INTELLIGENCE AND IQ TESTING

Intelligence is the global capacity to act purposefully, to think rationally,

and to deal effectively with the environment. The core of intelligence consists of general
mental abilities (called the g-factor) in the areas of reasoning, problem solving, knowledge,
memory, and successful adaptation to one’s surroundings (Sternberg, 2004).
1.Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget provided some of the first great insights into how children
develop thinking abilities. He believed that all children pass through a series of distinct stages
in intellectual development.
Piaget believed that intellectual development grows through a process he
called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation refers to using existing mental patterns
in new situations. In accommodation existing ideas are modified to fit new requirements.
The different stages described by Piaget are:
1.Sensorimotor stage ( birth to two years)
In the first two years of life intellectual development will be largely non-
verbal .Children will be mainly concerned with learning to coordinate their movements with
information from their senses.
Object permanence- an understanding that objects continues to exist even
when they are out of sight emerges at this time. In general , development in this stage
indicates that the child’s conception are becoming more stable.
2. Pre-operational stage (2-7 years)
During this period children begin to think symbolically and use language,
but the child’s thinking is still very intuitive. i.e., it makes little use of reasoning and logic.
During this stage the child is also quite ego centric –unable to take the view points of other
people and the child’s ego seems to stand at the centre of his/her world.
3.Concrete operational stage ( 7-11 years)
An important development during this stage is the mastery of
conservation.-the concept that mass, weight and volume remain unchanged when the shape of
object changes. During this stage children begin to use concepts of time, space and number.
The child can think logically about concrete objects or situations, categories and principles,
Another important development is the ability to reverse thoughts or
mental operations .Reversibility of thoughts allow children in the concrete operational stage
to recognize that if 4x2=8, then 2x4 is also 8.
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4. Formal operational stage (11 years and above)
After about the age of 11 years children begin to break away from
concrete objects and specific concepts. Thinking is based more on abstract principles such as
democracy or correlation, Children who reach this stage can think about their thoughts and
they become less ego centric. Older children and young adolescents also gradually become
able to think hypothetically (using suppositions )Full adult intellectual ability is obtained
during the period of formal operation.
2.Charles Spearman ( Two factor theory)
Spearman (1927) believed that our cognitive abilities share an important
core factor which he labelled ’G’ for general mental ability. He recognized that people also
have specific abilities ’S’ such as numerical reasoning or memory. However, he thought that
individual abilities for these specific areas ‘S’ is largely determined by their general mental
ability.
3.L.L. Thurstone ( Theory of Primary Mental Abilities)
L.L. Thurstone (1938) found that intelligence involve multiple abilities.
According to him intelligence is composed of seven distinct factors called primary mental
abilities.
1. Word fluency
2. Verbal comprehension
3. Spatial ability
4. Perceptual speed
5. Numerical ability
6. Inductive reasoning
7. Memory
4. Raymond Cattell
Cattell (1968) found that two clusters of mental abilities exists mainly
as fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence refers to our largely
inherited abilities to think and reason. In a sense it is the hardware of our brains that
determine the limits of our information processing capacity
In contrast crystallized intelligence refers to accumulated knowledge-
information we store over a life time of experience plus the applications of skills and
knowledge to solving problems. In a sense our crystallised intelligence is the outcome of
experience acting on our fluid intelligence. The speed with which one can analyse
information is an example of fluid intelligence , while the breadth of one’s vocabulary – how
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many words one can put to use, illustrates crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence seems
to decrease slowly with age but crystallized intelligence stays… or even increase.
5. Robert Sternberg ( Triarchic theory of intelligence)
According to Robert Sternberg (1985) there are three basic kinds of
human intelligence. The first called componential/analytical intelligence involves the ability
to think critically and analytically. Persons high on this dimension usually excel on
standardized tests of academic potential and make excellent students.
The second type of intelligence is experiential or creative intelligence. It
emphasizes insight and the ability to formulate new ideas. Persons who are high in this
dimension excel at finding what information is crucial in a given situation and at combining
seemingly unrelated facts.
The third type of intelligence is contextual or practical intelligence.
Persons high on this dimension are intelligent in a practical adaptive sense.
6. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence
Howard Gardner (1983) suggested that there are several important types of
intelligence that are relatively autonomous. They are:
1.Logical mathematical intelligence- Sensitivity to and capacity to discern logical/numerical
patterns, ability to handle long chains of reasoning.
E.g. mathematicians, engineers, Nobel price winners
2. Linguistic intelligence- Sensitivity to sounds , rhythms and meanings of words,
sensitivity to the different functions of language. People high in this intelligence are “word
smart’
E.g. Poets, Writers and Journalists
3. Musical intelligence- Ability to produce and appreciate rhythms, pitch and timbre,
appreciation of the forms of musical expressions.
E.g. Composers, Musicians
4. Spatial intelligence-Capacity to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to
perform transformation on one’s initial perceptions.
E.g. Engineer, Inventor ,Artist
5. Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence-Ability to control one’s body movement and to handle
objects skilfully.
E.g. Dancers, Sports persons

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6. Interpersonal intelligence-Capacity to discern and respond appropriately to moods ,
temperament, and desires of other people.
E.g. Psychologists, Social workers, Managers and Counsellors
7. Intra personal intelligence-Ability to assess one’s own feelings and the ability to
discriminate among them and using them to guide behaviors, knowledge of one’s own
strength, weakness, desires and intelligence.
8. Naturalistic intelligence- An ability to understand the natural environment.
E.g. Farmers, Biologist
Concept of IQ
An intelligence quotient is the child’s mental age divided by chronological
age multiplied by 100 ( William Stern, 1914)

The evolution of intelligence testing

The measurement of intelligence began with the work of a British
scholar, Sir. Francis Galton in the latter part of 19th century. .In his book”Hereditary Genius”
Galton concluded that ‘success runs in families’ Because intelligence is passed from
generation to generation through genetic inheritance, Galton advocated ‘Eugenic
programmes’. Eugenic refers to efforts to control reproduction to gradually improve the
hereditary characteristics of the population He used the concept of correlation. Galton coined
the phrase ‘Nature versus Nurture” to emphasize the heredity- environment relationship.
In 1904, a commission on education in France asked Alfred Binet to
devise a test to identify mentally subnormal children. In response to the need Binet and a
colleague Theodore Simon published a creative new test of mental ability in 1905-the Binet-
Simon scale.
The Binet-Simon scale expressed child’s sense in terms of mental level or
mental age. A child’s mental age indicate that he/she displayed the mental ability typical of
that chronological age .Binet revised the test in 1908 and again in 1911.
In America Binet’s test was initially put into use by Henry Goddard (1908).
He translated the test into English with verbally no changes in content. In 1916, Lewis terman
and others at Stanford University revised the test for use in North America. The Stanford-
Binet intelligence Scale 5th edition (SB5) continues to be widely used. The SB5 measures five
cognitive factors that make general intelligence. These are: Reasoning, Knowledge,

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Quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial processing, and Working memory .Each factor is
measured with verbal questions and non-verbal questions.
Wechsler’s scale
David Wechsler devised a test for both children and adults that include non-
verbal or performance items as well as verbal ones and that yield separate scores for these
two components of intelligence. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R) includes
the following subtest
Verbal tests
1. Information
2. Vocabulary
3. Arithmetic
4. Comprehension
5. Similarities
6. Digit Span
Performance tests
1. Picture completion
2. Picture arrangement
3. Block design
4. Object assembly
5. Digit symbol
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) sometimes used to identify children
suffering from various learning disabilities.
Culture fair tests
In an effort to eliminate cultural bias from intelligence test, psychologists
have attempted to design culture fair tests-tests designed to minimize importance of skills and
knowledgethat may be more common in some cultures than in others. Such tests attempt to
include only items to which all groups regardless of ethnic or racial background have been
exposed. These tests tend to to be non-verbal in nature. One such test is Raven’s Standard
Progressive Matrices. This test consists of 60 matrices of varying difficulty, each containing a
logical pattern/design with a missing part. Individual s must select the item that complete the
pattern from several different choices.
Determinants of Personality: Heredity and environment.
Human intelligence is clearly the result of complex interplay between genetic
factors and a wide range of environmental factors.
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Hereditary influences
Galton observed that intelligence run in families. Family studies can
determine only whether genetic influence on a trait is possible or not. If high intelligence
appear in a family over generation , this consistency reflect the influence of either shared
genes or shared environment. Because of this problem researchers use twin study.
Twin studies
The rationale of twin studies is that both identical and fraternal twins normally
develop under same environmental conditions. However, identical twins share more genetic
kinship than fraternal twins. Hence if pair of identical twins are more similar in intelligence
than pairs of fraternal twins, it is presumably because of the great genetic similarity. Research
shows that even identical twins living in different environments display greater similarity in
IQ than fraternal twins living together.
Adoption studies
If adopted children resemble the biological parents in intelligence even though
they were not reared by these parents. This finding supports the genetic hypothesis. Research
indicates that there is indeed more than chance similarity between adopted children and their
biological parents.