...but since IQ tests for the very young do not test reading or counting, those early skills do not play a role at all from what I gather in my limited experience. My DD at 3.4 years was asked to arrange blocks or pictures and my child wasn't even asked to count to ten though she can skip count, count backwords, do simple math etc. They didn't ask her to read one thing though she can read quite complicated words so those skills didn't play into her scores at all. One part that I did think could be inflated or deflated due to exposure was the general knowledge section of the WPPSI...
You and Dottie did address this with your posts a bit already, but even in the absense of reading or academic skills being directly tested on a preschool intelligence test, the home environment is more salient to the score in a younger child. It only takes getting a few hard questions right as a preschooler to significantly up your total score. A child with an enriched environment and one in which he is exposed to a larger spoken vocabulary is at an advantage in terms of how he will test on vocabulary sections, general knowledge questions, and possibly even abstract reasoning questions.
I'm not certain if
this is the study I am recalling, but I do recall from a psychometrics class I took a while back that there have been studies that indicate that an adopted child's measured IQ as a child will be similar to that of his/her adoptive parents due to environmental influences. Over time, as the child becomes an adult, his/her measured IQ will much more closely match that of his/her biological parents due to the environmental impacts lessening. Thus my recall from that class that IQ is not considered fully stable until later childhood.
