IQ Isn't Set In Stone, Suggests Study That Finds Big Jumps, Dips
In Teens For as long as there's been an IQ test, there's been
controversy over what it measures. Do IQ scores capture a
person's intellectual capacity, which supposedly remains stable
over time? Or is the Intelligent Quotient exam really an
achievement test — similar to the S.A.T. — that's subject to
fluctuations in scores depending on how well a student has
prepared? The findings of a new study add evidence to the latter
theory: IQ seems to be a gauge of acquired knowledge that
progresses in fits and starts. In this week's journal Nature,
researchers at University College London report documenting
significant fluctuations in the IQs of a group of British
teenagers. The researchers tested 33 healthy adolescents between
the ages of 12 and 16 years. They repeated the tests four years
later and found that some teens improved their scores by as much
as 20 points on the standardized IQ scale. "We were very
surprised," researcher Cathy Price, who led