* Understanding the Stats ( Descriptive Statistics and Psychological Testing - Stephen E. You might want to take a look at this LessWrong article which has a different graph, but one which is depressingly and scarily consistent. Translating between the different statistics (IQ, Z, T) Īge decline in fluid intelligence - around 0.6 IQ points per year And yes, I had to resort to pen and paper to work that out. Whatever my IQ was at age 26, it's now 23 points lower. It seems we lose about 0.6 IQ points per year from a high point when we're 26, a figure consistent with this Aberdeen/NHS study. It shows the sad story of someone who had an IQ of 120 at their mid-twenties peak (T-score 63) but was merely average at 60. What does the world of science have to say? It's not completely easy to find out, but after some digging I found the diagram below (from here) - where the T-scores on the vertical axis are rescaled IQ scores, as shown further down this post. Most older people have learned stuff over the decades and score rather better at crystallised intelligence (see the Wikipedia article for more on fluid and crystallized intelligence). Stupidity (can we still say that?) is really a decline or lack of fluid intelligence, the horsepower that lets you think abstractly and creatively solve new problems. With my 65th birthday in view, I am kinda worried that I'm getting stupider by the year.
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