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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]...  But the WPPSI is notoriously unreliable as a predictor of IQ.  NurtureShock, anyone?[/quote]
After reading that section of NurtureShock, I actually got interested enough in the subject to read all the scientific journal articles the book cited.  Those articles do say that IQ test scores of young children vary pretty significantly over time.  However, they actually don't say the tests themselves are unreliable.  What they really say is that children's development is moving in fits and starts at those young ages, and the performance of young children can be affected dramatically by a wide variety of factors.  A lot of research in the area suggests that if a child is properly tested multiple times over a span of several weeks -- and those results prove consistent -- then they can be treated as pretty highly reliable.

I know that deeper nuanced view is not what Bronson and his co-author pushed in NurtureShock.  They focused instead on the unreliability angle.  I suspect that was because it fit with their theme of trying to upend conventional thinking.  The message that "Tests are sort of reliable, if done carefully!" isn't a recipe for selling books to parents at Barnes & Noble.

So I'm not really disagreeing with your primary point, PP, but rather just discouraging people from taking it too far.[/quote]

Early WPPSI scores aren't stable and have limited predictive value. You can't test the kid multiple time over a span of several weeks, even if that improves the predictive value of the scores. WPPSI doesn't work that way. Later WISC scores have much more predictive value. It's not as simple as saying that tests are "reliable" or "unreliable." The bottom line is that parents should take early scores with a grain of salt and take later scores more seriously.. but not too seriously.[/quote]

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