Intelligence: A Tropical Approach To Lifespan Development

Intelligent quotient test is defined as a test that has been formulated and it is often used to measure human intelligence. There are many different types of IQ tests that are used to determine the level of intelligence between different test subjects. IQ testing has a wide range of application and in different specialized professions. Human resource managers have applied IQ testing as part of the tests administer during interviewing process. However, IQ testing has a wide application in research field where they are used to measure different traits across cultures or races. IQ testing has attracted many controversies, most of which support the assertion that IQ testing is indeed biased. This essay will present arguments in support of this standpoint.

Decades of research have documented the biases in standardized tests when it comes to students of color and culture. Cultural bias is an expression that means certain cultures are not given an equal chance to succeed in society because of an unfairness, prejudice, or partiality. Cultural biases involve practices and rules that put some minority groups at a disadvantage. In the public school systems, minority children are more likely to do poorly on state tests than the non-minority students are. A study by Jay Rosner in 2002 showed that sample questions, which were answered correctly by more African-American students, were not chosen for use in the tests. Although in the recent year’s test makers have attempted to discuss the concerns about test bias by establishing review committees to search the test for bias. Significant problems stay in the content of the

Scott Barry Kaufman had a very difficult time growing up. He was about to repeat third grade, and was regularly bullied by kids who constantly reminded him that he will always be a failure (Kaufman, 2013). Finally, he took an intelligence test. Kaufman recounts, in his book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, how this one test drastically changed his life forever.

“Not because you think you know everything without questioning, but rather because you question everything you think you know.”What is intelligence? Some think its only academic smarts others think there are different types of intelligences. Some examples of the multiple intelligences, like artistic, emotional, and logical mathematical. Artistic intelligence is being able to paint, and make sculptures with ease. Emotional intelligence includes interpersonal which refers to knowing others feeling, and intrapersonal which regers with knowing your own feelings. Also logical mathematical deals with being good with math, but also being connected to it somehow.

Intelligence tests even in these days remain somewhat controversial, from its interpretations, to their classifications in scoring on bell curves. So is the magnitude of debate, that many professionals in assessments question the value of these tests. One aspect of much controversy is the use of a single or multiple scores to determine intelligence. Some general intelligence assessments only use a score, g. This apparently reflects the variance underlying shared in different series of tests performance. Nevertheless, recent theories have suggested that human intelligence can be better measured in terms of multiple types of intelligence rather than a single score. One of those theories is the gf-gc; this theory indicates that there are two types of intelligence: f = fluid and c = crystalized.

For example, in California some of the standardized testing was proven to be bias. I experienced this first hand because my daughter had to be tested year after year in a public school. The test administrators of the standardized testing thought that my daughter was not able to speak because she would not answer the questions that they would ask her. Later the test administrators realized that my daughter did not respond to their questions because she was a Spanish speaker and they were asking her questions in English. This situation also showed that culture had played a role in my daughter’s assessment because the test administrators showed her pictures and asked her to name the objects in the pictures. My daughter was unable to name the pictures because they showed her a photo of a piece of pizza, a baseball, and a picture of an American football. My daughter had just arrived from Mexico where neither of those things were common so she had never seen them in her life. She was unable to name them because she did not know their name so this showed me that culture is a very important component of effectively assessing a

In the earlier year of psychology and research there had been ways on how to calculate different subjects that would be used to portray the demographics of social groups. One of which is intelligence testing. Looking back in the history of intelligence testing, there had been many studies conducted on intelligence that indicated some strong theories on what determines intelligence. The most controversial involving race and ethnicity. Modern research has made much advancements to say that these researchers did not realize was that there was much flaw in their procedures. Not to mention that the obliviousness may have been a result of subjectivity. These claims can be invalidated by many studies with revealing the

For Cattell, fluid intelligence represented a person’s innate abilities to detect relationships among various stimuli and to process this information effectively, efficiently and quickly. Fluid intelligence is all about a person’s ability to think and act quickly, or to reason, and it is an innate capacity grounded most noticeably in the brain (nature). Crystallised intelligence, on the other hand, represents those skills and abilities we get from accumulated knowledge and experience, good judgement and social skills, and stems from learning and the environment (nurture)… A good part of intelligence in relation to healthy cognitive development is nurtured through exploration and opportunities to extract meaning from such explorations and more often than not it is the mistakes that children make that provide a great deal of meaning and intellectual stimulation. (qtd. in Nagel

The intelligence quotient or IQ is an index derived from standardized tests of intelligence (Gerrig 275). IQ is calculated by taking a person’s mental age, which is received from the results of the tests given, and dividing it by chronological age and then multiplying by 100. The theories of intelligence are psychometric, Sternberg’s triarchic theory, and Gardner’s multiple intelligences and emotional

Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Intelligences is the ability to learn facts and skills and apply them. Howard Gardner wrote a book called Intelligences Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. He wrote this book to help expand the knowledge of professors and everyday people that no matter your IQ and or test scores that you cannot simply judge someone off of a numerical score. People are smart just in different areas bringing different learning styles and intelligence to the table. Gardner studies led him to propose seven possible intelligences. Intrapersonal

What exactly is intelligence? Can it be measured precisely or is it a more indefinite concept? These are queries that experts in fields of developmental psychology and cognition have pondered for a great many years. At this point in time the definition of intelligence is accepted universally as “...the capacity to understand the world, think with rationality, and use resources effectively when faced with challenges” (Feldman, Robert S. and Oriane Landry 212). This statement gives a fairly broad view on the concept of intelligence and allows for the inclusiveness of interpretation. It is difficult to find one set way of determining an individual’s intelligence because of the generality of the topic.

For decades intelligence quotient (IQ) has been held with utmost importance. Many use it to measure success later on in life, while others use it to measure how “smart” they are. According to Hurley, an IQ test or a portion that measures fluid intelligence can test and predict various things in the future, but that’s not true; it can’t predict how one will react in a certain situations, or what an individual will feel at a certain time. In fact, a woman named Tina Crhristopherson had the IQ of 189 (140 genius), but that didn’t make her the brightest of the bunch ("Commentary: When fear gets in the way of intelligent behavior" 1). Tina spent her life living in fear of an illness her mother had, so she would drink four gallons

Intelligence is referred to as an individual’s capacity for understanding, logic, learning, self-awareness, planning, emotional knowledge, problem solving and creativity. It can be generally described to be the ability of perceiving information, and retaining it as the applied knowledge towards some adaptive behaviors within a particular context or environment. Individuals do differ from each other in their understanding ability of complex ideas, to learn from their experiences, to adapt effectively to the environment, to overcome the obstacles through taking thought and to engage in the various reasoning forms. Though these individual differences can be found to be substantial, they are not always entirely consistent, for instance, the intellectual

Overall, Gardner came up with nine types of intelligences. However, this essay will only cover three of them: verbal/linguistic, body-kinesthetic, and logical/mathematical. This essay will also cover several examples of each type of intelligence. Gardner also had some critics criticizing his research which will also be included throughout the essay.

“Intelligence of a person involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings – “catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.” (Makharia et al, 2016, p.1-3)