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Is there a 'teaching the test' element to this? Does more exposure to education increase your ability to take a standardized test?


Of course. IQ tests measures nothing more than the ability to pass an IQ test, which is proxied by a lot of things such as western culture, education, propensity to cram tests, etc.


> IQ tests measures nothing more than the ability to pass an IQ test

Incorrect, IQ is a composite measure correlated with fluid reasoning, crystallized knowledge, working memory, processing speed, and spatial ability. It's true that you can't naively use IQ to compare two diverse groups, but you can correct for this with a large enough sample of any two groups. This idea that it's biased towards western culture or education is vastly overblown.


We don't know.


We do know that response to difficulty influences performance in iq testing: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10990577/

This study found that adding or removing rewards for performing well can pretty dramatically impact performance.

"it is unclear to what extent the positive manifold reported in intelligence research since Spearman (1904) might be explained not through a shared component of intellectual capacity, but through a shared component of effort or time investment in testing tasks."

So, yes, we don't know, but the ways we don't know should also include "we don't know if iq testing is even measuring intelligence rather than stick-to-it-ness".


I mean I agree with that too! I would just bucket all this under "we don't know". :)


We do know that practice taking tests makes you better at taking tests. Kids get tutored in that manner every day, and it works.


Sorry, you're right, I was reading "standardized test" as a rhetorical claim about IQ tests in particular. (I also believe those are trainable, but I'm much less certain of the science).


Define "more exposure to education". ;)

Also, NCBLA standardized testing has demonstrably ruined education in America.



NCLBA I'm dyslexic, sue me and crucify me, your majesty.


More exposure to upper middle-class culture increases ones ability to take IQ tests.


I don't think golf and tennis increases IQ


He's saying that low-class culture does not include quality education or quality influencers. Note that I'm not using influencer in the traditional sense here; I'm referring to anyone - dads, friends, acquaintances - who influences the child.


What I'm saying is that IQ tests specifically contain questions on esoteric matters that either don't matter or can't be accessed below a certain income.


I don't think this is true. It's an anti-goal of "modern" IQ tests (with a generous definition of "modern").


Gluten reduces IQ (jk)


Lots of good reason to believe nutrition does.




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