1. The origins of intelligence testing begins with Alfred Binet assessing intellectual abilities. He was doing this because a new law in France made it so the French had to attend school. Binet thus made the idea of a mental age, the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. This was used to separate the “dull” children with a lower mental age and the “bright” children who had a higher one. Eventually, Lewis Terman revised Binet's test and produced the Stanford-Binet variant, which is widely used. William Stern derived the intelligence quotient, which is mental age divided by chronological age times 100.
2. Psychologists do not agree on a single definition for intelligence, but the common similarities in its definitions is that intelligence is the ability to learn from abilities, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. To help learn more about the intelligence test, factor analysis is used. It is the statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items and uses them to identify different dimensions of performance that underlies one's total score. Spearman believed that everything in intelligence is affected by a g factor, which is a general intelligence factor that he believed to underlie specific mental abilities and is measured by every task of an intelligence test. Others believe that intelligence is much more complex and has many specific abilities. This can be most easily noted with people who have savant syndrome. They score low on intelligence tests to the point of mental retardation, but they have one astounding specific skill that makes them seem like a genius. Gardener believed that instead of a single intelligence, people had multiple intelligenc...
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...y be attributed to how they stay in school 30% more days per year than us and also study math outside of school, whereas the average American would not. The quality of education plays a major role in one's intelligence, thus showing how important the environment can be.
11. Psychologists generally consider the SAT to be non-biased. It is not culturally biased because after many times taken,the SAT does not favor one group over another. Intelligence tests can be biased in the fact that if you were brought up in a different culturally educational environment, the results will differ between cultures. People may do worse under pressure of a stereotype threat, which is a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. Minority students that have been told to believe in their potential tend to have higher grades and lower drop-out rates.
Before answering the questions let find out what intelligence test is. It is a test consisting of a series of tasks requiring people to use various verbal and non verbal skills to measure the individual’s intellectual ability. Now that we know what an intelligence test is we can now answer the question better. Three important short comings of intelligence test that have nothing to do with intelligence are: having low motivation or high anxiety which can greatly influence the performance on the test, also IQ test may contain cultural biases in their language and or tasks that may place people of one background above people of another back ground, and members of minority groups may have little experience with this kind of test or may be uncomfortable with examiners of a different ethnic back ground than them (Comer, 2013, pp.107).
General intelligence tends to relate to various degrees with each other (Cohen 2012). An example of this is that if an individual is good in math, they may also be good in spelling. In this weeks reading we reviewed several different models of measurement of intelligence. In regard to these theories and general intelligence (g), the theories are various but have commonality and overlap. The Spearman's two-factor theory is if a test has high correlation with other test than the measurement of g is highly saturated (Cohen, 2012). The greater the importance of g on a test, the better the test is believed to predict intelligence
Similar to Sternberg, Binet came to the conclusion that intelligence is the sum of mental processes (Flangan, Harrison, 2005). He developed the first intelligence test in order to categorize how much children benefitted from school education. The Binet-Simon scale, keeping in mind that Binet believed in intelligence consisting of different components, thus included language component, auditory processing, learning and memory, as well as judgement and problem solving (Kamin, 1974). The results were supposed to identify the student’s mental age. Lewis Terman introduced the Binet-Simon test to America and adapted it to sort army recruits in World War I (Comer et al., 2013). The Stanford-Binet test, developed by Terman in 1916, aimed to be an improved version that was able to measure mental age more appropriately (Kamin, 1974). He was convinced that intelligence is the ability to form concepts and to think abstract (Comer et al., 2013). The Stanford-Binet test has been described by Maud Minton to be superior to other intelligence tests of that time because it was very precise, it had detailed guidelines, it measured the IQ which became the standard marking system (Flangan, Harrison,
Spearman believed that two factors affect performance on mental ability tests. One was the general factor or general intelligence this factor focused on the mutual relation of all mental tests. Scores on all of these tests were generally related. The second factor was the specific factor "The specific factor related to whatever unique abilities a particular ...
Surprisingly, intelligence is not defined as a single ability, but by a combination of related abilities. For instance, a savant that discerns numbers different than the average human, and uses those numbers to connect with others is an unconventional show of intelligence. And there are even infographics that people design, and dedicate time and effort into, showing their thoughts on intelligence. Lastly, there have been articles written about intelligence that layout the author’s thoughts on how intelligence should be viewed. While some people label intelligence as academic skills, an individual can actually develop many different forms of intelligences, outside of academics.
Even though we don’t face such an issue since the test-makers are trying to be as culturally neutral as possible when they are making the tests, like being careful with their wording etc., but they are other problems that are still present. Some of the common standard test are the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and the Canadian Achievement Test (CAT). To its supporters, standardized testing is the pre-eminent way. In addition it is also an inexpensive way to assess the capabilities of the students, how well the teachers teach, and to decide where a school does stands in terms of its achievement. Furthermore they are deemed as the fairest form of assessment and can...
Standardized tests can trace their beginning to just over a hundred years ago, in 1905, when a French psychologist by the name of Alfred Binet was conducting studies of human intelligence. In order to further his studies, Mr. Binet developed the first standardized test to determine the relative levels of intelligence in his test subjects. A version of the test that he used was then developed to create the current IQ test that is often given to determine a person’s intelligence. (Dan Fletcher)
Educators have been questioning the validity of the SAT to determine college admission or to predict academic success because the test appears to be discriminatory and biased against women, minorities, and the poor (low income). The Educational Testing Service (ETS), which produces and administers the test, claims that the SAT in its current form "is an impartial and objective measure of student ability" (Owen 272). However, critics of the SAT argue "that tests like the SAT measure little more than the absorption of white upper-middle-class culture and penalize the economically disadvantaged" (Owen 10). The statistical reality of SAT scores is that: students who take coaching/prep courses do better than those who are not coached; men do better than women; whites do better than blacks; and the rich do better than the poor. Based upon my research, the SAT appears to be discriminato...
In this world, there are many different individuals who are not only different in demographics but also different neurologically. Due to an immense amount of people it is important to first understand each individual, in order, to better understand them and to help them when it comes to certain areas such as education, the work force, and etc…. For this reason psychologists have aimed to further understand individuals through the use of psychological assessments. This paper aims to examine a particular assessment tool, the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (Fifth Edition), which measures both intelligence and cognitive abilities (Roid, 2003). This assessment is usually administered by psychologists and the scores are most often used to determine placement in academics and services allotted to children and adolescents (despite their compatibility for adults) (Wilson & Gilmore, 2012). Furthermore before the investigation dives into the particulars of the test, such as its strengths and weakness’, it is best to first learn more about the intelligence scales general characteristics.
Most researchers believe that we are born with a certain intelligence or potential intelligence. They also believe that the intelligence we are born with is difficult to change. Psychologists use short-answer tests to assess one’s intelligence (Gardner papers). It was believed that intelligence was a single inherited thing. Human beings start out initially as a blank slate and could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way (Multiple Intelligences and Education). Currently an “increasing number of researchers believe the opposite. Gardner defined intelligence as: “the ability to create an effective product or offer a service that is valued in culture; a set ...
One of the most definitive things ever said regarding the nature of intelligence was that intelligence is whatever IQ tests measure. The IQ test has been in use throughout the 20th century and serves as an accepted measure of a person’s intelligence. It is used by institutions such as schools and the army to screen people’s level of intelligence and decisions are made based on that. The IQ test consists of a series of questions regarding certain skills such as vocabulary, mathematics, spatial relations. The scores that a person gets on these tests depend on the amount of questions that a person answers correctly. The actual score that a person gets is dependant on how others in that age group do on those particular questions.
On the ‘nature’ side of the debate is the psychometric approach, considered to be the most dominant in the study of intelligence, which “inspired the most research and attracted the most attention” (Neisser et al. 1996, p. 77). It argues that there is one general (‘g’) factor which accounts for intelligence. In the 1880s, Francis Galton conducted many tests (measuring reaction times to cognitive tasks), (Boundless 2013), in order to scientifically measure intelligence. These tests were linked to the eugenic breeding programme, which aimed to eliminate biologically inferior people from society. Galton believed that as intelligence was inherited, social class or position were significant indicators of intelligence. If an individual was of high social standing, they would be more intelligent than those of a lower position. However he failed to show any consistency across the tests for this hypothesis, weakening his theory that social class correlated with intelligence. Nevertheless, his creation of the intelligence test led many to continue to develop...
The cognitive ability level of different ethnic subgroups has been a controversial topic among the psychologists for over a century. One of the main aspects regarding this issue is the validity of the Cognitive ability tests like SAT, ACT etc. Is the cognitive ability tests used commonly, for important placement and selection in the domains of educational admissions, civilian employment and the military, fair? Or are they biased on the basis of race or ethnicity? Many studies indicate that a fair amount of bias is present with cognitive ability test takers of different ethnicities. In a study done recently by an Organizational Psychology Department,
Verbal Intelligence; Non-verbal Intelligence; Concrete Reasoning; and Abstract Reasoning are several of the mental abilities that have been identified by psychologists (Santrock, 2013). Spearman’s thoughts were that intelligence is general cognitive ability that can be numerically expressed and measured.
Intelligence tests began as a psychologist's solution to a problem faced by Paris schools at the beginning of the century. Alfred Binet, a French psychologist, developed a test to measure potential ability at school tasks rather than performance in school, and to produce the same scores regardless of the personalities or prejudices of those who gave or took the test. The scoring method originally used by Binet and his collaborator, Theodore Simon, was based on the concept of mental age or MA (the chronological age typical of a given level of performance). For the average child, mental age and chronological age are equal or a match. For example, a child who is 10 years of age has a mental age of 10. But some children who have less intelligence than average will not be able to pass all the items suitable to their age level and thus will show an MA that are lower than their CA. To measure mental age, Binet and Simon developed varied reasoning and problem-solving questions that might predict school achievement.