Verbal/Performance Gap in Childhood

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You guys probably know I don't put much stock in IQ tests, but the other day I talked to my grandpa about an IQ test I had when I was little, maybe ten years old or so. That was the WISC; the one I took as an adult was the WAIS. They use the same standard deviation so they're comparable.

As a kid, I scored within six points of my adult score on the Verbal scale, so it seems my abilities to do those tasks have been pretty much constant.

However, today I have a Verbal/Performance gap of only 9 points; the really striking gap is between full-scale and working memory. When I was a child, however, my Verbal/Performance gap was apparently huge--upwards of twenty points, though my grandfather didn't remember the exact number--to the point that my grandpa apparently talked to his psychology professors about it to try to figure out what it meant.

I remember taking the test and doing my best on it, and being confused by some of the subtests which I can only assume must have been the Performance subtests. And now I'm wondering: Why am I so much better at those tasks than I used to be when I was smaller?

What's changed since then?
--I've learned to play video games which require spatial reasoning and quick thinking.
--I've learned to ride a bike and drive a car.
--I've learned to clean and organize a room.

I wonder if maybe this kind of thing--learning things, despite low areas of actual talent in them--might have closed that Verbal/Performance gap for me. If so, maybe I have the ability to generalize skills in areas where I'm not particularly talented. That might mean that people with similar gaps could also take advantage of "training"--like how playing Tetris probably helped me learn to drive a car better, or how learning to organize a room probably helped me learn to draw better flowcharts.

What degree of generalization have you observed? When you learned something new, were you able to apply it to something it wasn't related to, or did you have to learn everything separately?

I don't know if it counts or not, but I've been able to apply things I've learned in doing textile arts to other forms of textile arts. But that's all string and string and more string so it probably doesn't count for what you're talking about.

Yes, the gap between my VIQ and PIQ has gotten smaller over the years, but still remains. Why has it decreased? I'd say at least two things come to mind. I have always been anxious around new people. Having someone administer a test that I don't know is an added stress to situation. As a kid, I would zone out and not pay attention to the instructions. As an adult, I could overcome that anxiety to a certain extent, though I still think it influences the results. The second thing that comes to mind is just how much in my life that I have had to self teach myself. Things that other people are normally shown passively, I've had to be creative and resourceful to learn for myself. I think this improves my mental flexibility and performance capabilities.

Hmm, I've played computer games a *lot* over the years, but I don't think it's changed my IQ gap much.

I've only had one IQ test, though, about 10 years ago, and the gap was 35 points (favoring VIQ). I don't have an earlier IQ test to compare to, but my SAT scores showed the same pattern: 94%-ile verbal, ~70%-ile math. And the time I did all those hours of gaming was in between. Of course, I don't know how well (or how exactly) SAT and IQ scores correlate.

IIRC, I had such a gap when I was little. On what test, I do not recall, nor the precise scores, nor my precise age.

Callista wrote:

You place about as much stock in them as I do. Which is to say....very little at all. Still.....none of us have any better clinical/objective indications of our cognition, so I have to pay some attention to my results and I do think my own are fairly accurate in terms of my skills in the real world. Especially when it comes to my poor mechanical/visual-spatial reasoning which is probably best reflected on WAIS performance subtests like block design, object assembly and visual puzzles. These subtests have yielded my lowest scores on all the WAIS subtests.





I guess this isn't unusual. Considering the WISC is normed for kids and the WAIS normed for adults, there is nothing amiss here probably. It gets odd when one's verbal scores as an adult vary 21 points in five years. Still....the explanation for this seems pretty self-evident to me considering what the verbal IQ is supposed to indicate. An individual's VIQ score largely depends on the education they've received...both formal and/or informal.

My VIQ at 23 was only 104. After 2 years of college and alot more "recreational" reading on my part....it jumped up to 125 at 28. Then it was 127 three years later and after that I scored 119 on another WAIS. In 2006....it was 155 and on my most recent test....it was 136. The thing that seems strange to me is that I obtained a full scale score of 120 on my first IQ test in 9th grade.

Now i'm almost certain the gap between VIQ and PIQ was present on that test too....but nothing was said about it. I only received the full scale score and I don't even remember if this was a Wechschler test, a Stanford-Binet, or what. Considering the probable between VIQ/PIQ on that one though, i'm pretty sure it wasn't my PIQ making any significant contribution to my FSIQ score. In other words....I suspect my verbal IQ was quite high (possibly in the 130's or 140's) on that test as i've never obtained a PIQ score higher than 111.




Hmmm....that's pretty small compared to my own gaps which have never been smaller than 19 points. It was 57 points on the WAIS-IV I took in June. I can't really explain the apparent decrease in your own gap. I think your own explanations are as good as any. Still...I might add that extraneous factors seem to have a substantial influence on PIQ scores as well. I think it's quite subject to mood, stress levels, anxiety, boredom, depression, how tired one is, etc....For example...I can't think of any good reason/s (aside from things like these) why my PIQ/POI score in 2006 was 111 and 79 in 2010.


One notable difference is that I was far less depressed in 2006 than I was in June of this year when I took most recent WAIS and obtained a score of 79 on[/quote] the POI. I don't really think anything else has changed dramatically since then which would offer a reason for this major decrease in my PIQ/POI score.






The funny thing is....in spite of my own PIQ scores and visual-spatial deficits which are probably much worse than your own, i've never had a problem riding a bike, driving a car or cleaning/organizing a room. I really don't even have a big problem with parellel parking and even many NT's seem to epic fail at that. Rather....I think my visual-spatial/nonverbal deficits manifest in poor mechanical reasoning, problems with spatial math like geometry, etc....I couldn't even tell how many sides a cube has by trying to visualize one in my head. I had to actually LOOK at a cube in order to do that.


I'm wondering how you do with mechanical tasks if you don't mind sharing a little bit about that. Personally speaking....i'm good for screwing a lightbulbs and that's about it. This is a slight exaggeration, but seriously, i'm pretty inept when it comes to anything mechanical. I have trouble tying knots and I don't think I could tie a proper knot which would secure a boat to a dock or something. Even if somebody showed me how....my poor visual memory would probably prevent me from remembering how to do it on my own. This doesn't seem that unusual even among NT's though.

My grandfather is basically as bad as me when it comes to anything mechanical. He received top honors grades in both high school and university. He has an impeccable vocabulary and can write, read and speak French. Also...he is pretty good at math (far better than I am) but he claimed he struggled with geometry in university. Still....he's pretty lost when it comes to anything mechanical.

My philosophy professor in college was probably even worse than me at mechanical skills and he seemed pretty NT to me. Once he told us that he put water in HIS OIL TANK when his car was over-heating. He thought the oil tank was the radiator in other words. I wouldn't made that mistake when I was eight years-old or something. This man had a PhD in philosophy and didn't even know the difference between his oil tank and his radiator. Anyway....i've never played enough video games to know if I really have any appreciable skills in that area or not.





I think that it's entirely possible, but I also think it may be nothing more than the sort of extraneous factors I mentioned. I think anything can improve with practice/training, so I wouldn't be surprised if your "training" in Tetris and learning how to organize a room helped you in other areas. I only wish I knew what sort of training would help to improve my mechanical and overall visual-spatial skills.





I'm not sure I can answer this. It seems like it's easier to play some musical instruments since I learned how to play guitar (badly), but those are two closely-related. My overall mechanical reasoning seems to improve when i'm constantly being asked to perform tasks which have some mechanical reasoning componant, but my overall visual-spatial skills never seem to improve. The same would be true for my motor skills.


A few interesting, though possibly untrue, things i've heard about VIQ/PIQ gaps....at least when it comes to gaps favoring VIQ.

Disproportionately speaking.....Ashkenazi jews supposedly perform better on verbal IQ tests than they do on performance ones. I am 1/4 Ashkenazi jewish and that part of my heritage is from the grandfather (maternal) I mentioned. If this has any validity, I would think it might have something to do with academics and "book-learning" receiving a high priority in jewish culture. I must admit.....I don't know all that many jewish people who work with their hands, so perhaps some of the nonverbal aspects of "intelligence" are a bit neglected/undervalued in jewish culture.

I hope no one will accuse me of racism here. I don't believe there's any biological differences between the "races" (I don't much believe in the concept of race as it is) which result in differing performance on IQ tests or something. Still...I do believe cultural differences and norms may result in some.



Also.....one of the leading NLD researchers (I don't recall who exactly....maybe Rourke or the late Sue Thompson) claimed that college/uni grads are more likely to display a VIQ/PIQ (again...in favor of VIQ) gap when compared to non-grads. If this is true...what else can explain this aside from study and effort in academic tasks which are primarily verbally-loaded?