Beware of Intelligence Results Based on Common Verbal Tests

Abstract

Intelligence (IQ) tests are used to determine a child's intellectual abilities relative to his or her age group. Results are used to diagnose learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and giftedness; and to inform psychoeducational interventions and student education plans. The majority of tasks on intelligence tests require vision, such as visual pattern recognition. Therefore, psychologists typically use verbal sections, especially vocabulary tests, to assess students who have visual impairments.In a recent study (Morash & McKerracher, 2016), we investigated whether a common vocabulary test produced scores from children with visual impairments that were reliable. We found that reliability was not high enough to be used for high-stakes decisions, such as determining diagnoses or educational programming. Therefore, we do not recommend common verbal tests developed for sighted children be used with children who have visual impairments. Practitioners need to be wary and watchful of any diagnoses based on inappropriate intelligence measures.

A Haptic Nonverbal Cognitive Test for Children and Adolescents With Visual Impairment

“…They are skills that are typically solved in tasks such as Raven's Matrices, the WISC-IV and WAIS-IV Matrix reasoning and Figure Weight. Therefore, nonverbal cognitive abilities are left out of assessment altogether (Atkins et al, 2011; Morash & McKerracher, 2017).…”