Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Most accurate- FSIQ, GAI, GAI with extended norms?

I'm not sure what you mean by the personality traits inflating the other three indices and therefore the FSIQ is still reliably measured by the test.

The aforementioned personality trait will deflate the processing speed index but inflate the other three indices (because the person will be able to comprehend more in general due to the slowness of pace and develop better reasoning skills, which does not equate to an increase in pure g, which is what the IQ test attempts to estimate).

Hmmm. I've not heard this before. What led you to believe this? Particularly about WMI? My ds's WMI certainly wasn't inflated by his average PSI.

I say this because it is clear that certain personality traits are deleterious to certain mental abilities, processing speed being one, and advantageous to others, e.g., verbal comprehension (the person who reads slower and has a need for precision is almost certainly more likely to comprehend more than another person with a similar level of g but will usually have a lower processing speed).

A person's level of g does not vary simply because one develops personality traits that are conducive to high scores on a given index or indices, and if IQ tests could yield deceptive results simply because one student has a need for precision and accuracy and another person does not, they would not be a reliable measure of g by any means, and yet the full-scale IQ's of different IQ tests all have very high correlations (e.g., the correlation between the WAIS-IV and the SB-V is r = 0.89).

To state it simply, if a person develops certain behaviors and traits that have an adverse or propitious affect on certain mental abilities, it will show up on other indices of a good IQ test. For example, a person who reads very slowly and has an obsessive need to understand all of the subject matter under immediate discussion is likely to have a very high verbal comprehension index, but this will be negated by a much lower processing speed index. A person whose verbal comprehension index is high as a result of his or her level of g will not have such a mitigation in processing speed.

As far as working memory is concerned, it is probably the least affected by the aforementioned personality trait; verbal comprehension, followed by perceptual reasoning, are the most highly inflated, while working memory could be not affected at all (although the child may have a somewhat higher arithmetic score due to an abnormal facility with quantitative reasoning as a result of obsessive tendencies that result in an "over-learning" of mathematics).

Yes, but the VCI on the WISC is not in fact a reading comprehensive measure--at least not as I understand it.

I'm sorry, but I'm just not convinced.

I couldn't imagine how reading comprehension wouldn't have a high correlation with verbal comprehension; clearly, the greater one's reading comprehension the more likely he or she will preform better on vocabulary and information; after all, the more information one comprehends while reading, the more likely he or she will store that information in his or her long-term memory. Also, the greater one's reading comprehension the more terms he or she is likely to comprehend and thus the larger his or her vocabulary is likely to be. Not only that, but according to Dr. Arthur Jensen, for adults a measure of reading comprehension relative to the general population is essentially as accurate a measure of g as a certified IQ test. Clearly, there is a very strong correlation between verbal comprehension and reading comprehension.

As far as not being convinced is considered; I would also pose the contrary example: consider a person who reads extremely rapidly but as a result comprehends little of what he or she is reading. He or she may preform very highly on processing speed, but is likely to preform comparatively poorly on verbal comprehension in particular.

One is able to estimate the g-factor using a method developed by Spearman known as factor analysis; as a general rule, factor analysis shows that the more diverse and different tasks measuring mental abilities one administers, and the higher the g-loading on those tasks, the greater the accuracy to which one can be sure one is measuring g.

If you are unconvinced of what I'm saying, you would have to believe that certain personality traits can alter one's IQ significantly, in which case you would have to believe that IQ tests are not a reliable measure of g. I would argue quite vehemently that one would not score well on all or even a large number of the sub-tests on the Wechsler battery without having a very high level of g and a very high level of g only. What are the chances that one, by sheer serendipity, would have all of the personality traits that are conducive to proficiency at tasks measuring abilities as different as vocabulary, block design, digit span, coding, and the like? Not only are these tasks only positively correlated due to the g-factor, they tend to be negatively correlated when g is factored out (for example, verbal comprehension and processing speed have a negative correlation when g is negligible for the aforementioned reasons).

So did I misunderstand your original assertion that a person's personality trait of meticulousness lowers their PSI and inflates the other three indices?

Not true at all for PRI at least. The 'blocks section' of the WISC IV is timed and I could see (via double mirror) my DD basically playing and exploring the potential of the blocks as well as checking and rechecking (perfectionism). While she solved every block task, she took her own time about it so only got credit for what she did within the time which held her PRI down to 145.

Tendency wouldn't mean absolute causality. Not true in one anecdotal case is different than something being wrong. I think you can find most of Frank22's points fairly well layed out in the book: Essentials of WISC-IV Assessment.

per KADMom's question:
"So did I misunderstand your original assertion that a person's personality trait of meticulousness lowers their PSI and inflates the other three indices?"

I think that is the inverse of what he originally was saying, which was that if the other three indexes are high and PSI is low, FSIQ is still a reliable measure. I think the statistics say that, and the presented supporting theory behind the statistics is that perfectionism can yield that pattern. I think block design can be a bit of a wash because it is timed, but it also favors a more complex carefulness to prevent accidental mistakes.

Of course it has been over twenty years since I took psychological testing, test design, and various statistics classes; techniques and theories (and my memory) may have changed radically since then.

And above all, most of us here are here because our kids are the exceptions that statistics do not account for. 1 in 10,000 isn't even noise in most of these test norms.

Welcome to the boards, Frank22.

I've read in several places (not to spark any controversy) that Working Memory is probably the best indicator of academic success in elementary school. The particular study I'm thinking of measured working memory at the beginning of a child's schooling (around age five) and their subsequent academic progress at around age twelve.

I (think) the authors of the study were stating that working memory seemed to be the deciding factor independent of IQ score. (although working memory at least on the WISC is part of FSIQ- so a bit confused). Also, working memory was shown to be independent of parent's level of education or socio economic background.

I would be interested in seeing how working memory plays out as these children age through high school and college as academic subjects become more complex. I probably have a pretty excellent working memory (self-assessed) and was stymied by calculus and economics.