Originally posted by mikelom
That may well have been the case Kewpie, but I doubt very much there was an 'age' deviation or scrutiny attached.
I thought that was one of the basic tenants of IQ tests, the mental age of a subject. If you score the same raw result on an IQ test and you are 7 years old as a kid who is 14 then the result has to be factored in about the age.
That is one of the main reasons IQ tests only really show results for the young, like predicting how well they will do in school, statistically speaking of course. Some kids with IQ's of 80 have worked extremely hard because they were extremely motivated and gone all the way to a Phd. I know at least one case where exactly that happened.
But on the whole, out of a thousand kids tested, the one with the 130 will be able to do anything in the education system available now and the one with the 80 will find it very tough going and probably won't be as motivated.
But if the one with the 130 got that result at the age of 6, it might not be that at the age of 60. A child of 6 getting a high result on an IQ test is assigned a high score BECAUSE of her age. I don't know the exact formula but in general a child of 6 getting the same score as a child of 12 and the 12 yo gets a rating of 100, the 6 yo would get a rating of 200 or so. I am pretty sure that's how it works. I don't know if it's totally linear like that but that is how it works. Maybe it would work out the 6 yo only gets a 160 or something, don't know the exact details.
But for adults it has to be different because the brain has stopped growing for the most part and now is relying on brain plasticity for getting smarter or more skills. So a 40 yo would probably do just as well as a 30 yo or a 50 yo since the playing field more or less evens out as you age. Of course when you get to be 80 or 90 you will lose out at least until science catches up with the loss of brain cells we all experience as we get older.