Does IQ last for life?

[David H]

Having just heard mensa took a 3 year old member, I wondered if children's IQ test results will remain the same for life, or may need a retake after 18 or so for an adult reading?

[kempie]

IQ is a subjective measurement which is notoriously inaccurate for testing extreme age ranges (i.e. very young and very old) and can fluctuate from test to test.

A person of 16 with an IQ of 138 has the intelligence of an *average* 22 year old.  The 3 year old with this IQ has the mental ability of a 4 year old. WOW!

It's possible in 4 years time this genius child might have the abilities of a 6 year old (an IQ now of 86) so would we call him sub-normal?

All a high IQ proves is that you're good at IQ tests.

[slimfandango]

Not sure what you mean by "subjective" here, please elaborate. For the subject? For the tester?
It's quite hard to define intelligence...the ability to do well at IQ tests? LOL. IQ tests will be a good measure, then...
But similarly, if you identify it as the kind of things that IQ tests measure...you're going to find a similar result.
Is it the capacity for problem solving? There's plenty of capacity for capitalizing on a poor 'hand'. Huge component of environmental factors, in my opinion.

[David H]

These are interesting discussions, but the only simple answer I require is if your IQ is taken before maturity, can you use that result for life or would it be better to retest later on?

I did get an answer from a psychologist once which made no sense, and my intuition tells me it should be fixed for life. Though environment can stunt your growth, I doubt it can increase what we were designed to reach either physically or mentally, and I'm sure a study has been taken to find this out ('hothousing').

[magicdice]

scientists tend to score higher on IQ tests than non-scientists of a similar intelligence level because of the way that the questions are asked, and how all they really reflect is logic