Major Movements in Psychology - Intelligence Testing

10 important questions on Major Movements in Psychology - Intelligence Testing

What does it mean to say that an IQ test is normed?

Test norms allow comparison of any individual's score with those of the general population. In other words, when a test is normed, it is possible to know the percentile rank of any given score, which means the percentage of people who scored below it.

Thus IQ scores reflect a person's percentile rank according to the tests' norms.

What is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence (WAIS) IQ test?

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test is the most widely-used intelligence test. The first WAIS was published in 1958. The WAIS-IV, published in 2008, produces a Full Scale IQ based on scores from ten core subtests:

  1. Vocabulary
  2. Similarities
  3. Information
  4. Arithmetic
  5. Digit Span
  6. Block Design
  7. Matrix Reasoning
  8. Visual Puzzles
  9. Digit Symbol
  10. Symbol Search


Five supplemental tests include:

  1. Comprehension
  2. Letter-Number Sequencing
  3. Picture Completion
  4. Figure Weights
  5. Cancellation

What are the four index scores of the WAIS-IV?

  1. The Verbal Comprehension Index relfect the ability to express abstract ideas in words.
  2. The Perceptional Reasoning Index reflects the ability to process visual and spatial information.
  3. The Working Memory Index suggests the ability to hold and manipulate information in memory.
  4. The Processing Speed Index indicates the ability to process information rapidly. 
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Does the WAIS measure intelligence?

Whether any one test can measure a concept as complex as intelligence has been a topic of considerable controversy. What we do know is that the WAIS does a good job of measuring a range of cognitive skills that are indicators of other measures of intelligence, such as academic and occupational success.

Is there agreement on what intelligence means?

There is some agreement that general intelligence does exist and that people vary in how much of it they have. Nonetheless, there is considerable disagreement as to the exact way to define intelligence.

Loosely, we can define intelligence to refer to the ability to process information in a way that allows individuals to adapt to their environment. This definition suggests, however, that intelligence may vary according to the environment.

Because the nature of intelligence is inherently dependent on an individual's environment, there are chronic problems with cultural bias in intelligence tests.

What are the best ways to reduce cultural bias in IQ tests?

The WAIS-IV includes non-verbal tests such as Block Design and Matrix Reasoning that are not dependent on language and not too dependent on education. Further, the use of abstract, geometric shapes avoids culturally meaningful images. It is also important to exclude items that depend on knowledge that is relevant to only a small percentage of the population.

Are there other kinds of intelligence that the WAIS doesn't measure?

Howard Gardiner has argued against the idea of a single, unitary intelligence, proposing instead the existence of multiple intelligences, including forms based in the body, and social and emotional forms of intelligence.

Similarly, Daniel Goleman has written extensively about emotional intelligence, the ability to process emotional and interpersonal information effectively.

Who devised the first intelligence test?

John Galton (1822-1911), the father of Eugenics, was one of the first scientists to study individual differences in intelligences. He presumed such differences were inherited, what we would now call genetic, and he aimed to separate the most intelligent individuals from the least in the interest of selective breeding.

What does mental age mean?

Alfred Binet (1857-1911), a French psychologist, furthered the work of Galton and Cattell with his concept of mental age.

While observing his own children develop new cognitive skills as they grew, Binet recognized that intelligence could be measured developmentally. By comparing the test performance of a child with the age at wich such performance was expected, he could calculate a mental age for each child.

What were the problems with the early IQ tests?

The problem with Galton's approach was an utter lack of relationship between outside indications of intelligence, such as school performance, and the measures used.

Later tests were extremely culturally biased, serving the anti-immigrant bias of the first several decades of the twentieth century.

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