Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Flynn effect

I just came across a recent blog post by Deborah Ruf, where she discusses how she is finding the Flynn effect to be much higher in GT kids. She says that the average life span of an IQ test is 12-13 years, and if you take a test on the last legs of its life, your score may be overestimated. On the flip side, if you take a test when it's brand new, your score may be underestimated. Her point below about how we are making educational decisions based on these scores is what caught my eye. Personally, I don't think anyone should make big decisions based on just one test, but some schools will include/exclude based on a particular number.

"The matrix pattern reasoning and one or two other subtests account for most of this inflation over the years, but the real point is that we are over-estimating the level of giftedness of kids who take the tests when the tests are older and under-estimating the level of giftedness of the kids who take the test when the test is fairly new. More kids test as being Profoundly Gifted who may not actually be if they take the tests when the tests are older."

The Flynn Effect Affects the Gifted...

It seems like this is something that the folks who make these tests should factor in during the scoring process.

I think my kiddo took the SB-V when it was middle-aged, so I guess we lucked out.

When is the WISC V coming out, and how old is the WISC IV?

I think the Flynn Effect should be ignored, and IQ tests shouldn't use normed values. If the point is to match intervention to ability, then there isn't overestimating taking place. We are just correctly increasing the group size of those that need intervention.

Let's say studies determined that the ideal intervention in math for a 7 year old scoring a 130 on the WISC-III is to have 1st & 2nd grade compressed into one year and to skip review at the beginning of the school year. In 1992, that would be ~2% of the kids needing 1st & 2nd grade math compressed. 20 years later and 7% of the kids are scoring 130 on the WISC-III, I'd contend that the compressed math would be valid for the full 7%.

Renorming and waiting for tests to settle in before research is done means that research and longitudinal studies will continuously show results and interventions matched to the wrong population set. The compounded result is even more bored children, unless the overal baseline curriculum is drifting its mean in line with the overall IQ gains.

IQ should be a measure not a competition.

So what do you do about the two kids who test at the same age, one on the old version one on the new. The first kid qualifies for DYS, grade skip, and/or HG magnet, the second kid qualifies for no GT programs or grade skip based on school rules. For purposes of this example, if they had each taken the same test, they would have gotten the same scores. Or similarly, a kid who gets 130 on the old test and another kid who gets 115 on the new test. Which kids are in the correct educational setting? We cannot tell based on IQ score alone.

I guess I'm more concerned for the kids who are getting the lower scores, which may not get them into programs they need.

Do you think part of the increase in WISC IV over the years is the result of extended norms being used more frequently now and not in the beginning stages of the WISC IV?

Me too, the problem with renorming is that the bar at 2% (or whatever %) keeps raising and kids with needs are now falling below it and may not be getting the support they need. As you point out, it also helps illustrate that IQ scores are not sufficient screening.

Now if the mean population being targeted by standard curriculum actually followed the group mean, then the relative outliers argument would seem valid, but I don't get the sense that schools in general have been "smartening up" their core focus.

Dottie, based on the time frame you are saying for your oldest, I think that my oldest took the WISC-IV somewhere around the same time or maybe a year later. She did have a 19 on the picture concepts, which would have gone up considerably had extended norms been applied, as well as a lot of other high numbers and wild variability overall. Conversations like this, although really irrelevant at this late date, do make me wonder what the "real" number is although, as comes up here, there probably is no "real" number to be had. I guess that I can just assume that it would have been higher had the test been older.

The quote that St. Pauli Girl posted in her first post as well as this one,

"The WPPSI-IV Technical Manual points out what many of us know, too, that achievement scores often have more to do with exposure and opportunity and don’t necessarily identify intellectually gifted children"

were the two parts that really stood out of this article to me. Like Dottie, I've seen a good number of kids who were ided as gifted using somewhat nebulous means (achievement scores, behavioral rating scales, group tests with low thresholds, and retests until they hit the right point) who really have not presented as gifted over the years. There are always ways to get the highest number you can by using an old test, prepping, etc., but like mentioned, if "gifted" wasn't a competition of something to "get in to" or a badge of pride, all of this would be less and less of an issue.

This is an interesting topic to me. My oldest scored within a few points on his FSIQ over a period of 8 years on WISC IV. The last test was a few points lower at 14 years old. It certainly didn't appear to impact him. Another one of mine hit ceilings all through the test a little over a year ago, but the achievement scores matched the IQ. I'm not to worried about inflation on that testing. Absent any 2E issues, Do you think the more obvious sign of this would be really mismatched Achievement scores or day to day performance for a child? My youngest will likely be tested on WISC-V by the time we test for GT program.

Zen scanner I get what you are saying that schools don't seem to have increased the difficulty for the normally developing kids, but gifted kids needing different provisions is about a lot more than pure curriculum to me - its about speed, finding peers, thinking differently, etc. so that relative difference does seem very important to me. Going from 2% to 5% to eventually 20% above x cutoff is not really helping the kids that were in the 2% at all. Let alone the .1% kids...