Measurement of
Intelligence
Venus Benjamin
21562012
What is intelligence?
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for
abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional
knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and
problem-solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to
perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be
applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or
context.
Types of measurement of intelligence
The general intelligence tests have been classified into three groups.
Individual, group and performance tests.
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Individual Test
Group Test
Performance Test
Individual Test
The individual intelligence test is administered to only one
individual at a time. A trained psychologist is expected to administer
the test for a definite period of time and interpret the result. These
tests cover age group from 2 years to 18 years. These are
(i) The Binet simon tests, (ii) Revised tests by Terman, (iii) Mental
scholastic tests of Burt and (d) Weschler test.
Group Test
There are two kinds of group intelligence tests verbal and nonverabal.
• Verbal
The verbal group test requires an individuals to read out
certain problems and write out solutions of these problems.
• Non-Verbal
The non-verbal group tests presents similar problems as the
verbal test but in a different way. The problems are presented in the
form of pictures,diagrams, puzzles and mazes. If does not require the
individual to read or write,but only to be able to make a mark with a
pencil.
Performance Test
Performance tests are designed to test problem solving
ability using certain objects such as pictures and blocks, instead of
words. These tests are specially useful with young children,
illiterates, persons with speech defects and persons who do not have
proficiency in language. Some of the famous tests are (i) Koh’s
Block design test (ii) The cube construction tests and (iii) The Pass
Along tests.
Binet-Simon Intelligence Test
Alfred Binet and his colleague Theophile Simon first developed the
work of measuring intelligence known as the Binet-Simon
intelligence test. The test was developed to identify the reason for
school children’s bad habits and to take corrective actions.
Later, this Binet test was translated and revised by Lewis Terman,
and this new edition is called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test.
Continue..
The test contains thirty items, ranging
from simple to complex to capture the
ability of children of different ages. The
test contained copying a drawing,
repeating a string of digits,
understanding a story, and so on.
They collected simple problems that
measured higher mental processes such
as reasoning, memory, and spatial
thinking
The Concept of Mental Age
Binet conceived the idea of Mental Age (MA) to measure
intelligence. Tests were made different age levels. If a test was
passed by 60-90% of children of a given age, Binet accepted it for
that age level. A child who successfully perform all the tasks
acceptable for the five year old child is taken to have a mental age of
five, whatever his chronological age (CA) may be
Intelligence Quotient
Measurement of intelligence in terms of MA raised many problems.
To make the comparison easy Stern devised the concept of
Intelligence Quotient, popularly known as IQ. The intelligence
quotient is an index of the child’s relative level of brightness as
compared with the other children of his age. IQ is the ratio between
the MA and the CA. It is obtained by dividing the mental age.
Revised Test by Terman.
After becoming a professor at Stanford, he worked on revising the original
Binet-Simon scales for use with American populations. His updated version
of the test became known as the Stanford-Binet and went on to become the
most widely used IQ test.
The third edition of the Stanford–Binet (Terman & Merrill, 1960), could not
be directly compared to scores on "true" deviation IQ tests, such as the
Wechsler Intelligence Scales, and the later versions of the Stanford–Binet, as
those tests compare the performance of examinees to their own age group on
a normal distribution (Ruf, 2003). While new features were added, there
were no newly created items included in this revision.
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