High Cognitive Minds

For many people, IQ is not only their measure of how smart they are, but of who they are.  I wouldn't deliberately pull out the props to anyone's ego, but when it comes right down to it, I've come to think that IQ is little more than a cultural construct. Years of reading the arguments pro and con intelligence testing, whether "g" does or does not really exist, etc.,  have forced me to the conclusion that the whole debate has little relevance to understanding intelligence. Even if we assume that IQ tests can be refined and tweaked until we are satisfied with their accuracy, the scores they provide are essentially meaningless, a kind of fantasy on which an entire industry and whole careers, are based. IQ scores serve as a rough guide to learning capacity, but that's about it.

After I learned about IQ and giftedness I was able to look back and recognize that I had taken an IQ test, probably in late elementary school. If anything came of it, I certainly wasn't told. Factoid 1. I eventually took a couple of IQ tests online, and one that I found in a bookstore, and consistently scored around 140. By that time, I knew that a weakness in any one area could bring down your overall score, and I had no illusions about my math abilities. How much should I have added to my scores to compensate for that weakness? Factoid 2. According to Leta Hollingworth, and supported by many researchers since, children with an IQ of about 160 or greater have trouble relating to and communicating with other children. By this measure, my IQ should be at least 160. Factoid 3. According to my husband, whose official score was 170, I was just as intelligent as he was. Not exactly an objective judgement, but it's worth throwing into the mix.

The problem is that, after I've observed and analyzed my mind, its strengths and weaknesses, and the ways in which I use it, I can't find any relationship or correlation with IQ, either at the lower end or the higher end. It's much more fundamental than the popular argument that one number can't represent a person's intelligence.  It's the difference between measurement and description.  If I took an official IQ test tomorrow and found that my IQ was 200, it still wouldn't tell me anything of value about my cognitive traits and abilities. Neither would a score of 125.

When researchers discuss creativity these days, they may start with statistics, but eventually have to move into unquantifiable description. They know that numbers tell us nothing about why Richard Feynman, with an IQ of 125, won a Nobel prize for a major contribution to physics and Marilyn vos Savant, with an IQ of 200, has contributed nothing but a syndicated answers column.