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Australian Aboriginal children typically receive communication assessment services from Standard Australian English (SAE) speaking non-Aboriginal speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Educational assessments, including intelligence testing, are also primarily conducted by non-Aboriginal educational professionals. While the current paper will show that non-Indigenous SLPs can conduct valid communication assessments with Indigenous children, it will also be shown that educational assessments do not always benefit the child being assessed, and may sometimes do harm to Aboriginal children. Many of the issues surrounding the assessment of Australian Aboriginal children by non-Aboriginal SLPs are similar to those encountered in other countries where Indigenous populations represent a minority. Very little research has been conducted within Australia to examine this issue. This paper presents overviews of case studies from a longitudinal research project designed to examine the topic of cross-cultural speech-language pathology assessment with Indigenous children, making specific reference to the situation in Australia.

Attributional and encouraging statements during WISC-R administration were compared for experienced and beginning examiners. The patterns of comments for both experienced and beginning examiners seemed to be related to structural aspects of the test, and the proportions of comments in attributional categories were similar for the two groups. However, experienced examiners made greater numbers of both attributional and encouraging comments. The results suggest that further investigation of subjective aspects of test administration be made and implications for training of examiners be considered.

This article begins with a brief review of the history of the conceptions of intelligence and of intelligence testing. It then discusses the effects of these conceptions on education and on children's development. The problem of intelligence and intelligence testing is reformulated in terms of charting pathways to the development of expertise. In particular, the article stresses the importance of habits of mind, or patterns of thinking used in everyday life that can affect the way one approaches various tasks. Acquiring expertise requires acquiring those habits of mind that most facilitate task performance. The importance of context is stressed, as is the importance of dynamic testing of human abilities, which recognizes that people's observed levels of performance do not necessarily reflect their full capabilities.

In this article, I discuss the effect technology has had on the development of intelligence testing. I propose three fundamental principles of technology. First: Old technologies do not die; they just fade away. Sometimes they are like age spots, which fade away ever so slowly, if at all. Second: Successful technologies multiply like rabbits. And like rabbits, when they have multiplied extensively, they will start to invade areas where they are unnecessary, and even useless. Third: Successful technologies are originally driven by ideas. Once the technologies succeed, however, they start driving ideas, instead of being driven by them. After discussing these principles, I describe the specifications for the Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test (STAT), a new test that is theory driven rather than technology driven.

Somatic anxiety during intelligence testing was examined for 43 children in Grades K through 5 by assessing each child's heart rate with an Apple IIe computer program during an administration of the Kaufman-ABC. Heart rate (a measure of somatic anxiety) decreased steadily during the course of the test administration, except for an increase when the one timed subtest (Triangles) was administered. Heart rate during each separate subtest did not correlate significantly with performance on any task. Implications of these preliminary findings are discussed.

This article addresses two related situations that result from widespread use of individualized intelligence testing for admission to Missouri gifted educational programs in elementary and secondary schools. One is that students are placed on waiting lists with rank ordering determined by the same‐IQ tests that qualify them. The second is that IQ testing sometimes serves as both qualifier at entry, and as a program outcome measure. The implications of these two problems are discussed. A case analysis of one school district's selection criteria is presented.

There are two reasons why it is important to study the relation between performance in dynamic tasks and test intelligence. First, such studies will contribute to theoretical advances concerning the structure and function of human cognitive abilities, and second, they may also lead to an innovation in the technology of intelligence testing.

Presented at the Southeastern Symposium on Child and Family Development, 23rd February, 2007. The World Summit for Children of which Nigeria is a signatory promised to ratify the convention on the rights of the child. In Africa, the problem of the handicapped child is by no means insignificant. Communicable diseases are important causes of morbidity and mortality in Nigerian children. There is a disagreement even amongst experts about the thinking processes of people with hearing impairments. The difficulty faced with the hearing-impaired in Africa is that they fall behind in their academic achievements. Also, they leave school less qualified than their hearing peers. The attitude of the society in Nigeria is that these children are best forgotten in homes and that they cannot achieve a functional capacity in society. Hearing-impaired children hardly go beyond the primary school level because it is believed that their level of intelligence is not the same as children with normal hearing. Cognitive functions deals with the mental processes that deal with thinking, perceiving and understanding. This study hopes to examine similarities or differences that may exist in the cognitive functions of the hearing-impaired and the nonhearing-impaired using non-verbal tests. This study also hopes to highlight the intelligence level of the hearing-impaired persons and other cognitive functions using a modified Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices.

Raven's Progressive Matrices is a frequently used intelligence test, and it has been suggested that the major determinant of difficulty for each item is its numbers of elements and rules, and its rule complexity. The current study investigated another potential source of difficulty–element salience–items are harder where their elements are difficult to identify. We investigated two aspects of this: whether item elements are (1) overlapped; and (2) based upon familiar versus unfamiliar shapes. Three sets of newly devised matrices were compared to the original items: (1) easy to identify elements (European letters); (2) difficult to identify elements (Invented ‘letters’); and (3) Overlapped elements (using European letters). The original items (with many overlapped and/or unfamiliar elements) were hardest. Performance was significantly better when item elements were either difficult to identify but not overlapped or overlapped but easy to identify. Performance was best when item elements were neither difficult to identify nor overlapped. It is suggested that although element salience can influence the working memory load of an item, the skills necessary for successful element identification are not necessarily related to working memory capacity.

Competence is defined by a culturally constituted system of representation. Its presence or absence in a given individual is construed in emergent ways through interpersonal interactions, which in turn are informed by a system of meanings shared among the coparticipants and their various audiences (Jenkins, 1998; Serpell, 2001). The cultural practice of intelligence testing falls within this framework as an institutionalized network of recurrent activities, scripts, artifacts, roles, and social functions. In this chapter we seek to situate the technology of intelligence testing within the system of meaning that informs professional practices and guarantees their sociocultural legitimacy. Many of the assumptions underpinning the legitimacy of the practice in American society are much less widely shared in contemporary African societies. As a result, we argue that the process of institutionalizing intelligence testing in Africa threatens to distort important aspects of

Several issues have led to concern about the use of intelligence tests with children from cultures different from that of the test developers. The traditions of Galton, Binet, Wechsler, Cattell, and others underlie all modern tests of intelligence. These tests emanated from French, British, German, North American, and other similarly European cultures. Intelligence testing, however, became unusually popular in the United States, a society that is perhaps unusually multicultural, being characterized by diverse values, languages, and religious beliefs.

The clinical skill required to properly administer an intelligence test cannot be overemphasized. Clinical skill is especially needed when assessing children, since they are highly influenced by adult behavior. The psychologist who acquires the necessary knowledge to use intelligence tests but not the requisite clinical skill is ill prepared. This individual will find intelligence testing to be arduous, unrewarding, and perhaps punishing. The clinician who is skilled in interacting with children will be capable of making the often stilted test directions used by some intelligence tests seem like ordinary conversation to a child. She will make the intellectual evaluation a pleasant experience for the child rather than an onerous one.

This is a study of how Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) testing, which was always controversial, became a tool for one of the nation’s most advanced and progressive school systems, the Los Angeles public schools. Rather than considering what advocates said about intelligence testing, this essay focuses on the actual testing in schools. It argues that teachers never completely accepted I.Q. tests as the unambiguous instruments their designers had claimed. Instead, teachers immediately detected the cultural biases in the tests, and administrators recognized that they did not provide the revolutionary, educational, or diagnostic tool that had been expected. This essay does not suggest that I.Q. testing played no role in “tracking.” What it does demonstrate is that the test generated far more confusion and frustration for teachers and administrators than historians have thought. Educators initially expected that the test would provide a clear-cut pattern for separating students by intelligence. When they discovered that the test was unreliable, many looked for alternatives. Ability grouping in Los Angeles public schools in the 1920s and early 1930s depended less on I.Q. testing than other historians have led us to suppose.

John Richardson's book on Howard Andrew Knox fills a gap in the history of intelligence testing and introduces the reader to one of the forgotten pioneers in this field. Knox spent five years at El...

Terminology The debates on intelligence have been long and fierce. It sometimes seems that the longer they continue the farther we get from any resolution. Some objections, like many of those aired in the wake of the publication of The Bell Curve , were little more than the predictable rantings of those whose ideological toes had been trodden on, but others are more serious and need to be addressed. Early objections were raised to IQ measures on the grounds that extraneous and irrelevant factors like fatigue and ‘training’ could distort the measure. Such problems are more to do with bias and reliability and can, to some extent, be controlled. Much more serious are those that challenge the very foundations of the enterprise. Often these objections are expressed by questioning the truth of statements which have wide currency, and seem to be taken for granted by the advocates of intelligence testing. In coming to the end of our journey we must attempt to separate the facts from the fallacies. A convenient way to do this is to focus, principally, on two writers who have obligingly drawn attention to the rocks on which they think the good ship founders. First among these is Gould, who repeatedly claimed that intelligence is not a single, innate, heritable and measurable ‘thing’ . This runs like a refrain through The Mismeasure of Man and its five elements cover most of the significant objections that have been raised to intelligence testing.

Publisher Summary The Wechsler test is one of the most used, individually administered, standardized measures for assessing intelligence in children and adults. The primary purpose of intelligence testing is to classify individuals based on their overall level of cognitive functioning. This chapter presents an overview of the items adapted and closely translated per subtest in each of the countries. This chapter provides the background for the statistical analyses. The overview provides insight in the judgmental bias of the subtest, which refers to nonstatistical procedures to identify bias, based on a content analysis of the items. All local test development teams had to address two issues: which American items were expected to be transferable to a new linguistic and cultural context without major alterations, and which items were assumed to require adaptations. As a consequence, country comparisons of the number of adapted items of the 11 subtests provide information about the judgmental bias in these subtests.

Publisher Summary The Wechsler tests is one of the most used, individually administered, standardized measures for assessing intelligence in children and adults. The primary purpose of intelligence testing is to classify individuals based on their overall level of cognitive functioning. Psychologists in the United Kingdom are in the fortunate position of being able to tap more easily than colleagues in many other countries into the largest and most dynamic test environment in the world. In reality, there are such a large number of consistencies in language, culture, values, and educational objectives that tests travel relatively easily from the U.S. to the UK, and the process of translation, adaptation, and standardization is much more straightforward than in other countries. Despite this history of acceptable adaptation and use of the test, with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Third Edition development, it was argued that it would be necessary to undertake a more thorough adaptation of the test for the UK, with the provision of more substantial UK data.

School-based standard testing continues to evolve, yet in some ways it remains surprisingly close to its roots in the first two decades of the twentieth century. After use for many years as a diagnostic and as a filter for access to education, in the closing years of the century it has been pressed into service for state-run political accountability programs. In this role, it is generating vehement controversy that recalls protests over intelligence testing in the early 1920s. This background article explores primary characteristics and issues in the development of school-based standard testing, reviews its typical lack of qualification for political accountability programs, and suggests remedies to address major problems. In general, the attitude toward new techniques of assessment is skeptical, in light of the side-effects and unexpected problems that developed during the evolution of current techniques.

Scores from nine WAIS-R short forms were calculated for a sample of 75 adults with mild to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Although all nine of the short forms were significantly correlated with the WAIS-R Full Scale IQ, three of the short forms (Vocabulary-Block Design; Vocabulary-Block Design-Arithmetic-Similarities; VocabularyArithmetic-Picture Arrangement-Block Design) significantly overestimated the WAIS-R IQ and thus may be inappropriate to use with this population. The remaining six short forms did not differ significantly from the WAIS-R Full Scale IQ. Among these six, Ward's seven-subtest short form appeared to exhibit the least variability in predicting the WAIS-R Full Scale IQ. Information is presented and discussed regarding the absolute difference scores between short form IQ estimates and the WAIS-R as well as the proportion of short forms which significantly underand overestimate the Full Scale IQ.

Engineering design is analysed in terms of design problem-solving. Engineering designers of differing productivity hardly differ in mental abilities, as measured by intelligence testing, but in their strategies concerning the analysis of requirements and of the problem, in the search for general principles that solve the relevant problem, and in the procedures that develop specific solutions. Experimental and interview results stress that the interrelationship between thinking and sketching, as well as other kinds of early low-cost prototyping, are of crucial importance for the efficiency of the problem-solving procedure and the result. Possibilities of assisting design problem-solving and of improving the training of designers are discussed.

Intelligence, Destiny and Education: the Ideological Roots of Intelligence Testing by John White. By John White. Pp. 172. London and New York: Routledge. 2006. £21.99 (pbk), £70.00 (hbk). ISBN 0-415-39493-7 (pbk) 0-415-36892-8 (hbk).

At the end of this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Discuss different definitions and theories of intelligence; 2. Appreciate the implications of different theories for intelligence testing; 3. Understand the nature and functions of intelligence tests and be aware of the controversies surrounding their use; 4. Appreciate the issues surrounding the heredity/environment controversy in intelligence and evaluate different kinds of evidence used by psychologists to reach a conclusion; 5. Discuss the interactionist approach used by psychologists in assessing the relative influence of heredity and environment on intelligence test performance.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses three levels of description: intelligence, mind, and reasoning. All three approaches have enhanced greatly to the understanding of human mind and they have contributed significantly to the attempts to strengthen and enhance intelligence and the mind. The psychometric approach has been successful in illuminating the structure of intelligence. That is, it has shed light on the hierarchical organization of intelligence and pinpointed the boundaries between the abilities involved in each hierarchical level. Thus, modern psychology must be indebted to the psychometric study of intelligence because it provided the ground for the understanding of intra- and inter-individual differences in intelligence and for the development of important practical applications. Intelligence testing and programs designed to boost intelligence are the most notable applications that resulted from this tradition. The cognitive approach focused on the functional and the procedural aspects of intellect. As a result, it highlighted how different functions such as perception, attention, memory, and thought work, how they are used by the person in different environments, what their limitations are, and how these limitations might be overcome. The chapter describes the three levels of description.

This study was conducted on 160 children, in the Bagalkot district of Karnataka state between August and October 2010, with the aim of finding out if there is a relation between dental fluorosis status and Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Children were categorized as, those suffering from dental fluorosis and those not suffering from dental fluorosis and for all children in both categories, Intelligence testing was done using the Raven′s Coloured Progressive Matrices. The following observations were made from the data gathered: The mean IQ score of children without dental fluorosis was significantly higher than those children who had dental fluorosis. The mean IQ scores did not vary with the severity of dental fluorosis as classified by Dean′s fluorosis index. Also it was noticed that the percentage of children with dental fluorosis was more in Extremely Low and Low IQ categories whereas the percentage of children without dental fluorosis was more in Average and High Average IQ categories. Previous studies had indicated toward decreased Intelligence in children exposed to high levels of fluoride and our study also confirmed such an effect.