<p>It is assumed that most people taking intelligence tests have been exposed to a wide range of assessments in the past. It is a standard feature of education systems that students will do a wide range of assessments, and some of these are more or less like intelligence tests. </p>

<p>Many tests even have practice questions for the purpose of increasing validity. The rationale is that some people may perform unnecessarily poorly because they're not familiar with the interface or the general test taking strategy.</p>

<p>So, no, doing another intelligence test doesn't invalidate your current intelligence test score.</p>

<p>That said, there is an active literature on practice effects. For example, see this question about <a href="https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/20177/does-practicing-ravens-progressive-matrices-tests-inflate-your-iq-score?rq=1">practice effects on Raven's</a>.</p>

<p>As a general principle practice effects are generally considered to be small on intelligence tests. The theory of skill transfer says that they will vary on a continuum based on the similarity between what has been practiced and what you are doing now. There also needs to be some capacity for domain-specific learning. </p>

<p>In your case, most free online tests that claim to be modelled on the Wonderlic or another commercial test are likely to be a very rough proxy.
More generally, the Wonderlic has a wide range of question types. Thus, I doubt that even taking an alternate form of the Wonderlic would make much difference to subsequent test taking efforts.
Also, when you do a test, you typically don't receive feedback on what is the correct answer. So, the capacity for incidental learning is limited.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-19T06:42:24.487Z
2020-05-27T00:45:14.010Z
2020-05-27T00:45:14.010Z
Jeromy Anglim
<p>Years ago I did a fake wonderlic test on a website getting a bad score mainly because the test server delayed time in between questions but also the questions were harderd and not correctly ordered by difficulty. I did another 2 or 3 tests after then a couple of years later did a real wonderlic test (with different questions) and scored 95th%, im wondering is this score invalid because I did a few practice tests some years before.</p>

<p>Also the real test included instructions not to spend too much time on one question which made a difference i think.</p>

<intelligence><cognitive>
Is the Wonderlic invalid if you have previously done other intelligence tests?
stackcogni
# Is the Wonderlic invalid if you have previously done other intelligence tests?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-05-18)

Years ago I did a fake wonderlic test on a website getting a bad score mainly because the test server delayed time in between questions but also the questions were harderd and not correctly ordered by difficulty. I did another 2 or 3 tests after then a couple of years later did a real wonderlic test (with different questions) and scored 95th%, im wondering is this score invalid because I did a few practice tests some years before.

Also the real test included instructions not to spend too much time on one question which made a difference i think.

**Tags:** intelligence, cognitive


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-05-19. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

It is assumed that most people taking intelligence tests have been exposed to a wide range of assessments in the past. It is a standard feature of education systems that students will do a wide range of assessments, and some of these are more or less like intelligence tests.

Many tests even have practice questions for the purpose of increasing validity. The rationale is that some people may perform unnecessarily poorly because they're not familiar with the interface or the general test taking strategy.

So, no, doing another intelligence test doesn't invalidate your current intelligence test score.

That said, there is an active literature on practice effects. For example, see this question about [practice effects on Raven's](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/20177/does-practicing-ravens-progressive-matrices-tests-inflate-your-iq-score?rq=1).

As a general principle practice effects are generally considered to be small on intelligence tests. The theory of skill transfer says that they will vary on a continuum based on the similarity between what has been practiced and what you are doing now. There also needs to be some capacity for domain-specific learning.

In your case, most free online tests that claim to be modelled on the Wonderlic or another commercial test are likely to be a very rough proxy.
More generally, the Wonderlic has a wide range of question types. Thus, I doubt that even taking an alternate form of the Wonderlic would make much difference to subsequent test taking efforts.
Also, when you do a test, you typically don't receive feedback on what is the correct answer. So, the capacity for incidental learning is limited.


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