WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE ? THE
PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH
Apparently, then, IQ tests are
measuring something that helps people do better in both academic and work
settings, something that helps them lead healthier, wealthier, and more
productive lives. But can we be more precise about what this “something” is?
Put differently, if the IQ test is in fact measuring intelligence, what exactly
is intelligence?
For more than a century, these
questions have been framed in terms of two broad options. One proposal comes
from Binet himself: He and his collaborators assumed that the test measured a
singular ability that can apply to virtually any content. In their view,
someone’s score on the IQ test revealed their general intelligence, a capacity
that would provide an advantage on any mental task—whether it’s solving a
puzzle, writing a paper, or learning a new mathematical technique.
Many authors have offered an
alternative view—namely, that there’s really no such thing as being intelligent
in a general way. Instead, each person’s score on the IQ test represents a
level of achievement produced by that person’s collection of more specific
talents, and each talent is relevant to some portions of the test but not
others. In thisview, if we look closely at the test scores, we’re unlikely to
find people who are success-ful in every aspect of the test or people who are
inept in every mental task. Instead, each person will be strong on the tasks
for which he has the relevant talents and somewhat weaker on the tasks that
rely on talents he lacks. As a result, each person would have an individualized
profile of strengths and weaknesses. If we then represent that profile with a
single number—an IQ score—this is actually just a crude summary of the
per-son’s abilities because it averages together the things a person is good at
and the things they’re not.
Which of these proposals is
correct? Is the IQ score a reflection of intelligence in general, so that it
measures a capacity useful for all tasks? Or is the score just an aver-age created
by summing together diverse components?
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