Re: Mensa, online IQ test

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Aug 16 1999 - 06:34:41 MDT


"Clint O'Dell" <clintodell@hotmail.com> writes:

> What I don't understand though is that this test is much different than the
> ones I took between 13 and 15. I was institutionalized at the time and
> maybe those IQ tests differ because of that.
> I had to recite lists of numbers, letters, names, and groups of the same. I
> had to solve puzzles, and make up stories.
> The wouldn't tell me the scores but instead told me they were off the chart.
> Whatever that means.
>
> Can somebody explain to me a distinction from the IQ tests I took at the
> institutions and the one I just took on-line?

The online test is most likely highly abbreviated in the first place,
and just the core IQ test. The test battery you mention above likely
includes a lot of other stuff, it sounds a bit like the WAIS test plus
some extras; that test studies overall cognitive functioning and can
be used to check certain aspects of personality etc. If it was WAIS,
then the result isn't a single score, but a whole list of traits
corresponding to memory, spatial ability, understanding of the world,
personality etc. It is likely more revealing than a single score, but
harder to interpret. Also, tests such as WAIS are mainly used to
diagnose problems, not evaluate healthy or bright people, they tend to
answer so well that many tests can't distinguish them.

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