Can you get better at IQ tests? The practice effect, honestly

Yes: take the same style of test twice and the second score is usually higher. This is one of the most reliably reproduced findings in testing, and it has a boring explanation. You have seen the formats, you know how the matrices work, you no longer waste the first minute learning what is being asked, and you are less nervous.

None of that is your reasoning improving. It is the measurement getting easier.

How big is the effect

Typical retest gains on reasoning tests run to a few points on a second attempt, larger when the two sittings are close together and when the second test reuses the same items. The gain shrinks as the gap widens, and shrinks again if the second test uses different items measuring the same thing.

What it means for your own result

• Your first score is your noisiest one — unfamiliarity is included in it.
• A rise on attempt two is expected and does not need explaining.
• A DROP on attempt two is more informative than the rise. It usually means sleep, illness, distraction or rushing, and it is worth looking at.
• Comparisons across different tests are close to meaningless: different norms, different populations, different question mixes.

How to make a retest actually informative

Hold the conditions still. Same test, similar time of day, no alcohol the night before, phone out of the room. Then treat the difference as a signal about how you took it, not as a promotion.

And measure the thing you trained, separately. If you trained memory, the memory area is where a real change should appear first — a composite can move for a dozen unrelated reasons, but a single trained area moving while the others stay flat is a much harder result to explain away.

Our seven-day plan ends in a full retest and shows both runs side by side, including when the second one is lower. See how the week is built

The claim we do not make

That a week of exercises raises your intelligence. What a retest can honestly show is whether the specific abilities you drilled behave differently under the same measurement a week later — and what regular practice does to your consistency, which people underrate. Consistency is most of what separates a good run from a bad one.