Intelligence - What is it and How Do You Measure It?

Intelligence, "the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations," as defined by the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary. Williams (1996) believes that intelligence is based on ones level of goal orientation and adaptive behaviors. Or according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, "the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge."

Nowadays our American society has become very competitive, with everyone trying to outdo and outsmart each other which has led to intelligence testing having a bad reputation but labeling people using their results wasn't the original idea of intelligence testing. In the early 1900's Alfred Binet created the first true intelligence test, upon the request of the French government. It was used in schools to simply classify children into groups of relatively similar intelligence levels, not to label each child with a number representing their own intelligence. His test only had thirty items in which it evaluated people in four areas: imagery, comprehension, memory and judgment, while some of today's test have over a hundred items (Lawson, 1992).

There are three types of measurable intelligence that researches look at, psychometric abilities, neuropsychological processing models, and dynamic assessments, each consisting of different items being tested. Psychometric abilities are tested in evaluations that look at verbal and spatial ability, attention, processing speed, inductive reasoning, and memory. From a different perspective, neuropsychological processing models are more theoretically driven, they look at the different regions of the subject's brain and how they function with relation to intelligence. The third type of intelligence testing is dynamic assessment which measures someone's ability to learn and modify to the situation. This test gives the tester more insight into the cognitive processes the participant used or didn't use and allows them to evaluate the person based on that. (Daniel, 1997).

There are many uses of intelligence testing, and the way they've been seen and used in public has changed over time, as well as what they're testing. Francis Galton was also known for his intelligence testing ideas, according to Williams (1996), but he focused more on the physical strengths such as grip strength, with the belief that strength represented intelligence. People then realized that physical strength really had nothing to do with the needs of intelligence testing, since people were looking for information on how people would perform at school and work, so they sought out to find a different method.

Alfred Binet created a new version of the intelligence test, much similar to ones used today, as compared to Galton's physical strength tests. Binet was asked by the French government to devise a test in order to place children in schools grouped by intelligence, not to determine and label how smart they are, but in order for the teachers to know where they needed to begin teaching so they couldn't bore the children nor challenge them beyond their capacity (White, 2000). Binet defined intelligence in his own way, reported by Williams (1996), "consisting of direction (knowing what to do and how), adaptation (selecting a strategy for performing a task and monitoring one's success), and criticism (knowing how to critique one's work)." According to a report researched by Sarah Lawrence College, Binet never meant for his tests to be used to rank normal children, by doing that the tests just give the children a label which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that they live up to.

Binet had a theory, mental orthopedics, which led him to create a program made up of exercises for children to raise their intelligence. Some examples of this program include training for attention, willpower, and motor control by carrying full cups of water to a table without spilling a drop. In order to increase the child's ability of prolonged maintenance of an attitude they had to stand completely still while holding a book with a piece of chalk balanced on top of it, or hold one foot in one hand while the other hand was placed on the back of their neck without moving. He also created an aspect of the test to train attention and memory by showing the children a series of cards with pictures of objects on them and once the cards were taken away, the child then had to write down as many names as they could. Unfortunately, Binet died in 1911 before he was able to fully implement his project but researchers today are looking into the logic he used to see if they can create something more practical for today's society based on his ideas (White, 2000).

The Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale was created and Lewis Terman of Stanford University revised it to make what he felt was a more appropriate intelligence test to be administered to the public. This test combined different aspects of earlier tests, so they were able to combine the different types of intelligences, psychometric abilities, neuropsychological processing models, and dynamic assessments into one exam. This version looked at verbal reasoning including vocabulary, comprehension, absurdities, and verbal relations; quantitative reasoning including number series and mathematical word problems; abstract reasoning including pattern analysis; and short term memory including memory of sentences, digits, and pictured objects (Williams, 1996). The Stanford-Binet test was one of the first examples of an adaptive test in the history of intelligence testing. This means that the examiner uses what he/she knows about the participant and uses that information to determine where to start the test. With this type of test only questions which are appropriate for the specific participant are asked to avoid the frustration that arises when some of the questions are too hard or too easy for them (Becker, 2003). The most positive aspect of this type of test is that you can gather the most relevant information on the participant in the shortest amount of time.

Today, IQ tests are used by different groups of people, in schools, the workplace, or even just out of curiosity. The media has given intelligence testing a bad reputation but the use of these tests can still be beneficial in some cases. The tests do help professionals make decisions regarding the placement of children in schools as well as other personal classification purposes. Although it has been found that IQ test scores do correlate with education level, income, and socioeconomic status, they are not independent variables, in contrast they depend on each other, if someone has a higher education level, chances are they will have a higher income due to a better job, which can be seen in one's IQ score (White, 2000).

Sarah Lawrence College research has shown that the average IQ today is 100, below 70 is considered mental retardation, 130 or above is considered gifted, and 175 is genius level. However, for the most part, anything over 150 is due to lack of norms. Another group, American Mensa Ltd, agrees with the above scores until you reach the genius level, in which they claim you need a score of 140, and that places you in the 98^th percentile (US Mensa). Different tests have different meanings of their scores which leads to false belief of how intelligent someone may be through comparison of different tests and can cause confusion among students and lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.

Many people do not approve of using intelligence testing in schools because of all the negative stories they have heard about the consequences the children face afterwards. The administrator giving the test must have a full understanding of the test and what the results mean or else they will encounter problems like the one Lawson (1992) wrote of. A college boy was doing really well at school his freshman year, his grades showed he was above average, his sophomore year his advisor gave him an intelligence test. His advisor told his teacher what his score was and then his teacher turned around and told the student that his intelligence quotient was 96. He was very disappointed with himself because had always thought he was more than slightly above average so when he heard his score, he just stopped trying because he felt like he had failed himself. Several months later, after probation and many school meetings, it was discovered that in actuality, his score was in the 96^th percentile, not an IQ quotient of 96. This is a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in the way that he gave up and became what he was told he was supposed to be and then once he knew the truth about his score, he was back to a straight A student his senior year. Once the mistake had been recognized everything was taken care of, but mistakes such as this give intelligence testing a bad name. This could have easily been prevented if the administrator of the test had been trained in what the score meant and the ethics behind spreading information about the student to people who were most likely not authorized to the information.

Another important aspect is that the test is valid and being published for the correct reason. When intelligence testing first became popular among schools and teachers, they talked highly of them and were used frequently. Publishers realized, unfortunately, that the more tests they produced and the better reputation they had, the more money they would make off the profits. They than began talking highly of these tests as well as standardized tests and norms just to increase their personal profits (Lawson, 1992). It's sad that in today's society making money has become more important to some people than helping those people in need. This problem can be prevented if it is looked more closely at why the test is being given and make sure it is only for an appropriate reason, to help the person, not to benefit the creator or administrator of the test.

There has been discussion on ways to improve intelligence testing by making it more ethical and meaningful. One idea that is circulating is that the administrators of the tests must show preparation and clinical training by being previously licensed to secure the validity of the results (Lawson, 1992). Another option that has been suggested is to reinvent IQ testing. Logically, researchers have learned a lot about children's intellectual development and their educational needs since the time the Stanford-Binet test was created. They should take this new knowledge and turn it into a more useful and beneficial test (White, 2000). Another issue that was brought up was to reconsider when IQ tests should or need to be used and when it is inappropriate or unethical. This idea has already began to surface through legal challenges to educational and social practices (White, 2000).

There is already a newer test which has been developed, the TRI, the Test of Inductive Reasoning. This is more beneficial for people with disabilities as well as others because it is culture fair, a non verbal test, to remove the bias of variations in language. This test also has no time limit so the participant can take as long as they need to think things through. One of the most important aspects of this test, the TRI, is that even though it has no verbal questions, it still highly correlates to traditional IQ tests (Jouve Testing).

Intelligence testing has greatly evolved since it's first implementation by Alfred Binet in the early 1900's, and although it has some beneficial uses in today's society, unfortunately there are many misuses as well. It is believed by researchers though that with some work, intelligence testing can be revised and become beneficial to society again when used appropriately.

References

Becker, K.A. (2003). History of the Stanford-Binet intelligence scales: contents and psychometrics. Retrieved November 1, 2005, from Riverside Publishing Web site: http://www.riverpub.com/products/clinical/sbis5/SB5_ASB_1.pdf#search='stanfor dbinet'

Daniel, M.H. (1997). Intelligence testing: Status and trends. American Psychologist, 52, 1038-1045.

IQ Testing

Lawson, D.E. (1992). Need for safeguarding the field of intelligence testing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 131-133.

On the mater of genius.

What is the TRI?

White, S.H. (2000). Conceptual Foundations of IQ testing. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 6, 33-43.

Williams, W.M. (1996). Consequences of how we define and assess intelligence. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2, 506-535. Jouve Testing: TRI. Retrieved December 4, 2005 from http://www.jouvetesting.org/eng/tests/tri/pages/index.htm American Mensa Ltd. Retrieved November 1, 2005, from http://www.us.mensa.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&TEMPLATE=/CM/ ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=1904. Sarah Lawrence College. Retrieved October 12, 2005, from http://pages.slc.edu/~ethicalgenetics/IQTest.html