IDENTIFYING GIFTED AND TALENTED CHILDREN THROUGH IQ TESTING

IDENTIFYING GIFTED CHILDREN AND DYSLEXIA EARLY DIAGNOSIS: RISK OF CHEATING ON IQ TESTS

Marco Ripà

12th Asia Pacific Conference on GiftednessDubai, July 15, 2012

How can we measure children’s IQ?

• Through standardized IQ tests (e.g. WISC-IV);• Using personalized methods, with a good

norm (e.g. high range IQ tests searching for gifted children);

• Using a combination of both standardized and personalized tests/instruments.

A brief reminder about IQ

There is not a general/singular definition of human intelligence, but we can try to evaluate specific skills which are usually related to the most abstract part of cognitive attitude (Sperman’s Gf factor).

The so called crystallized intelligence (Sperman’s Gc factor) affects everyday life and contributes significantly to increase our chances of finding the solutions to complex problems.

WISC test takes into account both these components, while Raven’s Matrices is focused on non verbal intelligence quantification.

How is IQ theorically distribute among people?

Normal distribution of random phenomena Gaussian distribution and IQ (σ=15)

How is IQ really distributed?

A change of perspective...

IQ distribution in populations only approximately fits a bell curve (in the same way as height), diverging from it rapidly as the scores surpass 2.5 standard deviations from the mean. There is nothing that says that IQ has to follow any particular kind of distribution curve at all. Conventional (ratio) IQ fits children well enough. However, as children's physical growth slows during adolescence, the growth of mental age also slows and then plateaus around the 20’s.

IMO…

My personal point of view is that modern standardized IQ tests, such as WAIS tests or Standford Binet versions, do not suffer from substantial variance in the [+2, +3.5] s.d. range. So, for our purpose to discovery giftedness, we can easily refer to a normal distribution of the scores. Based on the previous assumption, we could subdivide gifted children into four different groups: gifted or moderately gifted, highly gifted, exceptionally gifted*, profoundly gifted*.

WAIS tests classification

According to the table above, we obtain the following subsets:

[+2,+3] s.d. from the expected mean gifted children;[+3,+4] s.d. from the expected mean highly gifted children;[+4,+5] s.d. from the expected mean exceptionally gifted children; > +5 s.d. from the expected mean profoundly gifted children.

Around 10% of Italian children between 6 and 10 are affected by dyslexia and this number becomes higher in middle school. They find it difficult to read, write, make calculations.

Reading disability is the most common form of dyslexia and it is not correlated with IQ, it is not caused by environmental factors nor psychological ones, sensorial deficits or neurological deficiencies.

It is necessary to discover this learning disability in time, if we want to reduce its impact on a child’s future: the worthy age for an appropriate diagnosis is 6 years old, but the screening is convenient until the age of 9.

For this purpose, we have constructed a fast and relatively inexpensive method to search for giftedness in children who fall in the age range 7-16, looking for a possible learning disability (in particular dyslexia) with specific regard to children younger than 9.

A short digression: learning disabilities

Could we measure a +5 sd IQ from the mean?

To recognize a profoundly gifted child we need to use a smart strategy, because common standardized IQ tests suffer from ceiling effects and do not have a ceiling high enough.

One possible solution could be to use a combination of two different kinds of IQ tests, such as WISC plus Raven’s Matrices. Nevertheless this does not allow us to investigate above 2-4 standards deviations from the mean (depending on the age group we are considering).

We are able to differentiate between 3 age groups (7-11, 12-13, 14-16), providing an

increased ceiling for IQ estimation…

• Our method is based on a specific combination of two different types of IQ tests (a collective spatial test plus an individual one), but it could easily be adapted to different targets. For example, we could try to investigate about creativity potential (even if it is not so simple to achieve a good indicator for this purpose) or underachieving problems (often related to hyperactivity).

• For children/adolescents in the age group 10-16, we are able to discriminate deeper and deeper in the IQ screening as the age grows. This lets us combine a collective IQ test with an individual one (or a high range IQ test), increasing the ceiling of our research and avoiding false positive cases. The IQ growth during early age is not linear, and it is not simple to detect highly (or profoundly) giftedness adolescence.

The Raven’s Matrices types that we have to use will be different according to the given age range we are considering:

• Coloured Progressive Matrices for 7-11 years old children, • Standard Progressive Matrices for the 12-13 years old subset,• Advanced Progressive Matrices otherwise.

For every pupil younger than 9, we will add, at least, eight verbal -memory-arithmetic subtests of the WISC-IV (similarities, digit span, coding, vocabulary, letter-number sequencing, comprehension, arithmetic, word reasoning), searching for substantial variances between the performances achieved on the two different tests.

This could represent a good hint for more detailed individual and personalized tests, trying to reveal specific comorbidities such as dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, etc.

For children above 9, we are firstly interested in detecting giftedness, so we will perform a preliminary screening using Raven’s Matrices, taking into consideration only results at or above the 90th percentile (the bottom level compatible with giftedness). For these 1.33+ s.d. IQ children, we will administer the WISC-IV to confirm the giftedness diagnosis, also giving a more detailed measurement of the theoretical/potential IQ of the subject.

The ceilings (σ=15) grow-up as the age raises: 7-11→IQ 120-135, 12-13→IQ 125-140 and 14-16→IQ 140-160.

This approach could be switched to specific underachieving research, adding to Raven’s Matrices another collective tool (e.g. SDAI or SCOD).

Moreover, a 120+ IQ score represents a partial indication of a creative potential above the mean, since 1.33+ s.d. IQs are positively correlated with creativity.

In detail (operating procedure)

Further lectures on this topic

Paul Cooijmans’ (founder of Glia and GIGA societies) study about high IQ development by age is very useful in the spirit of better

understanding the ceiling of our approach: http://www.paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/iq_development_with_age_modelled.htmlThe upper bounds that we have previously estimated are based on

my personal experience in the high IQ community, dealing with some gifted and very gifted children and teenagers.

A particular example of IQ growth by age: one highly gifted boy who took a wide set

of supervised and high range IQ tests

The next slides refer to a highly gifted friend, previously very active in the high IQ community, who took a lot of supervised and high range IQ tests during his adolescence. His IQ development enables us to understand better the cognitive ability development of a very high IQ teenager.

Taken tests list (converted to σ=15) Month-Year:

• RAPM-Set II: raw 35/36, 08-2009;• Isis Test: IQ 156, 08-2009;• Cerebrals International 88 composite Contest 2009: according to Dr. Jouve IQ between 153-161, 08-2009;• Advanced Spatial Intelligence Test: IQ 147, 07-2009;• Hieroglyphica: IQ 146, 05-2009;• Compactica: IQ 150, 03-2009;• SLSE48: IQ 154, 12-2008;• SLSE I: IQ 148, 12-2008;• Logima Strictica 36: IQ 143, 10-2008;• Cooijmans Intelligence Test: IQ 143, 09-2008;• Exactica: raw 49/80 (±158), 08-2008;• Simplex: IQ 138, 07-2008;• Nemesis Test: IQ 141, 04-2008;• Plane&Space&Numbers: IQ 153, 03-2008;• CFNSE-D: 99.914% (age corrected) 99.89% (adult population), 11-2007;• GET-γ: IQ 144 – age corrected, 08-2007;• The Sùnesis Test: IQ 145.45, 04-2007;• Median nicologic.free.fr: IQ 155, 06-2006.

[Average score: IQ 147 (σ =15)]

The IQ scores are based on norms by the test author, if available.

age (years) year IQ mean (σ=15) Number of tests taken

11-12 2003 117,0 1

12-13 2004 130,0 1

15-16 2007 145,5 3

16-17 2008 147,3 8

17-18 2009 149,5 4

[My IQ growth has been quite similar to the one above]

An important issue related to very high IQ performances: risk of cheating

Most of the standardized and supervised IQ tests are not without risk if we want to use them for giftedness screening (even if they represent the best choice for average people’s reasoning skills evaluation, or IQ deficit diagnosis). It is regrettable that tests like the WAIS or Stanford Binet (every version) are sold at the moment on eBay for €300- €1000.

The results of a search for professional IQ tests on eBay

It is a joke to cheat on them, for example, achieving a perfect score under the supervision of a serious psychologist and in front of the Media too.Last year a famous episode of cheating occurred on the Cattell Culture Fair III (form A+B) with a boy who got a perfect score under the television eye, but that was not able to reach a 130 (σ=15) performance on a similar test. One possible solution, to reduce this risk of cheating is to use qualitative high range IQ tests, even if episodes of cheating also occur on them (for example the Get-γ test compromised in 2010).

A new idea to create totally culture free numerical IQ tests, which I have recently had, is based on a method to construct new integer sequences starting from a given and explicit set of sequences.

The related solving of problems will be linked to inference and retro-analytical reasoning, similar to the retrograde analysis of chess problems.

http://spiqrsociety.webs.com/

Work in progress…

Focal points

• Gifted students’ screening is very important in order to invest in the future from a meritocratic perspective, gaining individual richness from youths’ talents valorization.

• An efficient strategy, to perform a preliminary talent screening, is to look for children’s IQ. For those ones under 10, as a preliminary indicator, it is abstractly possible to adopt an adult IQ test, distinguishing every performance above the adult mean on that test.

• The approach previously described assures a cheaper and faster method than administrating WISC-IV for every pupil: a good way to search for creative children and gifted ones. In fact, we can easily discriminate children at or above the canonical gifted level (IQ 2+ s.d. from the mean) setting the Raven’s test to be bound at 120 (σ=15) and the WISC-IV cut-off at 130.

Last specifications

• A 120+ IQ could be a good indicator for creative potential by itself and students above 120 would be tested again using different solutions/tools.

• If necessary, children who suffer from ceiling effects on the Raven and WISC-IV tests could be investigated again using specifically designed high range IQ tests. To this end, it is essential to keep in mind that “There are all sorts of confounding variables that give rise to differences in scores; therefore, it is always advisable to be skeptical of the results you obtain” [Paul Laurent].

• For pupils below 9, we are able to point out related learning disabilities too (dyslexia in primis), without forgetting the possibility that a child with disability could be a very gifted/talented little boy as well.

http://spiqrsociety.webs.com/

marcokrt1984@yahoo.it