IQ Tests Essay, Research Paper

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 be be used to quantify a person?s overall intelligence by

any means.