It seems that psychologists find it hard to reach an agreement to define intelligence, resulting in the final definition I will mention from Vernon (1969) “intelligence is what intelligence tests measure” (1969, cited in Howe, 1997).
Although most definitions seem to have a similarity, the meaning of intelligence can vary over time and through cultures. It was once thought that intelligence was all down to a persons ability with spelling and arithmetic, whereas in the islands of the south pacific a persons ability to navigate the oceans and there spatial memory are the way to judge a persons intelligence level (MSN, 2005).
It seems a nomothetic approach is needed to even attempt to measure intelligence. All tests need to be reliable, correlate with existing test scores and show face, internal and ecological validity (MSN, 2005).
Intelligence tests were developed to predict school children’s eventual academic results (MSN, 2005). In England in the 1880’s Galton made the first attempt at measuring intelligence. Galton’s theory was that a person with a good degree of intelligence would perform well on all tests, physical and mental so he included tests on lung capacity strength tests, reaction times and many more, but it was found that his tests had no correlation with academic achievements (1880, cited in Gross, 1992). Although Spearman found that there was a correlation between people taking academic and mental tests, people that did well on one test did well on other tests, led him to believe in a general intelligence. Other psychologists have gone on to say that there is possibly more than one type of intelligence (cited in P. Smith et al, 2003) maybe the term intelligence should be thought of as a blanket term covering a multitude of cognitive and physical abilities. To me intelligence doesn’t just cover how clever a person is, I believe it’s the ability to perform and repeat tasks and learn from them, down from the smallest insect that has the intelligence to survive, up to mankind and the nuclear scientist who has the ability to destroy humankind.
One of the most widely used intelligence tests was developed by Alfred Binet who was the first to develop a test that correlated with academic achievement, which was later updated by Lewis Terman and named the Stanford-Binet Test. It is made up of a selection of tests covering comprehension, mathematics, word definition and reasoning, unfortunately they where all verbal tests, so did not cover a full range of abilities (cited in Berryman et al, 2002). Because the Stanford-Binet test was not appropriate for adults and depended on language ability David Wechsler(1939) decided to develop a test that had a verbal part consisting of comprehension, information, arithmetic, similarities, digit span, vocabulary and letter number sequencing and a performance part that consisted of digit symbol, picture completion, block design, picture arrangement, matrix reasoning, object assembly and symbol search, all tests could be scored separately or together to give an IQ score (1939, cited in E, Smith et al, 2003)
Most intelligence tests give a result of an IQ score (Intelligent quotient - which shows how a persons intelligence compares to the average person) which on a scale with 100 in the middle, and placing most of the population around the 100 mark between 85 and 115 as being of average intelligence, and below 70 as being of low intelligence or retarded and above 130 as highly intelligent (Davison et al, 2004).
An example of someone most people would describe as intelligent is George Stephenson, it would be surprising to learn that if he had sat an intelligence test his result would be a low IQ, as he never mastered written English and was very poor at arithmetic (Howe, 1997).
It does seems that Intelligence tests do have there place for giving an indication of a persons ability or disability, if every aspect of the test results are analysed, if not, the results can be very destructive as an individual can be wrongly labelled for life, due to the fact that the results are only an indication of how someone performs on set questions and tests. Culture, social deprivation, upbringing and educational background can have an affect on the results (Howe, 1997). Also on the day of the test so many factors can affect the results such as our mood, stress and illness (Heim, 1970). It occurs to me that intelligent tests only cover a small amount of a person’s ability, it doesn’t cover musical ability, spatial intelligence as in sense of direction, inter and intra-personal intelligence, common sense, creativity, imagination, sensitivity, motivation and the ability to adapt to situations and their environment, would these qualities not also be seen as a part of intelligence?
From the various definitions which psychologists can not agree on and my final example from Vernon that intelligence is what intelligence tests measure and the prediction of what the result of an IQ test taken by George Stephenson would be. Leads me to conclude that intelligence can not be accurately defined and without an accurate definition we can not accurately measure it. Although short, I think that sums up the answer to the question can intelligence be defined and measured accurately.
1100 words not including title and references.
References
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