# Visual test of IQ



## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

An interesting new study that links visual perception to IQ.


Smart People Have Duller Senses... On Purpose [Video IQ Test] : Science/Tech : Medical Daily


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## Tea Path (Sep 5, 2012)

I dislike the title. I don't agree that IQ = intelligence. The images were interesting.


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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

Tea Path said:


> I dislike the title. I don't agree that IQ = intelligence. The images were interesting.



What I find interesting is that is suggests the difference between S and N.


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## Tea Path (Sep 5, 2012)

azdahak said:


> What I find interesting is that is suggests the difference between S and N.


hmm, missed that. How so? Long = S, short = N? or vice versa? I felt like at the fast I was about even on both.


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## chimeric (Oct 15, 2011)

I'd be curious how this relates to folks on the autistic spectrum.


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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

chimeric said:


> I'd be curious how this relates to folks on the autistic spectrum.



There was another study recently that showed autistic children are better at detecting fast moving objects. Let me see if I can track it down….


Enhanced motion perception in autism may point to an underlying cause of the disorder



So the implication here is that the autistic brain doesn't have a proper dampening threshold…..like they never stop noticing the clock ticking.


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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

Tea Path said:


> hmm, missed that. How so? Long = S, short = N? or vice versa? I felt like at the fast I was about even on both.


It's impossible to really tell with a proper test and more data on the experimental setup. For instance…screen size…distant from the computer monitor…etc….all those things will change the apparent size of the image.

If I put the video full screen and sit back about two feet, I have difficulty telling what's going on in the large fields and the small fields are always clear, even when they're fast.



The study doesn't suggest it, but it seems a natural fit to the usual way S vs N is described in MBTI.

Namely that S is more "in tune" with the physical world….for instance…S types are usually better athletes. 

They're correlating this to IQ which also correlates to N. 

But they're directly measuring visual perception which seems closer in nature to a measurement of N vs S.

I'll write the authors of the paper and ask them if they've considered cognitive models like the Big 5.


It would be interesting if a test like this can predict with some degree of accuracy if you're an N or an S.


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## Life.Is.A.Game (Nov 5, 2010)




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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

Life.Is.A.Game said:


>



Care to elaborate?

The study has a 70% correlation rate. That's actually highly accurate for these types of things.


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## Life.Is.A.Game (Nov 5, 2010)

azdahak said:


> Care to elaborate?
> 
> The study has a 70% correlation rate. That's actually highly accurate for these types of things.


I just don't agree with any test that measure someone's "intelligence". Second of all, these tests are only accurate for a while and then they change. Sensors might be "intelligent" for a while until they decide to change the tests around.

Everything is relative, you can't really measure intelligence... it just doesn't make sense to me.


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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

Life.Is.A.Game said:


> I just don't agree with any test that measure someone's "intelligence". Second of all, these tests are only accurate for a while and then they change. Sensors might be "intelligent" for a while until they decide to change the tests around.
> 
> Everything is relative, you can't really measure intelligence... it just doesn't make sense to me.


Yeah, of course. But the paper doesn't talk about intelligence, which is an ill-defined term.

It correlates visual perception to IQ. And IQ correlates to N.

IQ test are actually highly reliable, measuring whatever it is they measure.

The authors point out that this test, once it's. perception test, doesn't suffer from the bias of a language based IQ test.

That applies equally to MBTI tests.

people like to do all this "visual typing" in socionics. This looks like an objective measurement.


The language of the popular article is of course dumb....but not everyone has access to the paper, or the ability to interpret it. 

Smart people don't have "duller" senses. The paper suggests there is a essentially a perceptual filter, and the other paper suggests this may be a bit too "loose" in autistics.


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## bellisaurius (Jan 18, 2012)

azdahak said:


> An interesting new study that links visual perception to IQ.
> 
> 
> Smart People Have Duller Senses... On Purpose [Video IQ Test] : Science/Tech : Medical Daily


I thought the more interesting part of this test was it potentially allows for culture blind IQ testing. 

Of course, that's not assuming there's some other correlation in effect here like smart people play more video games and therefore have better filtering mechanisms in their visual senses, or something like that. 

Either way, I've really been hoping people would start trying to look at stuff like this more laterally; and this one doesn't disappoint.


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## merlin89 (Mar 10, 2013)

I just dont seem to see the connection between intelligence and recognizing the movement direction... Just another specific test to test specific thing like we dont have enough of these tests already... What is it for ? Recognizing the direction of movement... Seriously... If this describes the intelligence and modern science, then I guess the "intelligence" of our population and science is really low...


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## Life.Is.A.Game (Nov 5, 2010)

azdahak said:


> IQ test are actually highly reliable, measuring whatever it is they measure.


How can you say something is highly reliable if you don't know what it measures? 

How do you know IQ tests are highly reliable?

How do you know that this article is reliable?


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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

merlin89 said:


> I just dont seem to see the connection between intelligence and recognizing the movement direction... Just another specific test to test specific thing like we dont have enough of these tests already... What is it for ? Recognizing the direction of movement... Seriously... If this describes the intelligence and modern science, then I guess the "intelligence" of our population and science is really low...



If the connection between the two were obvious, then it wouldn't be a new discovery. And besides, the study has nothing to do with measuring "intelligence".

The study simply shows a high correlation between scores on IQ tests and perception of motion in the test patterns.

The connection that you're not seeing is one of cognitive processing of visual stimuli. This study and others like it, are making links between the ability to process movement in the visual field with other cognitive processes. For instance, IQ tests often have a spatial reasoning component. It's plausible that this simple test is predictive of performance on spatial tasks in typical IQ tests.


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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

Life.Is.A.Game said:


> How can you say something is highly reliable if you don't know what it measures?
> 
> How do you know IQ tests are highly reliable?
> 
> How do you know that this article is reliable?




Easily. A test is reliable if it always returns the same score (up to some error) every time it's applied. For instance, the first investigators of atomic structure didn't really understand what they were measuring, but they measured masses and charges and deflections etc. etc. anyway and got data. Similarly an IQ test measures your responses to questions. In the same way that that set of numbers representing masses and charges etc. eventually led scientists to deduce atomic structure, IQ tests give us data, albeit crude, about how the brain works. This is precisely why pure physical response tests (like this one) are interesting. They offer a more direct measurement of the processing nature of the brain, without going through the middleman of language, with all its cultural biases. 

IQ tests measure IQ. It's well established in the literature that IQ tests are fairly stable. For instance, it's doubtful you would score 120 on an IQ test, and then a week later suddenly score a 140 (assuming of course you were in the same physical condition).

As to whether the paper is reliable or not (I didn't read the popular article). Well, I take it with the same skepticism I take all scientific results -- especially those in neuroscience. But the experiment is rather straightforward and supported by previous work, so I think they are measuring something real. Of course, more research will either show this to be wrong, or support it.


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## StephMC (Jan 25, 2011)

azdahak said:


> The study doesn't suggest it, but it seems a natural fit to the usual way S vs N is described in MBTI.
> 
> Namely that S is more "in tune" with the physical world….for instance…S types are usually better athletes.
> 
> ...


It's a good theory to start with, but you really won't know what kind of outcome you're going to get. Do we really know why IQ is correlated to N -- _really_? Do we know why IQ is correlated to this test? Seems like there could be a whole hell of a lot of confounding variables there until it's researched more. Heck, if it turns out you were right, and this was a better predictor of "IQ" (as you said, for whatever it is that it measures -- I'll just call it iqtelligence) and then this new test _also_ could more accurately predict N, we still wouldn't be any closer to why there's a correlation at all -- at least not at first. And it's the _why_ I care about, though I do find value in more accurate identifiers.

And, I'm sure you've heard this many times before: when they tried to find the N correlation with IQ, did they really know those people were N? What is "N"? N is pretty meaningless. Ni and Ne are very different creatures. Saying N in terms of MBTI type (xNxx) is pretty nondescript. At a technical level, you have more in common with an ESFJ than an INTJ. So how about the correlation between IQ and Ni? And IQ and Ne? And you referenced this article (as far as I can tell) because you saw a connection between visual perception and "N vs. S". Honestly, I would think Ni would be more prone to filter out visual data than Ne, and perhaps therefore Se/Ni users. So if it's really Ni that is the indicator here, does that mean _Ni_ is actually what's highly correlated with IQ, not "N"? And if _that's_ the case, would Se/Ni be higher scorers than Ne? If they were only measuring S vs. N in that IQ study, it's possible Ne was lowering the "N" correlation and Si/Ne the "S" correlation (the Si population is a good bit larger than the Se population). 

Obviously that's just conjecture. But all I really wanted to point out, is "N vs. S" is pretty ridiculous. I can't take any study looking for "N vs. S" correlations seriously -- because individual functions could end up being confounding variables. Look at the functions, then I'll consider.


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