unremarkable with regards to producing any kind of insight, or even in some cases understanding of basic logic.
It really pains me to see that a person with reasoning abilities well-above the norm gets placated as average by these ill-designed tests. How many people who can’t find their way out of wet paperbags get marked as intelligent fellows? In any case, all of them are too many and I cannot help but succumb to the need to express how deeply distasteful it is that these dunning-kruger morons are allowed to roam our streets freely, their deluded self-worth inflated even further by psychologists : that is the true tragedy of “IQ” tests.
white peepoo sos marth… not so
interestingly how extremely subjective great majority of white individuals, specially males, can be… not rational at all, i suppose.
Rightwinkies think insensitive things is always true
Leftwinkies think sensitive things is always true
Offense is superimposition of subjective feelings than the rounded truth of something.
Do you think cockroaches are intrinsically disgusting*
Thanks to pseudo-philosophy [phies we have so many losers believing they are geniuses overmisapplying logical fallacies etcetera..
Now, we have ”neo-lamarckians”, mostly … whites… whites…
These people jump to ”lamarcq is absolutely right” without before speculating how flexible human behavioral innateness can be..
These guys have absent SELF theory of mind or simply no have a normal autobiographical memories associated with pattern recognition. Seems they can’t know if their own behaviors are culturally-caused or not.
The first principle to understand behavior is to understand your own…