IQ Testing

I am thinking about getting my child’s IQ tested. What should I consider in deciding whether to pursue this?

Intelligence tests, or IQ tests, are of course standardized tests designed to measure intelligence. That’s easy enough to say. The real challenge is trying to define intelligence! Let’s not.

In 30 years as a child psychologist, I have administered IQ tests many, many times. I have often said that I sometimes have the feeling that most of the world is more impressed with IQ tests than are psychologists, who invented the darn things. Psychologists are very aware of the limitations of the tests and even the potential abuses of the information yielded by the tests.

My preference is to think of IQ scores as useful only for a small number of purposes. An IQ score is a pretty good predictor of how someone ought to perform in school. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t necessarily predict success in life, and it certainly doesn’t predict happiness, character, work ethic or other things that are important. Intelligence tests measure “slices”orsamplesofsomeaspectsofwhat we might think of as intelligence. But, as I suggest above, the concept of intelligence can be slippery. The ability to do traditional schoolwork is only one aspect of intelligence. There are many others. Most of us have heard about various theories of “multiple intelligence.” Social intelligence is probably the best known of these.

My practice when I did this kind of work was to not recommend any kind of testing unless I could be fairly confident that it would provide information that would truly be useful. A psychologist can often learn some useful things by interacting with a child in the structured context of testing. Arguably, one can learn things by noting how children perform in the different “subtests” that are part of the IQ tests we have available. But, for me, the decision on whether to recommend testing wasbasedonwhetherIcouldconfidently say that the child’s parent had a question about the child that the test results were likely to answer.

In your case, I would ask you what you hope to learn from the test. Very often, just reviewing how a child is functioning in school and his or her world is enough to know what it is you want to know. If there is a problem you are concerned about, don’t conclude that an IQ test is necessary or wise. Consult a professional about your concerns, and let the professional guide you in the steps needed to address your concern.