Living With Live Wires

The main ideas of a recent article:

“But the two tasks I’ve described are a real test for children, developed in Switzerland. They are phenomenally accurate at predicting full-scale intelligence scores. On 5- and 6-year-old kids, this simple test is virtually synonymous with a 90-minute intelligence test of their full cognitive capacities; the two tests have a 99 percent correlation. It turns out that kindergartners who are really good at sorting line length and relative weight are the same kids who score highly on tests of conceptual reasoning, memory, and attention. Whatever the neurobiological advantage is, it’s driving performance on both tests?at least at that age.

“This shines a bright light on testing of children’s intelligence, and I’m of two minds about it?two minds that I can’t reconcile. On one hand, it reveals just how premature it is to screen 5- and 6-year-olds for entrance to private schools and gifted programs.

“Conclusion: the tests work for measuring current intelligence. But it’s a bad bet, and a bad investment, if we’re counting on any test to predict a young child’s future.”

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