1. Intelligence Testing 1928-1978: What Next?
- Author
-
Scottish Council for Research in Education. and Vernon, Philip E.
- Abstract
Attention is drawn to the ways in which current conceptions of intelligence and its measurement differ from those which were generally accepted in 1928. The following principles underlying intelligence testing were generally agreed upon in 1928: (1) the assumption of intelligence as a recognizable attribute, responsible for differences among children and adults in learning, reasoning, and other cognitive capacities; (2) the principle that sampling appropriate mental tasks and norming scores against distribution in the population yields IQs acceptable as quantitative measures of level of intelligence; and (3) essentially innate and genetically determined, intelligence develops with age, regardless of the environment. These statements are contrasted to 1978 thinking, and the following common criticisms of intelligence testing are highlighted: most item types are developed haphazardly without clear rationale; group tests are often given by untrained lay people under poorly controlled conditions; test results depend on practice and motivation; the tests are unreliable, and, the public feels threatened by tests. The remainder of the paper is a look at recent investigations supporting genetic/environmental factors on intellectual growth. (GK)
- Published
- 1979