Aptitude One of the Concerns in Assessing

¶ … Aptitude

One of the concerns in assessing general intelligence is that there is an over-emphasis upon verbal intelligence. Even if the test is not specifically a verbal IQ test, this is a concern given that fluency in the English language (and the type of English used by the test designer) may impact the test-taker's ability to interpret the instructions. The purpose of the Cultural Fair IQ test is to distill all verbal advantages from the test design, versus tests such as the test of Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence. These tests, much like Visual-Spatial Intelligence tests are designed to test a specific 'kind' of intelligence vs. general intelligence.

Everyone has different personal strengths and weaknesses and the advantage of taking separate tests is that these abilities can be more perfectly isolated and measured. It also ensures that, for example, an unusually strong spatial intelligence does not result in an artificially high score on the Cultural Fair IQ test which is supposed to assess general intelligence or an unusually large vocabulary does not give one an artificially high score on a verbal tests of ostensibly general intelligence like the Wechsler Scales or Stanford-Binet. However, the disadvantage is that by segmenting tests, an incomplete picture of the subject's ability cannot be arrived at, since ultimately functional intelligence requires a certain degree of integration of all of these abilities.

I am more accustomed to taking verbally-oriented tests in general, so my greater familiarity with this format resulted in a much higher verbal vs. spatial IQ both on the supposedly generalized Cultural Fair IQ test as well as the segmented tests. I also felt that the online format encouraged more impulsive decision-making on the test, versus the more traditional paper-based method. Paper-based tests also allow for more strategizing by skipping around the test. Both testing formats are supposed to be more objective and less prone to observer bias than other methods of assessing performance such as observations and open-ended evaluations of (for example) problem-solving or written essays although the standardized test format can still be biased based upon the background of the test designer.

Self-check: Part II

The predominant competing theories regarding intelligence are between theorists who believe that there is a 'generalized' intelligence factor vs. those who stress the existence of multiple intelligences, or the idea that someone can be very intelligent in one area (say, musical or kinesthetic intelligence) yet lacking in other areas of intelligence. Implied in the theory of multiple intelligence is that certain individuals will be judged as less intelligent simply because they are less strong in areas valued in a school-based context, such as verbal intelligence. However, there is a general agreement that there is a difference between fluid intelligence (innate reasoning ability) and crystalized intelligence (intelligence gained over time through the accumulation of knowledge).

The Stanford-Binet, Wechsler Intelligence Scale, and Woodcock-Johnson tests all assess generalized intelligence Stanford-Binet intelligence tests are the original IQ tests and evaluate children based upon mental age on a scale where 100 is 'average.' Wechsler tests, in contrast, evaluate all persons based on what is known as deviation IQ, or the derivation of an IQ score based upon "the proportion of people in the normative sample that had scores above and below the person's obtained score…because the concept of mental age seemed inappropriate to use with adults" (Mason & Wilcox 2009). (After all, while the difference in the cognitive abilities of a ten-year-old vs. A fifteen-year-old is considerable, that is not true of a thirty-year-old and a thirty-five-year-old). The Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities-III (WJ COG III) "is often administered as the examiner's second choice, if the age-appropriate Wechsler scale has been administered less than three years from the current assessment date" (Mason & Wilcox 2014). While the Wechsler test measures Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Reasoning, Working Memory, and Processing Speed the Woodcock-Johnson measures Verbal Ability, Thinking Ability, and Cognitive Efficiency and a General Intellectual Ability (GIA) (Mason & Wilcox 2014).