I would think that just sitting in wouldn't be enough for most parents to subsequently prep a kid to the level needed for a gifted level score. You would need to remember all of the questions given orally as well as be able to generate all of the printed material for the tests that require it.
Exactly. This was exactly my experience. There are what... 8 to 10 subtests? Many of the them visual and paper and pencil - you'd have to take a picture of the block design the child was suppose to reproduce or take a picture of the picture presented for picture concepts. I mean really. And I couldn't write any questions down - the testers could see me (plus they had me filling out forms). It's really not what people seem to think. As someone who has sat in while her child was being evaluated I find it really silly to think that one would be able to effectively cheat that way...
I agree. A parent can never prep their child for most of the things in an IQ test - and age (and complexity of questions are related to age), geographical location, cultural references, hitting the ceiling etc factor in when a child is tested. So, a parent of a PG child who hits the ceiling on a subtest would never hear all the questions in that subtest if they were present. Similarly, if my 7 year old was tested, my 6 year old neighbor would not have the same set of quesions. And they also ask questions about ethics, morality etc (things like what does truth mean to you? - there is no way to know which topic the questioner would choose).
IQ testing consists of a battery of tests. Psychologists do not always ask the same quesions - they cover several areas of testing. One question that comes to mind was that my son was given a picture of intersecting geometric figures and asked to count how many polygons he could see. In the previous test taken 2 years ago, he was given a similar question using a different group of interesecting geometric figures - but they were a lot simpler than in this recent test. I know because he came out excited that he remembered doing similar things a couple of years ago. (I am not violating the integrity of the IQ test here, because the Critical Thinking Company puts out a workbook they say is useful for review before IQ testing with the exact same concepts and any parent can buy it for under $10).
And the answer to such questions really depends on the perception of the child at that instant - for example, if there were 10 intersecting triangles in the picture (this is not an IQ test question, I am making it up), then there could be 15, 20 or 30 triangles that can be counted by the child based on how he is viewing that picture. There is no way to coach a child to come up with the correct number for such a question. What I am trying to say is that an IQ test does not contain a set of questions for which the answers can be memorized and reproduced. The questions are problems that need to be solved by the child using his thinking skills and attention to detail.
So, if a parent wanted to prep a child for the tests, there are a ton of ways to do it - NY has prep schools for this purpose charging thousands of dollars. But, none of them might work. They might provide a level of familiarity to the child, but the child is on his own during the test.
A parent cannot sit in on a test and then leak the test for other kids to do well or use it to coach their own child to get 99+percentile. It is almost impossible.
Disclaimer: I did not sit in on my child's test and I would not - even if I got the chance - because he is excitable and I might prove to be a big distraction to him. The tester had another person present in the room (a third party observer).
