- ITHACA, N.Y. -- The year
in which IQ is tested can make the difference between life and death for
a death row inmate. It also can determine the eligibility of children for
special services, adults' Social Security benefits and recruits' suitability
for certain military careers, according to a new study by Cornell University
researchers.
-
- That's because IQ scores tend to rise 5 to 25 points
in a single generation. This so-called "Flynn effect" is corrected
by toughening up the test every 15 to 20 years to reset the mean score
to 100. A score from a test taken at the end of one cycle can vary widely
from a score derived from a test taken at the beginning of the next cycle,
when the test is more difficult, says Stephen J. Ceci, professor of human
development at Cornell.
-
- Ceci and his current and former graduate students, Tomoe
Kanaya and Matthew Scullin, found, for example, that the number of children
recommended for special services for mild mental retardation tripled during
the first five years of a new test compared with the final five years of
an old test, despite the fact that there were no real changes in underlying
intelligence.
-
- "Our findings imply that some borderline death row
inmates or capital murder defendants who were not classified as mentally
retarded in childhood because they took an older version of an IQ test
might have qualified as retarded if they had taken a more recent test,"
Ceci says. "That's the difference between being sentenced to life
imprisonment versus lethal injection."
-
- The study is published in the October issue of American
Psychologist ( Vol. 58, No. 10, pp. 778-790), a journal of the American
Psychological Association. Co-author Kanaya is a fourth-year graduate student
in human development and is the first author. Scullin, Cornell Ph.D. '01,
is now an assistant professor of psychology at West Virginia University
and is the second author.
-
- The researchers analyzed IQ data from almost 9,000 school
psychologist special education assessments in nine school districts across
the country to document how the resetting of the IQ test influences mental
retardation diagnoses for several years after a new test is introduced.
-
- The consequences of taking intelligence tests at the
end or beginning of a test's cycle are most critical, however, when determining
whether a death row inmate is mentally competent. Of the 350 people executed
since 1990, 112 were known to have IQ scores of 70 or below (the cutoff
for mental retardation).
-
- Among children, the researchers found nearly a six-point
difference between those taking the two tests. "This variance can
make the difference between a child being diagnosed as mentally retarded
or not," Ceci says. "This study shows for the first time that
two children in the same classroom with the same cognitive ability could
be diagnosed differently simply because different test norms were used
for each child."
-
- The researchers report that perhaps tens of thousands
of children could be affected by these IQ trends over the course of their
school years, with far-reaching financial implications. "Our results
imply that millions of taxpayers' educational dollars may be misallocated
because students are being misdiagnosed every year that an IQ test ages,"
Ceci points out.
-
- A diagnosis of mental retardation also determines whether
a person is eligible for Social Security disability benefits. And the year
in which a military recruit takes an IQ test can determine whether he or
she is eligible for service or certain occupations and ranks.
-
- "Caution must be used when IQ scores are used to
base important financial, social or legal decisions. It may not be sufficient
to simply look to see if an IQ score is below some cutoff point,"
concludes Ceci. "The most important times to be particularly careful
are when the test is either at the beginning or the end of its cycle."
-
- The research was supported, in part, by a grant from
the Smith Richardson Foundation to Ceci.
-
- Editor's Note: The original news release can be found
here.
- http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Dec03/IQ.retardation.ssl.html
-
- http://www.sciencedaily.com/copyright.htm
- Copyright © 1995-2003
- ScienceDaily Magazine
-
- http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/states/texas/northeast/74
35828.htm
|
