First, we’ll provide a little background on IQ tests: In 1955, American psychologist David Wechsler published an intelligence test that became known as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). He defined intelligence as “the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment.”
To measure this faculty, he created two sub-tests–one measuring “verbal intelligence” and the other, “non-verbal (performance) intelligence”. Assuming that intelligence is normally distributed, Wechsler mapped his test scale onto a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. By standardizing his tests in this way, Wechsler linked his scale directly to percentiles, allowing for immediate comparisons to average intelligence.
Wechsler’s departure from a single measure of intelligence offered by the Stanford-Binet test evolved from his recognition that intelligence may have more than one dimension. Growing recognition of these multiple dimensions led to subsequent revisions of the Wechsler tests to include measures of verbal comprehension, perceptional reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. WAIS-IV has 10 subtests and 5 supplemental tests that summarize intelligence with two measures–a final IQ score and a General Ability Index. IQ is a multi-dimensional measure of aptitudes for language and mathematics, as well as a host of related cognitive skills. Capabilities in abstract thinking, generalization, drawing inferences and identification of patterns in data are tested and scored. A verbal IQ of 134 indicates an exceptional language capability that is 2 standard deviations above average. The fact that your combined IQ score is average means that such things as your eye-hand coordination (psychomotor skills) is at or below average. (Your total IQ score is the weighted average of the scores on all the aptitudes measured)
The bottom line: Someone achieving an IQ score of 134 in language skills is gifted in this area and about average in the other measures. However, if the person receiving these scores is a child, then it might mean that the child is significantly ahead of other children the same age, and the “giftedness” relative to others may or may not persist through to maturity.
