Intelligence Testing
Few concepts in psychology are more hotly debated than the idea of what constitutes human intelligence. The definition of intelligence has become part of current culture wars as well as an area of intense scientific debate. This paper examines one popular theory of intelligence, Howard Gardner's concept of 'multiple intelligences,' which has been proposed as an alternative to the theory of 'general intelligence,' or intelligence as a concept that spans multiple domains of ability.
The theory of multiple intelligences
Few concepts are as contentious and fraught as that of intelligence in modern-day life. Questions of how to measure intelligence is intermeshed with current debates over race and gender, as well as more general concepts of human worth. One of the most popular conceptions of intelligence to emerge in recent years is the theory of multiple intelligences, as advocated by Howard Gardner of Harvard University. However, within the field, this theory is hotly debated, and many state that Gardner lacks scientific evidence to back it up his assertions, even though the media and educators in the field have embraced the concept. "A quarter of a century later, MI Theory has so completely entered the culture that it has taken on a life of its own, and even outstripped its creator in name recognition. The dissemination of MI Theory at every level of education has resulted in significant challenges to a century's worth of fundamental educational principles and practices" (Helding 2009). Multiplicity is one potential relief from the current, polarizing debates over how to measure IQ, given that it expands the fields in which an individual has the potential to be intelligent.
Before Gardner developed his theory, intelligence was thought of as an enclosed entity. In the earliest studies of intelligence, "researchers discovered...although mental tests are often designed to measure specific domains of cognition -- verbal fluency, say, or mathematical skill, spatial visualization or memory -- people who do well on one kind of test tend to do well on the others, and people who do poorly generally do so across the board. This overlap, or intercorrelation,...
Intelligence Testing It is often essential to measure the human intelligence so as to provide special attention to the deficient ones. Being an abstract concept it is absurd to think of expressing its magnitude in numbers. However, expressing in terms of imaginary units psychologists could visualize to accord ranks and quantify the intelligence. The intention of measuring intelligence originated ever since the era of Chinese emperors during 2200 BC when it
Intelligence Testing Intelligence -- Nature/Nurture Debate In psychological terms, intelligence can be defined as "the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalizing, and adjusting to new situations" ("intelligence," 2013). However, interest in and importance of emotional intelligence has flourished in recent years because of which general and applied psychology has made emotional intelligence a standardized concept (Antonakis,
Intelligence Testing Intelligence and achievement are very different. Intelligence is a measure of one's aptitude, or ability, which is in essence a measure of potential. It is actually only a measure of potential in one skill area -- the cognitive. Intelligence testing is usually focused on things like problem solving and pattern recognition. Intelligence testing continues to be an evolving field as well, with the definitions of intelligence being challenged and
intelligence testing. The first of the two articles read in this article analysis on intelligence testing is called "Role of test motivation in intelligence testing," and was authored by Angela Lee Duckworth et al. This article links motivation as one of three highly important variables that is treated in intelligence testing. Significantly, the article references David Wechsler and his theory of intelligence a number of times in the text. A
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test Intelligence testing began in earnest in France. The French Government commissioned Alfred Binet in 1904 "to find a method to differentiate between children who were intellectually normal and those who were inferior." (Strydom and Du Plessis, 2004) This early form of intelligence testing was not scaled -- a child either passed or was placed into a special school where he or she would receive more appropriate instruction. (Strydom
Intelligence testing can be a useful means of measuring certain skills. However, intelligence tests are highly contextualized and also have the potential to be culturally biased. Although intelligence tests are “here to stay,” they can be administered, adapted, and used in ways that fairer and more representative of a diverse population (Ford, 2005). One of the ways intelligence testing can be culturally biased is that there are different types of
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