Essay, Research Paper: Does Iq Measure Intelligence?-

Does IQ Measure Intelligence?-
The task of trying to quantify a person's intelligence has
been a goal of psychologists since before the beginning of this
century. The Binet-Simon scales were first proposed in 1905 in Paris,
France and various sorts of tests have been evolving ever since. One
of the important questions that always comes up regarding these tools
is what are the tests really measuring? Are they measuring a person's
intelligence? Their ability to perform well on standardized tests? Or
just some arbitrary quantity of the person's IQ? When examining the
situations around which these tests are given and the content of the
tests themselves, it becomes apparent that however useful the tests
may be for standardizing a group's intellectual ability, they are not
a good indicator of intelligence. To issue a truly standardized test,
the testing environment should be the same for everyone involved. If
anything has been learned from the psychology of perception, it is
clear that a person's environment has a great deal to do with their
cognitive abilities. Is the light flickering? Is the paint on the
walls an unsettling shade? Is the temperature too hot or too cold? Is
the chair uncomfortable? Or in the worst case, do they have an illness
that day? To test a person's mind, it is necessary to utilize their
body in the process. If everyone's body is placed in different
conditions during the testing, how is it expected to get standardized
results across all the subjects? Because of this assumption that
everyone will perform equally independent of their environment,
intelligence test scores are skewed and cannot be viewed as
standardized, and definitely not as an example of a person's
intelligence. It is obvious that a person's intelligence stems from a
variety of traits. A few of these that are often tested are reading
comprehension, vocabulary, and spatial relations. But this is not all
that goes into it. What about physical intelligence, conversational
intelligence, social intelligence, survival intelligence, and the slew
of others that go into everyday life? Why are these important traits
not figured into intelligence tests? Granted, normal standardized
tests certainly get predictable results where academics are concerned,
but they should not be considered good indicators of general
intelligence because of the glaring omissions they make in the testing
process. To really gauge a person's intelligence, it would be
necessary to put them through a rigorous set of real-life trials and
document their performance. Otherwise the standardized IQ tests of
today are testing an extremely limited quality of a person's character
that can hardly be referred to as intelligence. For the sake of
brevity, I will quickly mention a few other common criticisms of
modern IQ tests. They have no way to compensate for cultural
differences. People use different methods to solve problems. People's
reading strategies differ. Speed is not always the best way to tackle
a problem. There is often too much emphasis placed on vocabulary. Each
of these points warrants individual treatment, and for more
information refer to The Triarchic Mind by RJ Sternberg (Penguin
Books, 1988, p18-36). It is possible to classify all the reasons that
IQ tests fail at their task into two main groups. The first grouping
is where the tests assume too much. Examples of this flaw are the
assumption that speed is always good, vocabulary is a good indicator
of intelligence, and that different test taking environments won't
affect the outcome. The second grouping comes because the tests gauge
the wrong items. Examples of this are different culture groups being
asked to take the same tests as everyone else, and the fact that the
tests ignore so many types of intelligence (like physical, social,
etc). These two groupings illustrate where the major failings of
popular IQ tests occur and can be used as tools for judging others. IQ
tests are not good indicators for a person's overall intelligence, but
as their use has shown, they are extremely helpful in making
predictions about how a person will perform in an academic setting.
Perhaps the problem comes in the name intelligence tests when it is
obvious this is not what they really are. The modern IQ test
definitely has its applications in today's society but should not be
used to quantify a person's overall intelligence by any means.