Hello. A while back I made a post about how I scored at the 99th percentile on the KBIT verbal as a child, but scored significantly lower on the WISC as a teenager. Between maybe the ages of 11 and when I took the WISC, I don't think I gained a whole lot of vocab as I have trouble finishing books due to inattention. However recently, it seems that I've gained a significant amount of lexical knowledge and I fear that it may be illegitimate. I've certainly been interested in psychometrics for a few years, and have learned some words in the context of testing, whether that be when reading about it, or from random online vocab tests and old manuals (e.g., 1916 SB). I recently had the chance to take the PPVT-4 and obtained a standard score of 138, however I learned at least one word from a random online vocab test, and encountered at least one other in a very old manual (not that of the PPVT, of course). I think I've encountered those words elsewhere as well, but don't know if I'd have gotten them. I've also forgotten many words, which makes me doubt my ability significantly. My long-term recall ability seems to be inconsistent. Anyway, I guess I'm really wondering if the source of the vocab doesn't matter as long as there wasn't prior knowledge of what the specific test items would be.
I'm also curious about how much reasoning analogies require. I managed to get ahold of some genuine pre-1995 SAT forms, which contain both antonyms and analogies, and I seem to be quite good at both item types, with the antonyms + analogies composite (they called it the vocabulary subscale) appearing to be roughly +3 SD. Some regard them as having significant reasoning requirements, however others consider them to measure nothing more than lexical knowledge. The old SAT V also appeared to be pretty difficult to train for, with one meta-analysis predicting that it'd take over 1,000 hours of training to gain 40 old SAT V points artificially. It appears that I could subtract 40 points and still be at roughly the 99th percentile according to the national general population normative data that I found, but I still fear that it could be inflated due to vocab. Apparently Cecil Reynolds regards antonyms as tapping reasoning in addition to general vocab, as there seems to be reasoning involved in determining which option is the *most* opposite of the word listed. I also found a book containing an analysis of the GRE analogies, and they reported that on average for the items analyzed, only about 10 percent of the variability in item difficulty was associated with the rarity of the words used.
