Intelligence/Personality Tests
The concept of intelligence and the practice (and practicality) of testing for intelligence has been one of the more controversial areas of psychology and psychometrics since the first tests were developed and administered a century ago. Far from there being a consensus in the scientific community on exactly what makes up intelligence, the list of characteristics that comprise intelligence has instead been a matter of extreme and ongoing debate. Measuring intelligence in individuals has found an even greater share of disagreement and controversy. Even when researchers are able to agree on what aspects should be measured to develop an accurate picture of intelligence, the methods proposed and implemented for testing these areas have often been widely disputed. The controversy surrounding intelligence testing reached new heights in the era of cultural diversity, as it became clear that the standard intelligence tests in use for the better part of the twentieth century had an inherent bias in favor of white, Euro-centric thinking, to the detriment of other cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Nonetheless, there are several standard working definitions of intelligence that while not perfect by any stretch of the imagination have still proven consistent and reliable enough to produce tests that measure intelligence with some accuracy. One widely used definition of intelligence from the American Psychological Association includes the ability to understand complex thoughts, adapt to environments, learn from experience, and engage in various types of reasoning. This definition makes it incredibly clear that intelligence is not a simple phenomenon such as how "smart" someone is, but rather there is a wide and varied set of considerations that must be taken into account in order to arrive at an idea of "true" intelligence -- a feat which the American Psychological Association says has still not yet occurred.
According to many other authorities, even the above definition is not inclusive enough to determine true intelligence, even if things such as cultural bias were not an issue. Creativity is one of the most common and most disputed additions to definitions of intelligence. Not only is the concept of creativity at least as difficult to define as intelligence, but measuring creativity through the use of standardized test is entirely antithetical to the idea of creativity. Other problems...
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
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 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
Intelligence When most people think the concept of "intelligence," they think of how "smart" an individual might be. Typically associated with academic success, many imagine that intelligence has a lot to do with how well one did (or did not do) in school, and later, by how much money one can make in its exercise. However, as many people know, there are many different kinds of intelligence -- from the "book
While it is almost certain that intelligence ahs a neurological basis, the extent to which intelligence is determined by neurological and chemical changes is not fully understood. A recent study suggests that changing hormone levels prior to and during puberty have a large effect on intelligence; high salivary testosterone levels in ten-year-old boys showed a positive correlation with intelligence, but a negative correlation in twelve-year-olds (Shangguan & Shi 2009).
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