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

I have a question about the Flynn effect. A friend had their child retested on the same test (sb5) by the same tester a number if years apart. The tester said not to bother, because the result would be the same, but school wanted retesting. The result was either identical or within 1-3 points (FSIQ) and similar pattern.

My question is - first round of testing was obviously closer to the point of norming than the second round of testing. Now theoretically what the tester said and what happened is exactly the intention of IQ test - that scores should be fairly stable (assuming no conditions that might cause change or instability). But if you test your 5yr old on the sb5 when it's is first released there should be no Flynn effect, your 5 yr is close in age to the norming cohort, when you test again at 15yrs old surely the Flynn effect should be reaching its peak effect for that test (your 15yr old is 10-15yrs younger than the norming sample), how does the Flynn effect theory balance against "stable over time on the same instrument"?

Note that my friend's child was not tested 10 years apart, the situation just got me thinking.

My thought in that case is that the age of the child at the time of the testing might have had some impact. For instance, a 5 y/o who is tested on the WISC is likely to have a higher score than a 15 y/o even if the ability is the same. I say that b/c the 15 y/o is going to run into some significant ceiling issues.

So, for instance, the score at 5 when the test was newer might be lower due to the newness of the test and, at 10, it might be lower due to the age of the tester but higher due to the "oldness" of the test with those two things cancelling each other out. I hope that makes sense - just my random thoughts.

Maybe not an IQ score specifically, but there should be something else there... early milestones, cognitive precocity, unusual talent or advanced development in a certain area (or areas), etc etc. If there's no LD, there should be something that shows up on testing. (If there is an LD, I think that test scores should be taken with a grain of salt.)

It's funny because I don't like talking to NT people about it, because then I have to explain why it isn't always desirable.

Yes, but milestones can be misremembered as well. I've had people tell me that their kids were talking in sentences at 18 months, for instance, as recall of their early milestones. These are kids I was around at that age and not only were they not speaking in sentences, they weren't speaking at all beyond maybe a word or two. I think that's what I was getting at in regard to "hypochondria" regarding signs of intellect. If you want to see it, you can make things into something they are not and/or remember things off.

So true. Personally, I remembered DH8's milestones incorrectly- though in the opposite direction. I was going through old files and found a dated list of words I'd compiled that he had read the day I discovered he knew how to sound things out. The date on it placed him at a much younger age than I'd remembered. I guess I was more comfortable remembering him beginning to read a little early versus very early. I've definitely seen it go both ways though.

Right-- I'm a record-keeper and fairly fastidious about recall/detail, both by natural inclination and also by training. I've been ASTONISHED by what others even within my own family tell me that I know isn't correct.

I look in DD's baby book, though, and at early photos, and I know. Those things were contemporaneous recordings of what she was doing. We have video.

I tend to default to "oh, I probably just don't remember" when I think of something that DD did extraordinarily early.



Isn't THAT the truth!?

I sometimes wonder if most kids shouldn't be screened for LD's, and then worry about the kids who have LD's and let the rest of them gravitate to what they seem to need, and not worry so much about IQ testing. That would be ideal, it seems to me... but then again, it's a paradigm shift that will probably never happen, so...

This is a great reason why we love to be able to state (truthfully) that we really don't KNOW what DD's test numbers are. Never seen a need to know, since she just does what she does, and having the number doesn't seem to matter all that much. Without a 2e issue on the table, it seems so straightforward... she seems EG/PG (in spite of some of her earliest milestones indicating more like MG/HG, probably because of chronic medical problems), so that's how we treat her, and it seems to fit perfectly.

That tends to shut down the "Ohhhhhh... you're one of THOSE parents... the test-shoppers... the ones INVESTED in your kid being gifted..." in a hurry, because it makes it much more clear that it's ultimately about what our child seems to need, and not what we do.

I still spend time explaining asynchrony and perfectionism and other quirks of being HG+ to people who need to know and don't seem to, but it does close off a lot of the casual playground competition between parents.

Yes, and actually, the SAT re-centering is a prime reason why I wonder how valid the Flynn effect actually is-- you know, in terms of being a proxy for an ACTUAL increase in the population mean of whatever it is we think we're measuring with IQ testing...

or if it just reflects that the population most likely to seek out those tests tends to reflect greater and greater numbers of parents who are SEEKING a 'gifted' diagnosis, and actively prepping/grooming kids to get it.

Such grooming doesn't necessarily budge the mean, of course, which is what the SAT seems to suggest.

But it is a curious phenomenon. I tend to think that a shift in the sampled populations explains both things very well-- and means that neither thing says much about the population as a whole... merely about the self-selected sample being measured with the instrument.

I wrote a few things down, although I wish I had kept track of more. When I talk about milestones I try and only refer to the ones I've recorded, but then I feel like I sound like a broken record by repeating the same few. I also feel like it's too vague and lame sounding to say "there were so many more but I forget" and "she was just way ahead and people kept telling me to get her tested" etc etc. So... I don't talk about it much (except here ).