In order for something to test intelligence you shouldn't be able to improve your score by learning, practicing, or studying.
You cannot really improve your IQ score by any significant margin by studying in general, unless you memorize the answers on a particular test. This doesn’t make the IQ tests any less useful or valid than SAT or MCAT.
Scores should be reproducible.
They are. Test-retest correlation on high quality IQ tests are well north of 0.9
I've yet to see an IQ test that didn't test skills you could improve by practicing.
If you practice (I.e. memorize the answers) for a specific test, e.g. Wechsler, you won’t get any gain on Stanford Binet, for example.
They also assume knowledge. For example, the IQ test I had when I was young included word comparisons. This tested vocabulary more than intelligence. Someone who didn't have a formal education or didn't know English well would score lower regardless of their intelligence.
Yes, because intelligent people tend to have more knowledge. People don’t attain vocabulary simply by being taught the words at school. Vocabulary is learned by experiencing contact with words, and intelligent people tend to seek these experiences more. But yes, comparing an Englishman and Korean on an English-language analogies section of WAIS makes no sense. Fortunately, there almost always is measurement invariance within same country/culture, meaning that the tests measure the same latent ability.
You cannot really improve your IQ score by any significant margin by studying in general, unless you memorize the answers on a particular test. This doesn’t make the IQ tests any less useful or valid than SAT or MCAT.
Scores should be reproducible.
They are. Test-retest correlation on high quality IQ tests are well north of 0.9
I've yet to see an IQ test that didn't test skills you could improve by practicing.
If you practice (I.e. memorize the answers) for a specific test, e.g. Wechsler, you won’t get any gain on Stanford Binet, for example.
They also assume knowledge. For example, the IQ test I had when I was young included word comparisons. This tested vocabulary more than intelligence. Someone who didn't have a formal education or didn't know English well would score lower regardless of their intelligence.
Yes, because intelligent people tend to have more knowledge. People don’t attain vocabulary simply by being taught the words at school. Vocabulary is learned by experiencing contact with words, and intelligent people tend to seek these experiences more. But yes, comparing an Englishman and Korean on an English-language analogies section of WAIS makes no sense. Fortunately, there almost always is measurement invariance within same country/culture, meaning that the tests measure the same latent ability.