✘ – 90 minutes can be exhausting for clinical patients (TBI, depression, fatigue). ✘ Cultural loading – Some Vocabulary/Information items favor Western middle-class exposure. ✘ Digit Span (Working Memory) now includes sequencing – harder for elderly or some clinical groups. ✘ No direct measure of executive function (planning, inhibition, set-shifting) – requires supplementary tests. ✘ Practice effects – Retesting within <1 year can artificially raise scores by 5–10 points. ✘ Utility for extremely low IQ (<55) is limited; the WAIS-IV floor is not as good as the Stanford-Binet 5.

The operationalizes this definition by providing four major scores (Indexes) rather than just one "IQ number." This multi-faceted approach allows psychologists to identify specific strengths and weaknesses (intra-individual variability) rather than falsely labeling someone as simply "smart" or "not smart."

Compared to the WAIS-III (1997), the WAIS-IV introduced several dramatic changes: