Ellen-the-great

I checked this on google, but I didn't really know how to phrase it.
How low does ones IQ have to be for them to be declared to have mental retardation? I know its different everywhere, but whats about the average?

Ben

lin

Under seventy. But people get weird about calling that anymore. Words like genius and embecile and idiotr...once pysch terms, are now discouraged.
(The percent is not precise because it's just a percentile expression of a standard deviation.
Thing is, you meet people with seventy IQ's who aren't what people would call retarded. They just really dumb. But not like they need to have somebody taking care of them.

You didn't ask, but term IQ comes from the old Stanford Binet tests (TERRIBLE INSTRUMENTS) and refers tothe quotient between mental and chronological age. If a 4 year old is as smart as most 8 year olds, he's IQ 200. Other way around, IQ 50. Trouble is....how to you apply that to adults? Is a forty year old twice as smart as a twenty year old?

So the world standard these days are the Wechsler tests in which all scores are plotted and, like most natural ranges, fall onto a bell curve. By moving towards both ends from the "peak" in the middle (IQ 100) one standard statistical deviation at a time, we mark of limits they call normal, bright normal, etc. Much more valid terms than number scores.

Mensa is a club of people with measured IQ's higher than the third standard deviation. Which is like 2 percent. There is another club called Sigma Four for people at FOURTH standard deviation...top like .1 of the population.

Most people have 100 IQ, but say it's higher. 100 is not considered smart or cool.

Ron

IQ tests I came across had a great deal of arithmetic or logical tasks. So IQ test generally doesn’t show how smart you are but rather reflects mathematical kind of thinking. So a humanitarian person having weak calculating skills may be confused with a lower IQ score. I think 90 - 100 pints is considered average level.

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Hodge

I don't know if they even use IQ to determine mental retardation anymore, but it used to be anything under 70.

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Science

lin

Actually, mathematics is a purer form of sheer thinking ability than another really popular item on IQ tests...vocabulary. Straight learning. On the other hand, isn't intelligence another word for "information"?

THere are non-cultural instruments like the non-verbal Leiter scale. Seldom used. The Wechsler tests are often criticized for class and cultural bias, as well. A sample question: If a kid smaller than you tries to start a fight, what would you do. You get zero to two points. Only way to get two is to take positive action to prevent fight and future fights...tell a teacher. Punching the little bitch out you you don't have every other little mofo in the school ratpacking you is zero. Okay, you're in the Scarsdale school system that makes sense. You go to school in Oakland or Bed/Stuy and you;d be an idiot to walk off and tell a teacher.

A lot of the very simple tests (like for screening job applicants or prison inmates or GI's) are just math on one side, vocab on the other. (The WAIS takes over an hour to administer by a trained technician.)

So...yeah. If you mull this stuff over long enough you start coming down to, what is this intelligence we are trying to measure, anyway? Having spent a few years in the gig, I will say there are only two real definitions that make any sense at all.

One is Wechslers: The global ability of an organism to function within its environment. (I haven't been around this stuff in a long time, I might have misquoted) WOW, though, huh? So if your environment is the jungle or cellblock or hood, the intelligent thing to do is be tall, right?

The other definition is the only one that has no holes in it. Intelligence is the quality measured by intelligence tests.

Not as silly as it looks. What its measuring is the ability to take tests...like the SAT and shit. (I was a Merit Scholar with a C average...I'm good at taking tests and wpe my butt on IQ tests. I know some smart people who just don't have the test knack, or just hate them, so they don't test out.)

The problem is if you start taking the numbers as being meaningful. Wechsler himself warns against this. (Is a 20 speed bike better than a 15 speed bike, by the way?) Each test provides one "poll" where you stack up on the bell curve against everybody else who took the test, in a way.

I pay no attention to IQ scores at all...except that they are significant clinically. Comparing scores of WAIS subtests, for instance can give hard evidence of organic damage.

ALso, test don't always measure what the designer thought they would. The MMPI has a scale called M/F (No, not what you think, these are research scientists, not freudians) It was an attempt to measure masculine and feminine traits and possibly pinpoint homosexuality. (Would you prefer to collect antiques or root for the Raiders wearing black make up?) Not really a question on the test, by the way. TUrns out it is useless for measuring homosexual index (QQ?) But ended up having a lot to do with creativity and part of constellations of other scales that can get at schizoid types of indications. So go figure.

By the way, you can have a high IQ and still be an idiot. Scientologists are all way high IQ types. George Bush Sr and BIll Clinton have high IQ's. You can see more examples right here on this very forum. (Hey, right here on this very thread)

lin

90 t0 110 is average range, actually. 100 being right in the middle of the curve.

UNDEAD

I don't believe in measuring a person's intelligence, unless they aren't capable of taking care fof themselves. I have seen "retarded" people, who most people believ can't do anything other than grin stupidly, solve math problems that I couldn't even start to do. It was crazy becasue math is one of my easy classes

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Trevor Miller

I agree with Undead. Some people have to deal with what we might call "mental retardation" but no human being can understand how another's mind works. It may be that these people have deficiencies in the areas that our "normal" society considers necessary, while they are capable of things incomprehensible to us because of our deficiencies in comparison to their normal thinking. Scientists believe that we only use a small portion of our brains, so...what if these "retarded" beings can harness some of the other power of the brain, leaving them "stupid" by our standards. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe all mentally handicapped people are genius's, but I do think there is more to this than we can understand.

....Autistic savants???

Hodge

That's a myth. We use all of our brains. Whether we use them well is a matter of opinion.

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Shawn

That's called being an idiot-sevant... they can do one thing really well, but they lack life skills. Remember Rain Man?

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Rahvin

At the moment. I think that we will be able to, eventually (if we don't wipe each other out first...).

IQ tests only measure mathematical and logical capacity, and then only together. Someone can be a mathematical genius, but score low if they are unable to think in the logic demanded by the test, and vice-versa.

Hasn't autism got something to do with being an idiot-savant? (I could be wrong, though...)

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Shawn

I can't remember if autism is a social disorder or mental illness... but, no, an idiot-savant doesn't have much personality, they act on learned behavior and usually a few greeting phrases.

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mammamaia

Originally Posted by Rahvin
Hasn't autism got something to do with being an idiot-savant? (I could be wrong, though...)


'idiot savant' is just the old 'retired' term for what's now more politely called 'autistic savant'...

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Shawn

That's idiotic.

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