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Criterion-referenced testing is usually applied to the assessment of achievement. In this article, we suggest how it can also be applied to the assessment of adaptive intelligence, that is, intelligence as adaptation to the environment. In the era of the Anthropocene, we argue that adaptive intelligence is what is most important not only for individual success, but also for success in terms of preservation of the world as we know it. We define criterion-referenced testing and compare it to norm-referenced testing. We then discuss two kinds of scoring of criterion-referenced testing, namely, with respect to external criteria and with respect to internal (theory-based) criteria. We then discuss past research on intelligence that could be viewed as criterion-referenced. Finally, we suggest how criterion-referencing could be applied to the assessment of adaptive intelligence.

We administered both maximum-performance and typical-performance assessments of cultural intelligence to 114 undergraduates in a selective university in the Northeast of the United States. We found that cultural intelligence could be measured by both maximum-performance and typical-performance tests of cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence as assessed by a maximum-performance measure is largely distinct from the construct as assessed by a typical-performance measure. The maximum-performance test, the Sternberg Test of Cultural Intelligence (SCIT), showed high internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Sections with problems from two content domains--Business (SCIT-B) and Leisure (SCIT-L) activities--were highly intercorrelated, suggesting they measured largely the same construct. The SCIT showed substantial correlations with another maximum-performance measure of cultural intelligence, Views-on-Culture. It also was correlated, at more modest levels, with fluid intelligence and personal intelligence tests. Factorially, the (a) maximum-performance cultural intelligence tests, (b) typical-performance cultural intelligence test and a test of openness to experience, and (c) fluid intelligence tests formed three separate factors.

We review the musical conservatory as a model for educators to learn how to enhance admissions, instruction, and assessment in liberal arts collegiate settings. Although conservatories serve primarily students wishing to enter musical careers of various kinds, the model on which they are based can, in many ways, serve any student and any school. We review some of the history of conservatories and describe how they work. Next, we explore how they develop a wide range of technical, cognitive, affective, and conative skills. Finally, we show how the skills they develop are important not just for music students but also for all students who will enter the world of work and face difficult and unexpected adaptive challenges.

This article discusses the issues of the basic processes underlying intelligence, considering both historical and contemporary perspectives. The attempt to elucidate basic processes has had, at best, mixed success. There are some problems with pinpointing the underlying basic processes of intelligence, both in theory and as tested, such as what constitutes a basic process, what constitutes intelligence, and whether the processes, basic or not, are the same across time and space (cultural contexts). Nevertheless, the search for basic processes has elucidated phenomena of intelligence that the field would have been hard-pressed to elucidate in any other way. Intelligence cannot be fully understood through any one conceptual or methodological approach. A comprehensive understanding of intelligence requires the converging operations of a variety of approaches to it.

This article explores the advantages of viewing intelligence not as a fixed trait residing within an individual, but rather as a person × task × situation interaction. The emphasis in the article is on the role of persons solving tasks embedded in situations involving learning, intellectual abilities, and competencies. The article opens with a consideration of the role of situations in intelligent behavior. The article then discusses how intelligence is more similar to creativity and wisdom, in terms of the role of situations, than many psychologists have realized. Then the article reviews the role of situations in identity-based and irrational thinking and in conspiratorial thinking and cults. Next the article discusses the demonstrated importance of situations in assessment, but also notes the difficulties in sampling situations. Finally, the article draws conclusions, in particular, that, given our lack of situation-based tests, we need to be more modest in our interpretations results from conventional tests of intelligence.

The late James Flynn, to whom this Special Issue is dedicated, suggested that what will matter most to the future of the world is not levels of intelligence but rather how intelligence is deployed. In this article, I argue that we can distinguish between transactional and transformational deployments of intelligence. Loosely following Flynn, I suggest that we need to pay much more attention to the latter rather than the former.

A deeper understanding of the processes leading to problem framing and behind finding solutions to problems should help explain variability in the quality of the solutions to those problems. Using Sternberg's WICS model as the conceptual basis of problem solving, this article discusses the relations between creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based approaches as bases for solutions to problems. We use a construct of "meta-intelligence" to encompass understanding, control, and coordination between these constructs. We propose that constraints can act at each of three levels--individual, contextual, and interactive. Individual constraints include the metacomponents (executive processes) that underpin each of the four kinds of solutions. Contextual constraints direct which of the four approaches are preferred under what circumstances. Finally, interactive constraints involve individual and contextual constraints directly impacting each other's actions. The model of meta-intelligence and its functioning helps to explain the variability in the ways that individuals frame problems and, as a consequence, in the solutions that are found. The model of meta-intelligence also helps explain why some solutions to problems are so much more comprehensive, and often better, than others.

This article introduces a 6P framework for understanding intelligence, as well as the theories and tests that are derived from it. The 6Ps in the framework are purpose, press, problems, persons, processes, and products underlying intelligence. Each of the 6Ps is considered in turn. We argue that although the purpose of intelligence is culturally universal, the other Ps can vary at least somewhat over time and space. A single theory or test of intelligence represents a particular configuration of the 6Ps, but other configurations of the 6Ps might yield different theories and different tests.

Cultural intelligence is one's ability to adapt when confronted with problems arising in interactions with people or artifacts of diverse cultures. In this study, we conduct an initial construct-validation and assessment of a maximum-performance test of cultural intelligence. We assess the psychometric properties of the test and also correlate the test with other measures with which it might be expected there would be some connection. We found that our test was internally consistent and correlated significantly with maximum-performance tests of abilities but generally less or not at all with typical-performance tests, including cultural intelligence and openness to experience. However, our test appears to be distinct in what it measures from the other tests of cognitive abilities. The results lead us to suggest that cultural intelligence may have both maximum-performance and typical-performance aspects.

In many nations, grades and standardized test scores are used to select students for programs of scientific study. We suggest that the skills that these assessments measure are related to success in science, but only peripherally in comparison with two other skills, scientific creativity and recognition of scientific impact. In three studies, we investigated the roles of scientific creativity and recognition of scientific impact on scientific thinking. The three studies described here together involved 219 students at a selective university in the Northeast U.S. Participants received assessments of scientific creativity and recognition of scientific impact as well as a variety of previously used assessments measuring scientific reasoning (generating alternative hypotheses, generating experiments, drawing conclusions) and the fluid aspect of general intelligence (letter sets, number series). They also provided scores from either or both of two college-admissions tests--the SAT and the ACT--as well as demographic information. Our goal was to determine whether the new tests of scientific impact and scientific creativity correlated and factored with the tests of scientific reasoning, fluid intelligence, both, or neither. We found that our new measures tapped into aspects of scientific reasoning as we previously have studied it, although the factorial composition of the test on recognition of scientific impact is less clear than that of the test of scientific creativity. We also found that participants rated high-impact studies as more scientifically rigorous and practically useful than low-impact studies, but also generally as less creative, probably because their titles/abstracts were seemingly less novel for our participants. Replicated findings across studies included the correlation of Letter Sets with Number Series (both measures of fluid intelligence) and the correlation of Scientific Creativity with Scientific Reasoning.

Intelligence typically is defined as consisting of "adaptation to the environment" or in related terms. Yet, it is not clear that "general intelligence" or g, traditionally conceptualized in terms of a general factor in a psychometrically-based hierarchical model of intelligence, provides an optimal way of defining intelligence as adaptation to the environment. Such a definition of adaptive intelligence would need to be biologically based in terms of evolutionary theory, would need to take into account the cultural context of adaptation, and would need to take into account whether thought and behavior labeled as "adaptively intelligent" actually contributed to the perpetuation of the human and other species, or whether it was indifferent or actually destructive to this perpetuation. In this article, I consider the similarities and differences between "general intelligence" and "adaptive intelligence," as well as the implications especially of the differences.

We conducted two studies to replicate and extend, as well as test, the limits of previous findings regarding an apparent disconnect between scientific-reasoning skills in psychological science, on the one hand, and scores on standardized tests of general intelligence, on the other. In Study 1, we examined whether this disconnect would extend beyond psychological science to additional sciences as well, such as nutrition and agriculture. The results did indeed extend, suggesting that scientific reasoning across various natural sciences is comparable to scientific reasoning in psychological science, but different in kind from the reasoning required on conventional standardized tests. In Study 2, we examined whether these findings were linked to the format of presentation of scientific problems. Whereas real scientific-reasoning problems are open-ended, standardized tests tend to use multiple-choice format. We discovered that using multiple-choice format did indeed result in an apparently closer relation of the scientific-reasoning tests to two of the conventional ability measures (SAT Reading and Number Series) but not to two other tests (Letter Sets and SAT Math). Thus, one can increase the correlations of scientific-reasoning tests with at least some standardized ability tests but at the cost of content validity and ecological validity.

Technology alters both perceptions of human intelligence and creativity and the actual processes of intelligence and creativity. Skills that were once important for human intelligence, for example, computational ones, no longer hold anywhere near the same importance they did before the age of computers. The advantage of computers is that they may lead us to focus on what we believe to be more important things than what they have replaced. In the case of penmanship, spelling, or arithmetic computation, such an argument could bear fruit. But in the case of human creativity, the loss of creative skills and attitudes may be a long-term loss to humanity. Generative AI is replicative. It can recombine and re-sort ideas, but it is not clear that it will generate the kinds of paradigm-breaking ideas the world needs right now to solve the serious problems that confront it, such as global climate change, pollution, violence, increasing income disparities, and creeping autocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that conventional views of intelligence and its measurement have contributed toward at least some of the societal problems of today. I suggest that to escape from a degenerative process, society needs to consider the importance not only of intelligence, as conventionally defined but also of successful intelligence, involving in addition to conventional analytical intelligence, common sense, creativity, and wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching- and teaching-evaluation skills are critically important to professional success in psychology and related disciplines. We explored the possibility of measuring reasoning-about-teaching skills as a supplementary measure for admissions in psychology and related behavioral-sciences disciplines. We tested 103 students for their reasoning about teaching and their reasoning about research, as well as for their cognitive- (abstract reasoning) and educational skills. We found that women performed better than men on our reasoning-about-teaching measure, and that factorially, our reasoning-about-teaching measure clustered with our reasoning-about-research measures but not with our measures of abstract cognitive reasoning and educational skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I suggest why a symposium is desirable on the topic of why, despite worldwide increases in IQ since the beginning of the 20th century, there are so many unresolved and dramatic problems in the world. I briefly discuss what some of these problems are, and the paradox of people with higher IQs not only being unable to solve them, but in some cases people being unwilling to address them. I suggest that higher IQ is not always highly relevant to the problems, and in some cases, may displace other skills that better would apply to the solution of the problems. I present a limited-resource model as an adjunct to the augmented theory of successful intelligence. The model suggests that increasing societal emphases on analytical abilities have displaced development and utilization of other skills, especially creative, practical, and wisdom-based ones, that better could be applied to serious world problems. I also discuss the importance of cognitive inoculation against unscrupulous and sometimes malevolent attempts to change belief systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]