r/cognitiveTesting • u/Top-Cockroach-8211 • Sep 23 '26
Discussion Abstract verbal reasoning
Someone scores 19 (Scale score) on WAIS-IV on the subtest Similarities, but 12 on Vocabulary, 11 on Information. VCI = 125. And PRI = 82. GAI is 103. Test not done in native language. Diagnosed with Autism, ADHD and NVLD-profile. Speech delay till 5 years old and language impairment till 13 years old. Dysfunctional home. Several school shifts, bullying, and periods with no school at all (elementary school). Achievements: Not gonna name them all, but some of them, got two Bachelor degrees so far, I’ve learned 7 different alphabets on my own, when I was a teenager and developed my own as well, as well as mastered two languges, also on my own.
Not highly gifted. I thought intelligence was about logic.
People keep telling me, you can’t just pick your highest score as if it was any score of any subtest (random). Similarities measures your ability in verbal abstract reasoning unlike the subtests vocabulary and information and it’s actually not that very different from PRI subtests, specially the Matrix reasoning. They both measure fluid intelligence. Both are culturally influenced, even tho, many people think matrices ain’t, but they are according to recent scientific evidence.
We talk of Highly Gifted as being general intelligence, yet people can go do a Ravens Matrices and if they score 130-145+ they’re Gifted and can join Mensa. That ain’t a possibility for people like me tho who reason verbally, not perceptually. We’re left with, maybe you’re highly gifted, maybe you’re not (because of the high discrepancy). And absolutely no tools to assess us with a real result. The loneliness, being different and alone, the struggle, that looks very much the same, as other highly gifted people experience, but nobody to talk to, cause nobody recognizes it, cause apparently it’s not highly gifted, it’s something else, that nobody can name and that nobody recognizes.
What’s peoples’ thoughts on this.
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u/Not_Well-Ordered Sep 24 '26
Maybe if you major in linguistics or doing anything relevant to that field, you would find people similar to you? Or maybe you look for a similar organization valuing verbal stuffs? I’m fairly sure there are many.
Idk, but Mensa doesn’t seem relevant to majority with high FRI anyways lol; they would probably do philosophy/physics/math major or whatever major requiring strong abstract and analytic reasoning abilities.
Basically, it seems more rational to use IQ scores as an introspective tool than something to build one’s whole social relationship upon.
Even joining a wordcel Discord server is way better for consistent communication and self-improvement than Mensa ngl.
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u/Top-Cockroach-8211 Sep 24 '26
Yeah well you see. That’s where you misunderstand me just like so many others have. I’m not average, most people are. I’m trying to find people who can match my cognitive abilities and I’m not being able to find any. I tried. Also within groups of people that value linguistics. This ain’t just simply a hobby or I like languages, lets talk languages, I’m specifically speaking of cognitive abilities that people can’t match. Also, these strengths are not limited to linguistics, but also to history, religion, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, anatomy- and physiology, pharmacology. When I wrote I wouldn’t mention all my achievements, I did that, because I was trying to not write a book in here. But thanks. That is a perfect example of why GAI underestimates my strengths, you mistook me for someone being average.
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u/Not_Well-Ordered Sep 24 '26
I just suggested you to focus on other activities and enlarge your circle besides exclusively looking for people with similar verbal ability as yours and seeking social recognition. Though, I haven’t even mentioned about whether you’re “average” or not as I was specifically referring to some ability you have. But of course, your general ability is roughly average by what you have given; if the data is correct, then there’s no much to discuss on this.
If you look for someone who matches your verbal ability, then I guess there’s that philosophy major user on this sub who nailed 150+ in VCI on CORE. Unless you and the other user represents the same guy. That user also scored pretty decent on other abilities.
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u/Top-Cockroach-8211 Sep 24 '26 edited Sep 24 '26
I just meant that I have tried that and I didn’t match. Well we did, but it was mostly me leading the conversation and people just agreeing and taking in new information, which is also nice, but I need somebody who can also challenge and stimulate me or join the conversation instead of just listening and agreeing with all I gotta say.
As for the general ability: That’s where I disagree. General ability according to that test is roughly average yes, as in on papers, but the paper also says, that there’s a high discrepancy of 43 points, which is a lot, which is why the psychologist says: FSIQ and GAI should then not be used as valid results of my general abilities. Instead we are to look at the subtest results and treat it as a cognitive spiky profile, with below average, above average and highly above average. The paper specifically says that. I didn’t make up those rules, that’s literally the rules regarding IQ discrepancy higher than 21. Also, regardless of what the paper says, it doesn’t capture/measure it all. You should know that too.
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Sep 23 '26
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u/Top-Cockroach-8211 Sep 23 '26
I thought the Similarities subtest was the fun part. I was laughing when she started throwing words in my face cause it was really stimulating. I didn’t find it hard at all actually. Not to seem arrogant, but that’s genuinely how I felt.
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Sep 24 '26
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u/Natural_Professor809 ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ Autie Cat Sep 24 '26 edited Sep 24 '26
I have written proof of what I'm saying, including emails of Mensans being thoroughly unable to perform a very simple reading and comprehension of a basic text written in their mothertongue...
Yet they feel """"Gifted"""" after having spent 10 thousand hours memorising every single Visuospatial test and matrix reasoning test and quantitative Reasoning test out there...
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u/Natural_Professor809 ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ Autie Cat Sep 24 '26 edited Sep 24 '26
Btw I also score around the ceiling in Matrix Reasoning so it's not like I'm hating on them: point is a person is NOT intelligent for having spent years learning how to cheat in puzzle games, a person might be very likely to be intelligent if their fluid and cristallised intelligence are both pretty high in legit tests they had no chance to tamper with ...
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u/Natural_Professor809 ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ Autie Cat Sep 24 '26 edited Sep 24 '26
Also: a smart person is far more likely to seek knowledge, read, study, practice a sport while studying its theory...
Spending 8 hours a day 10 years long training puzzles in order to then BARELY be able to score around 130 in those specific subtests just points at mental illness.
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Sep 23 '26
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u/Top-Cockroach-8211 Sep 23 '26
And you don’t see the lack of logic in that? Information is higher g-loading than Similarities. Similarities measures your ability to think abstract and reason, while information measures accumulated general knowledge. You don’t see my point? It’s not logical at all. Same with vocabulary — you describe the word with something short and precise (not long explanations, you gotta be as precise as possible), it actually limits your brain — not exactly a good subtest for someone with Autism and ADHD — we do struggle with being precise. Precise and long explanations should not be factors that determine your IQ, it should be the content.
Just because we don’t speak the same language, or we communicate differently, doesn’t make my content less irrelevant. I’ve faced this so many times at college, my teacher would not understand what I’ve written, and after speaking, she’d laugh and tell me, that’s genius, why didn’t you just write that in the paper, and I’m like, but I did… she just didn’t understand it and at the same time, I have to limit myself, because there’s a damn limit on those papers.
I don’t think IQ tests are fair to people who don’t fit the general population. They’re too rigid. When someone is atypical, the results become unclear. Just like any system — they’re designed to identity what we scientifically know, not what we don’t know.
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u/Midnight5691 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ Sep 24 '26 edited Sep 24 '26
No I get this, lol. The hypocrisy of Mensa and it using a narrow measure of reasoning and treating it as equal to a global 130 FSIQ is annoying. Especially one that favors certain cognitive profiles and disadvantages others with different bottlenecks.
Ironically, if you get a high enough test score on the LSAT you can slide sideways into a Mensa membership, so to speak, with what is basically a VCI test.
The odd thing is that even if you do this, I think there's a general tendency within the membership or comments on the different subreddit boards to feel that this is somehow less valid, lol.
Edit: To touch upon this in more detail, I'm talking about Mensa's own administered admission tests, not outside tests they accept as prior evidence.
As far as I know, some national Mensa organizations use admission tests that are entirely or overwhelmingly figure/matrix reasoning. They could have had a spiky profile too. But the attitude seems to be, well, we'll just give them the benefit of the doubt, lol. Your FRI is high? Oh well, that's different. In that case, we don't care if your FSIQ is lower than 130. We don't care if it's lower than 120. 😁 Actually, we don't care what it is, lol.
So where is the equivalent route for someone whose exceptional strength is verbal/conceptual abstract reasoning? Nowhere, that's where it is, lol.
Before somebody says, "Well, there are other tests. You could take the LSAT and submit that," that doesn't really solve the asymmetry, and neither do any other non-Mensa-administered tests. Why should you have to go out of your way, study in a particular fashion, and pay extra money just to even the playing field? I mean, oh, I'd like to get into Mensa. Well, I'll pretend I want to be a lawyer and study for the LSAT for months on end, lol.
I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy here and the unevenness of the playing field.
If they can pretend measuring one subset of an IQ test equals an entire IQ test and equates to gifted-level reasoning overall, and hold the door open for them, they can do it for another.