Psychologists have been measuring “intelligence” with standard tests for a number of decades and the IQ score has been imbedded into educational evaluations and methods even though IQ tests are a limited sample of human abilities.  Group tests are usually multiple choice, pen and paper tests, used in education, business and the military to screen large numbers of people. Individual tests are more time consuming and are used to evaluate individuals who may be gifted or retarded.

The two most popular individual tests are the Stanford-Binet and the Wechsler scales. Binet's test emphasized verbal skills and was arranged by age level so that 80-90% of any given age could pass at their own age level. The test score is expressed as a mental age, which corresponds to the average age of normal children who perform as well as the individual being scored.  Binet's original assumption was that people who performed below their age level were retarded, those who performed at it were normal, and those who performed above it were gifted.

In 1916, Lewis Terman revised Binet's test for use in the United States and it became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. This was the first test to generate an intelligence quotient, or IQ, calculated as a ratio between a person's mental age and chronological age. Psychologists now use the test to compute a score known as the standard age score. The Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale is standardized and can be administered sequentially at a variety of ages. The Wechsler Scales differ from the Stanford Binet Test and include three separate tests, each designed for a different age group; the age ranges are 4 to 6.5 years, 6 to 16 years, and late adolescence to adulthood. Scores on the Wechsler Scales are based on the raw test score in relation to the normal distribution curve of intelligence.

Intelligence and Learning

Aptitude tests are tests that are designed to test how much someone would benefit from being admitted into an educational program or course of study. They are generally concerned with the subject's ability rather than the subject's prior knowledge.

Achievement tests evaluate how well someone has learned the material from a given course. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is a multiple-choice test, widely used in the USA. The purpose of the SAT is to evaluate aptitude for college level work. The original test had two sections, verbal and mathematics, each of which had a mean score of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. The reference sample for this standardization was a group of 10,000 American students in 1941. Average scores dropped in the early 1990's (verbal mean 422 and mathematics mean 474 in 1991). In 1994, the test was revised into SAT 1: reasoning tests and SAT 2: subject tests. The SAT 1 added question that require short written answers in addition to multiple choice, and the SAT 2 focuses on different areas of aptitude with more comprehensive testing.

One idea associated with IQ tests is that there is a general intelligence or “g-factor" that correlates positively with scholastic performance, employability, social and economic achievement. IQ tests evaluate a subset of abilities that involve shape and pattern recognition, recognizing analogies, counting, reasoning and language skills. IQ tests are designed to average performance across different factors. Each IQ test samples brain-processing ability and to some extent samples the function of different parts of the brain. No IQ test is designed to sample all abilities. A master of psychometrics, Arthur Jensen, reviewed a century of intelligence testing and the correlation of IQ measurements with a host of factors in his classic text, the g-Factor.  

Neurological and neuropsychological examinations are better focused on sampling the function of different parts of the brain at an elementary level to detect gross damage to brain function in individuals, but are not good at revealing the a range of learning abilities that IQ tests sample. An IQ score is calculated to place an individual within a normal group distribution so that an IQ of 100 is the mean and one standard deviation is 15 IQ points. IQ tests are age dependent and different tests are used in different applications.  IQ tests do not necessarily correlate with aptitudes, skills and achievements that are highly valuable and rewarded in contemporary society. Among our highest paid citizens are business men, athletes, singers, actors, authors and musicians. Each of these groups has a distinctly different intelligence specialization that may not be predicted by IQ measurement.

Humans live increasingly complex lives and require a surprising range of mental abilities even to live a rather simple life with little or no academic accomplishment.  Both IQ and educational measures cut a narrow but important path through the human experience. If, for example, you evaluated Wayne Gretzky’s hockey-playing ability with a standard IQ test you would probably come to the wrong conclusion. Gretzky became the highest scoring payer in the NHL and earned his title “The Great One” with calm precision over a twenty-year career in the National Hockey League. Gretzky’s genius in sensing, deciding and acting at the fast speed of a hockey game was manifest in sports and would have allowed him to excel as hunter-warrior on the African Savannahs thousands of years ago. When Gretsky was asked if he thought his children would inherit his extraordinary hockey talent, he suggested humorously that they could be unlucky and get his IQ and his wife’s skating ability. He was right about genetics. The mixture of his genes and his wife’s genes shuffles the genetic deck; it is unlikely that another great one would emerge from his family. Gretsky was probably a rare combination that occurred when his parents’ genes decks were shuffled and combined on the night of conception.

Like all great ones, Gretsky worked hard at perfecting his game. He also benefited from the teaching and support of a father who wanted him to succeed. One of his attributes was the determination to be the best he could be and the determination was expressed as daily, disciplined practice since five years of age. The best IQ test for hockey paying ability is the game itself and scouts for professional teams will scan the players in the farm teams for outstanding abilities. Performance scores in professional hockey are logged at each game in detail and provide real-time assessments of the hockey intelligence of each player. You could argue that IQ tests are limiting samples and are designed to be convenient for psychologists and institutions to use. Real-life tests tend to be more complex and richer in materials and contexts.

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Human Brain in Health and Disease

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