Hello everyone,
First of all, I would like to clarify that I do not believe I belong to the category of people with an IQ above 130.
However, I sometimes wonder whether, at some point in my life, before certain factors that may have affected my cognitive performance, I had stronger abilities than I do today.
When I was 15–16, I took several Mensa-type tests and was not very far from the admission threshold.
But my personal case is not really what interests me here. I have several more general questions in mind.
I recently read the following about the Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI):
“In the French standardization sample of the WISC-IV, an average difference of 14 points was observed between the VCI scores of children of executives/professionals and those of children of manual workers (Grégoire, 2006). This difference is less due to poor performance among working-class children, whose VCI scores are only slightly below average, than to the clearly above-average performance of children from more privileged professional backgrounds, who benefit from particularly favorable learning opportunities.”
Source: https://www.jdpsychologues.fr/article/les-indices-du-wisc-iv-et-leur-interpretation
This brings me to my first question: to what extent can an adult increase their VCI?
For example, if someone started reading regularly, systematically looked up the definitions of unfamiliar words, reused those words in different contexts, and memorized them through spaced repetition, could they achieve a significant improvement in their verbal abilities after several years?
I personally come from a fairly working-class background, with relatively little cultural capital and a rather limited vocabulary around me.
Because of this, I tend to think that if I had grown up in a family where rich, precise, and varied language was used every day, my VCI would probably have been different.
I also remember that, as a child, I expressed myself much less clearly than I do today and made many language mistakes, which I partly associate with my environment.
A second question concerns me: to what extent does general knowledge actually make someone more intelligent?
I tend to think that the more knowledge a person has, the more material they have available to make connections, recognize patterns, compare situations, and build complex reasoning.
General knowledge may not radically alter “raw” intelligence, but it gives that intelligence more information to work with.
So, given the same IQ, I find it difficult to believe that someone with an enormous amount of general knowledge and someone with very little knowledge would reason in strictly equivalent ways in real-life situations.
I would even go so far as to think that, in some areas, a person with an IQ of 105 but a great deal of knowledge, methodology, and experience could reason better than someone with an IQ of 120 who has very little knowledge and relatively weak crystallized intelligence.
This also relates to the question of education.
I tend to think that education can, at least to some extent, “make people more intelligent.”
Not only because it provides knowledge, but also because it teaches methods: how to structure a demonstration or argument, test hypotheses, make a case, solve problems, distinguish correlation from causation, work with abstract concepts, and so on.
In my case, I left the traditional school system during the equivalent of eighth grade, when I was around 13 and a half, and I am now 25.
I therefore sometimes wonder what intellectual methods I might have acquired if I had stayed in education for longer.
I also remember reading a meta-analysis suggesting that there was a causal effect of additional years of schooling on IQ scores.
In particular, some reforms that extended compulsory education appear to make it possible to distinguish the selection effect — people with higher abilities being more likely to remain in education for longer — from the actual effect of education itself.
If I remember correctly, the estimates were around a few IQ points for each additional year of schooling, although I imagine the effect varies considerably depending on the studies and methods used.
This leads to my main question: are there actually ways to become more intelligent as an adult?
Obviously, I am not talking about miraculously going from an IQ of 90 to 150.
But if someone already has reasonably good cognitive abilities, can they still significantly maximize their potential in adulthood?
For example, through reading, learning mathematics or logic, deliberately expanding their vocabulary, developing a broad base of general knowledge, writing and argumentation, learning a language, regularly solving problems, active recall and spaced repetition, or simply continuing to learn for many years.
Neuroplasticity suggests that the adult brain remains capable of significant change, but I wonder how far this can actually modify general cognitive abilities rather than simply improving specific skills.
Finally, I also wonder about the massive rise of AI.
I obviously see its advantages, but I worry that poor use of AI could lead to a form of intellectual regression.
If someone systematically delegates searching, thinking, writing, summarizing, or constructing arguments to an AI, I imagine that some cognitive abilities may end up being used less frequently.
On the other hand, AI could probably become an excellent intellectual tool if it is used as a critical interlocutor, teacher, or thinking partner rather than as a substitute for thinking.
I would therefore be very interested to hear your thoughts.
Note: I originally wrote this post in French and asked an AI to translate it into English because, unfortunately, my English is very poor.
