London, most adults never have to take an IQ test. But tests are used in schools around the world to assess students' cognitive abilities, such as the Cognitive Ability Test (Cat). These tests are very similar to IQ tests. Taking them can be difficult for children. Possibly it is an even bigger pain for parents.
For a moment, put yourself in the shoes of a parent whose child's overall Cat score turns out to be below average. A multitude of unpleasant questions may come to mind. Does that mean they won't be able to get into a top university? And what about his career?
Some time after all this rumination, another thought may cross your mind. If performance on these tests is important, is it possible to improve it the same way we improve anything else, that is, through practice? Science reveals that, whether you are a child or an adult, it is possible to improve your performance on cognitive tests . That said, it won't make you smarter.
The long history of testing.
Standardized testing has a long history in education and is sometimes used by companies as part of hiring. The most notable example is probably the Chinese civil service exam. This extremely harsh assessment was introduced during the Sui dynasty (581-618 AD) to select candidates for the imperial bureaucracy, a highly prestigious job. Not much has changed. Like imperial China, today educational institutions around the world test students on a variety of skills, including both subject knowledge and cognitive abilities. Today in the US, SAT exams are used to filter applications to prestigious universities. Testing students in subjects like math, literacy, and science makes as much sense today as it did 14 centuries ago.
It is a way to determine if students are learning the skills necessary to be educated, responsible and productive citizens. Less obvious and more controversial is what school cognitive tests provide.
Cognitive tests are typically a set of tasks that assess a variety of intellectual abilities. For example, the latest version of the Cat measures four cognitive abilities: verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and spatial reasoning. People who do well on a particular cognitive task are more likely to do well on other cognitive tasks. Therefore, cognitive tasks are linked to each other and do not take advantage of the knowledge acquired. Therefore, human beings must possess a general mental capacity to solve unknown intellectual problems unrelated to a given topic. This is what we call intelligence.
Your score on a comprehensive cognitive test is usually called IQ. But IQ scores are only indicators of people's intelligence. Fundamentally, these scores are closely related to academic performance.
In fact, IQ is by far the best predictor of academic performance and an important predictor of career success. Therefore, cognitive tests are a useful and fairly reliable way to predict results in real life. Practice makes perfect, not intelligence
Performing well on cognitive tests is a sign of intelligence. Being intelligent is helpful in achieving life goals.
Performance on cognitive tests improves with practice. For example, one study found that simply taking a common nonverbal reasoning test twice increases scores by about the equivalent of eight IQ points. Therefore, a child who takes a test like the Cat for second time get better results than the first time. Several rounds of repeated testing produce similar or even larger effects on various cognitive tests, although a plateau is to be expected.
Likewise, adults who take the same intelligence test several times can improve their performance by learning the logic behind the questions. For this reason, standardized tests, like the one used by Mensa, are not publicly available.
Still, improving your score by practicing will not prove that your intelligence has increased. As you can see, cognitive tests are designed to measure intelligence by exposing people to new material. If you have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with a cognitive test beforehand, your test score will measure, to some extent, your experience in the test. performance of the test and not their intelligence. That is, practicing on a cognitive test essentially makes the test results uninterpretable.
To support the claim that training on particular cognitive tasks makes people more intelligent, it is necessary to demonstrate that people show improvements on cognitive and academic tasks unrelated to the trained tasks.
The idea of improving intelligence through training on cognitive tasks is at least a few decades old. However, the evidence points in the opposite direction. While people consistently improve on trained tasks (or similar tasks), this has no effect on unfamiliar tasks related to intelligence. Training your child to perform well on the Cat or any other cognitive test can have practical purposes. . For example, some primary schools appear to use the cat in their selection process. It can also be a boost to the child's confidence.
That said, intelligence is impossible to train.
Still, academic and work skills are not. Although high intelligence is a significant advantage, academic and professional success does not depend entirely on it. Hard work, social class, personality, curiosity, creativity, and even luck often have a great effect on people's lives. (The conversation) AMS
For a moment, put yourself in the shoes of a parent whose child's overall Cat score turns out to be below average. A multitude of unpleasant questions may come to mind. Does that mean they won't be able to get into a top university? And what about his career?
Some time after all this rumination, another thought may cross your mind. If performance on these tests is important, is it possible to improve it the same way we improve anything else, that is, through practice? Science reveals that, whether you are a child or an adult, it is possible to improve your performance on cognitive tests . That said, it won't make you smarter.
The long history of testing.
Standardized testing has a long history in education and is sometimes used by companies as part of hiring. The most notable example is probably the Chinese civil service exam. This extremely harsh assessment was introduced during the Sui dynasty (581-618 AD) to select candidates for the imperial bureaucracy, a highly prestigious job. Not much has changed. Like imperial China, today educational institutions around the world test students on a variety of skills, including both subject knowledge and cognitive abilities. Today in the US, SAT exams are used to filter applications to prestigious universities. Testing students in subjects like math, literacy, and science makes as much sense today as it did 14 centuries ago.
It is a way to determine if students are learning the skills necessary to be educated, responsible and productive citizens. Less obvious and more controversial is what school cognitive tests provide.
Cognitive tests are typically a set of tasks that assess a variety of intellectual abilities. For example, the latest version of the Cat measures four cognitive abilities: verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and spatial reasoning. People who do well on a particular cognitive task are more likely to do well on other cognitive tasks. Therefore, cognitive tasks are linked to each other and do not take advantage of the knowledge acquired. Therefore, human beings must possess a general mental capacity to solve unknown intellectual problems unrelated to a given topic. This is what we call intelligence.
Your score on a comprehensive cognitive test is usually called IQ. But IQ scores are only indicators of people's intelligence. Fundamentally, these scores are closely related to academic performance.
In fact, IQ is by far the best predictor of academic performance and an important predictor of career success. Therefore, cognitive tests are a useful and fairly reliable way to predict results in real life. Practice makes perfect, not intelligence
Performing well on cognitive tests is a sign of intelligence. Being intelligent is helpful in achieving life goals.
Performance on cognitive tests improves with practice. For example, one study found that simply taking a common nonverbal reasoning test twice increases scores by about the equivalent of eight IQ points. Therefore, a child who takes a test like the Cat for second time get better results than the first time. Several rounds of repeated testing produce similar or even larger effects on various cognitive tests, although a plateau is to be expected.
Likewise, adults who take the same intelligence test several times can improve their performance by learning the logic behind the questions. For this reason, standardized tests, like the one used by Mensa, are not publicly available.
Still, improving your score by practicing will not prove that your intelligence has increased. As you can see, cognitive tests are designed to measure intelligence by exposing people to new material. If you have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with a cognitive test beforehand, your test score will measure, to some extent, your experience in the test. performance of the test and not their intelligence. That is, practicing on a cognitive test essentially makes the test results uninterpretable.
To support the claim that training on particular cognitive tasks makes people more intelligent, it is necessary to demonstrate that people show improvements on cognitive and academic tasks unrelated to the trained tasks.
The idea of improving intelligence through training on cognitive tasks is at least a few decades old. However, the evidence points in the opposite direction. While people consistently improve on trained tasks (or similar tasks), this has no effect on unfamiliar tasks related to intelligence. Training your child to perform well on the Cat or any other cognitive test can have practical purposes. . For example, some primary schools appear to use the cat in their selection process. It can also be a boost to the child's confidence.
That said, intelligence is impossible to train.
Still, academic and work skills are not. Although high intelligence is a significant advantage, academic and professional success does not depend entirely on it. Hard work, social class, personality, curiosity, creativity, and even luck often have a great effect on people's lives. (The conversation) AMS
