Intelligence Testing ((long...but informative)) by Alikat ..... Ask CureZone Community
Date: 2/18/2006 4:04:57 PM ( 18 y ago)
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Although the term "IQ" is no longer much in vogue with IQ experts, you still hear it often enough on the street. Ask 20 people what it means, and most of them will likely say "intelligence." Press for a longer definition and you might hear, "It's your intelligence score."
That concept--intelligence score--is one that's worth deconstructing.
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What's in a phrase?
In our quest for the meaning of IQ, let's leave aside the multiple-intelligences argument for now. That's the recent theory that says there are eight to ten--and maybe more--types of intelligence. And it makes the term "smart" even more ambiguous.
If the concept of "smart" is hard to nail down, "smarter" at least makes intuitive sense. No matter how you define intelligence, some people surely have more of it than others.
And if "smarter" makes sense, then it must be possible, at least theoretically, to measure "exactly how much smarter."
But when you start talking about "exactly how much smarter," you rely, I think, on a certain underlying image of intelligence and intelligence testing.
Is the brain like a bottle?
In this image, the brain is a container, and intelligence is a substance in it. An intelligence test, therefore, is like a dipstick. Shove it into the brain, pull it out, and what registers on the measuring stick is the amount of "smarts" in that brain.
But this image isn't accurate, is it? Interesting as poetry, maybe, but not really descriptive of what's happening.
After all, intelligence clearly isn't in the brain, it is the brain. It's less like the oil in the engine and more like the efficiency of the engine as a whole. Every aspect of the engine affects its efficiency, from how finely milled the surfaces are to the grade of oil in the block to the design of the engine.
So how can such a many-sided totality be measured?
Part II: Why it's tricky to measure intelligence
Suppose we limit our discussion to just one kind of intelligence. In fact, let's consider only logical-mathematical intelligence, the kind most of us are thinking of when we say, "What a brainiac!"
Measuring that kind of intelligence would seem pretty cut-and-dried.
You could just compile a series of problems, arranged in order of increasing difficulty, right? Then you'd have people solve as many as they could. The number of problems each person solved would measure how intelligent he or she is. You could represent intelligence as a number, then, and compare two people precisely.
There are a couple of problems with this, however. You'd have to devise problems that don't depend on any prior knowledge--otherwise you'd just be measuring how much math different people have studied. That could be tough to pull off. And to really make it work you'd have to calibrate "increasing difficulty" with precision. Is it really possible to set up a problem that is exactly one point "harder" than another? And then one that is two points harder? And so on?
This is starting to sound tricky.
Even if you manage all that, you run into another difficulty. If two people of identical intelligence tackle the same problem, is it conceivable that one will solve it and one won't?
Of course it's conceivable. It's even likely.
What does it mean to say that my IQ is 117 and yours is only 113? (Oh, all right--yours is 117 and mine is only 113.) What does it mean to say that one person is four points smarter than another?
Who came up with this notion of measuring intelligence, anyway?
Part II: Why it's tricky to measure intelligence
Suppose we limit our discussion to just one kind of intelligence. In fact, let's consider only logical-mathematical intelligence, the kind most of us are thinking of when we say, "What a brainiac!"
Measuring that kind of intelligence would seem pretty cut-and-dried.
You could just compile a series of problems, arranged in order of increasing difficulty, right? Then you'd have people solve as many as they could. The number of problems each person solved would measure how intelligent he or she is. You could represent intelligence as a number, then, and compare two people precisely.
There are a couple of problems with this, however. You'd have to devise problems that don't depend on any prior knowledge--otherwise you'd just be measuring how much math different people have studied. That could be tough to pull off. And to really make it work you'd have to calibrate "increasing difficulty" with precision. Is it really possible to set up a problem that is exactly one point "harder" than another? And then one that is two points harder? And so on?
This is starting to sound tricky.
Even if you manage all that, you run into another difficulty. If two people of identical intelligence tackle the same problem, is it conceivable that one will solve it and one won't?
Of course it's conceivable. It's even likely.
What does it mean to say that my IQ is 117 and yours is only 113? (Oh, all right--yours is 117 and mine is only 113.) What does it mean to say that one person is four points smarter than another?
Who came up with this notion of measuring intelligence, anyway?
Yerkes developed two tests, the Army Alpha and the Army Beta. One was for literate, English-speaking people, the other for nonliterate or non-English speaking people. Using these tests, the Army tested and sorted 1.7 million people. Those at the top were sent to officer training schools. Those at the bottom were told to go home, they were too dumb to serve. Were these tests administered properly? Nope. Were they accurate and fair? Of course not. Nevertheless, the Army's wholesale adoption of group IQ testing helped boost the tests' popularity in a big way.
New tests were developed over the next few decades. The most widely used today are the tests created by David Wechsler--one for children, one for adults. A Wechsler test might present a number of shapes and ask you to put them together to make some recognizable figure. Another item may be a verbal question such as "In what ways are wool and cotton similar?" But it also asks informational questions such as, "What day of the year is Independence Day?" It's easy to see how a recent immigrant from another country might get that one wrong.
Part IV: The dark side of IQ measurement
Over the years, IQ tests have been attacked for giving false results, for ignoring cultural factors, for mixing up aptitude with achievement, and for trapping people in prisons of fixed numbers. And the whole enterprise has a disreputable history of links to bigotry, dating back to its origins.
Galton dreamed of selectively breeding people from families full of high achievers to develop a deserving elite to lead society. In Galton's England, high achievers came almost exclusively from the upper classes. You can see where he was going with this.
Lewis Terman, after testing several Mexican Native American children and coming up with low scores, declared that "their dullness appears to be racial...." He recommended that "children of this group" be segregated in special classes because "they cannot master abstractions."
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Then there was Henry Goddard, an IQ expert who served as a consultant on Ellis Island. He declared that after careful testing he had determined that 83 percent of Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, 79 percent of Italians, and 87 percent of Russians were "feebleminded." Overall he ranked people of Latin, Slavic, or African descent as less intelligent than those of Nordic and other Northern European origin. His expert opinion was reflected in a 1924 law that set immigration quotas by country of origin.
IQ testing under siege
The late 20th century has seen a backlash against IQ testing. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court virtually banned the use of IQ tests as a hiring tool. Many states, including California, banned the use of IQ tests to screen African American children in the school system. Since the mid 1980s, many school districts have outlawed their use altogether. While this action was applauded by scores of parents and teachers, it wasn't a perfect solution for everyone.
Example: In 1991 a group of African American parents in San Francisco filed a lawsuit to force the school district to consider their children's IQ scores. The case began with a boy who was required to repeat a grade. After hiring a private company to test his IQ, his mother discovered that her child was quite smart but had a learning disability. She wanted the school to advance him to the next grade but also to provide him with help for his special problem. She wasn't able to make her case to the school district, however, because her evidence was rooted in an IQ test and therefore off-limits.
Eggheads of the world, unite!
Even with its problems, some people still take this whole IQ thing very seriously.
In fact, there is an international organization of people who have scored in the top 2 percent of a certain type of IQ test. The organization is called Mensa, and it's something between a social club and a badge of honor.
Mensa offers special lectures to its members. No, don't try to crash one of these lectures, you wouldn't understand it anyway. There is also an online Mensa Mall where the extremely brilliant can get deep discounts on such goods as--well, I don't know what goods. I'm not a member.
No, that's not a twang of resentment you hear in my voice.
I will, however, tell you a little story. A few years ago, there was a Mensa convention in San Francisco and a bunch of Mensa members were lunching at a local café. They discovered that their salt shaker contained pepper and their pepper shaker was full of salt. How could they swap the contents of the bottles without spilling, and using only the implements at hand? Clearly this was a job for Mensa! The group debated and presented ideas, and finally came up with a brilliant solution involving a napkin, a straw, and an empty saucer. They called the waitress over to dazzle her with their solution.
"Ma'am," they said, "We couldn't help but notice that pepper shaker contains salt and the salt shaker--"
"Oh," the waitress interrupted. "Sorry about that." She unscrewed the caps of both bottles, switched them, and said, "Will that be one check or separate?"
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/AdultLearning/?article=IQmain
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