There is really no concrete definition of intelligence however
“most definitions of intelligence include phrases such as knowing and understanding
the reality around us. Intelligence is
also defined as a set of mental skills that helps individuals reach a
goal. Intelligence is also seen as the
ability to use knowledge and skills to overcome obstacles. And finally, intelligence is defined as
helping one to adapt to a changing environment” (Shiraev & Levy, 2010
p.147). The concept of intelligence is a
very popular subject in the field of psychology because of the relation it has
with an individual’s cognitive abilities.
Cognitive abilities can be defined as “skills which are controlled by
the brain which allow us to carry out many different tasks from simple to
highly complex” (Marsh, 2011). Cognitive
abilities are more about how an individual learn, remember things and solve
problems rather than knowledge that they acquire.
There is a variation in the way intelligence is defined just as
the way it is measured. During the early
1900’s Alfred Binet was asked to develop a test to measure the educational
level of students because the “French government had just enacted laws
requiring that all children be given a public education” ("Alfred
Binet," 2005). The French
government passed these laws to ensure all children were receiving an
education; however there was issues on how would the school system identify
children that were mentally challenged or suffered from developmental
disabilities so they could be provided with special programs to meet their
educational needs and that is how the intelligence testing process developed.
Intelligence testing is defined as “a method of assessing a
person’s intellectual abilities” (Plucker & Schmalensee, 2009). Much attention has been dedicated to the
psychometric approach to intelligence in the field of psychology because “this
view is based on an assumption that our intelligence can receive a numerical
value” (Shiraev & Levy, 2010 p. 122), however giving an explanation on
intelligence according to the intelligence testing may be misleading because
questions that are used on the intelligence could quite possibly have different
meanings in different cultures, therefore resulting in different answers and
that is one of the reasons that theories were developed to analyze intelligence
testing from cultural perspectives. Standard intelligence test “may not provide
for the direct assessment of cognitive skills shaped by a particular cultural environment. Unless intelligence tests accommodate the
activities that people perform in their day-to-day life, the test created in
one culture will continue to be biased against other cultural groups” (Shiraev
& Levy, 2010 p. 122).
Chapter XI, Testing: Intelligence, Aptitude, Personality and
Achievement discusses the new L-M Stanford- Binet scales that are used to
measure the scores in intelligence testing.
This article evaluates and compares the measures of the old testing
scale and the new testing scale and concluded that “the new scale was more
effective in diagnosing the dull and defective, more reliable for showing the
relative influences of a general versus other factors, but that the order of
difficulty of subtests did not agree with that for English children” (Ruch
& Orata, 1939). This article also
evaluated the constancy of the intelligence quotient and concluded from a
series of studies on children tested one to five years after being placed in
foster homes that “the mean level of intelligence of these children is higher
than would be expected from the educational, socio-economic, and occupational
level represented by their true parents” (Ruch & Orata, 1939). During this
study there was no connection found between the true mother’s IQ and the
child’s IQ.
The G-factor also known as
general intelligence is a theory that was developed by Charles Spearman “after
using a technique known as factor analysis to examine a number of mental
aptitude tests, Spearman concluded that scores on these tests were remarkably
similar” (Cherry, 2014). Spearman
concluded that from his studies that “intelligence is general cognitive ability
that could be measured and numerically expressed” (Cherry, 2014). The G-factor theory corresponds with the
findings discussed in Chapter XI, Testing: Intelligence, Aptitude, Personality
and Achievement because the studies focused on the reliability of intelligence
measured in children that were separated from the birth mothers to see if there
was any relation between the IQ of a mother and the IQ of their child and no
relation was found just as the G-factor theory states that intelligence is all
about the individual’s cognitive abilities and not their environment. In relation to culture there is “another
approach to the interpretation of test scores on general intelligence, the
problem is in the way people across cultures value and construe intelligence” (Shiraev
& Levy, 2010 p. 134).
According to an article on the rising scores of intelligence tests
it is believed that “average scores on intelligence tests are rising
substantially and consistently, all over the world” (Neisser, 2014). Intelligence testing has evolved over the
years because of all the theories that seek to measure the intelligence if an
individual. Intelligence tests have also
changed because of differences in individuals, particularly culture. The cause of the rise in intelligence tests
scores have yet to be determined , however some have speculated on contributing
factors such as “better nutrition, more schooling, altered child-rearing
practices and the technology-driven changes of culture itself” (Neisser, 2014).
The assumption of what factors have contributed to the rise in
intelligence tests scores corresponds with the multiple intelligence theory. Howard Gardner developed the multiple
intelligence theory that put emphasis on an individual’s abilities “instead of
focusing on the analysis of test scores” (Cherry, 2014). The theory of multiple intelligence describes
eight different intelligences “that are based on skills and abilities that are
valued within different cultures” (Cherry, 2014). The contributing factors to the rising scores
on intelligence tests corresponds with the multiple intelligence theory because
this theory states that individuals have intelligence in different areas and
some of those areas could very well help with the rise in their scores.
In conclusion, Intelligence is difficult to define because of the
difference in how individuals perceive knowledge based on their environment,
however intelligence tests have been developed to measure human intellect based
on cultural standards but there has been discrepancies in those test because
they were developed based on a certain culture and not all cultures. Therefore
when measuring human intelligence one must consider many contributing factors
that surround that individual when evaluating their scores.
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