>>This actually troubles me, because the implication is that they can use this to determine your future career path, like they did in the former Soviet Union, based on tests taken at a early age.<<
This part is easy. Fortunately the hard part for them is getting the authority to do it.
BlueLancer, I included you because there is something we discovered about you AND me. The desire to come up with a quick answer can stump people like us when we think we have the answer and don’t even read the question. When I first saw the picture I didn’t read the question and saw the word “Cup” and noticed the phrase “sounds like” in the question and immediately said Duck.
When I went to the site I had to read the two sentenced several times to understand what they were asking for because my interpretation of the sentences was clouded by my assumption that Duck was the answer. By the third time I got it and then looked at the pictures and said, “Oh, it’s Pencil”.
However, we did not “hear” the question. We read it. The question does seem to test more than “raw” intelligence, however. It seems to test the testee’s propensity to fully understand a problem before attempting to solve it. And that is why sometimes people with low IQ’s can get to a solution more accurately than someone with a high IQ.
Smarts is only part of the equation.
It was an eye opener to me because this is the sort of thing that has dogged me in my career my whole life. I’ve learned to temper it and it has paid dividends. I would come up with solutions much faster than other people but my analysis would often miss a key point, making my solution incorrect, or sometimes way off base.
And, as you can see, my other challenge is that I tend to be over-analytical. ;)
Also, how many times have I discovered that my kids miss simple math problems because they added, when they should have subtracted and vice versa.
I keep trying to pound in their heads to read questions thoroughly and not assume anything, but it hasn’t quite sunk in, they just want to race through things (just like their old man back in the day)