Chapter 1: Intelligence and Ability
In 1904 the French government handed a psychologist named Alfred Binet an unusual task. Paris had just made schooling compulsory, and teachers needed a fair way to find the children who were struggling and would need extra help. Working with a young physician, Théodore Simon, Binet built something the world had never seen: a set of graded mental tasks — copying shapes, repeating numbers, defining words, following instructions. A child who could handle the tasks typical of an eight-year-old was said to have a “mental age” of eight, whatever the birth certificate said.
The Binet-Simon scale of 1905 became the ancestor of nearly every intelligence test that followed. Yet Binet himself stayed uneasy about it. He never believed his numbers captured a child’s whole mind, and he warned that a low score should open a door to help, not slam one shut with a permanent label.
More than a century later, his questions are still ours. What exactly is this thing we call intelligence? Is it one single power, like the lone lamp in Fig. 1.0-1, or a whole panel of different lights — words, numbers, music, movement, a feel for people? Can it really be caught in one number, and if we do measure it, whose intelligence are we measuring, and what do we owe the person behind the score?
Diagram
Fig. 1.0-1 – illustration contrasting two human-head silhouettes: one lit by a single glowing bulb, the other lit by many small distinct bulbs labelled words, numbers, shapes, music, movement and people; caption poses the question “one ability, or many?”
As you work through this chapter, keep these five questions in mind — each one is answered along the way.
1.1 The Nature of Intelligence
Almost everyone uses the word “intelligence” every day, usually as praise. We call a quick student intelligent, a clever plan intelligent, even a well-designed phone intelligent. The word comes from the Latin intelligere, meaning “to understand” or “to perceive.” For a long time psychologists treated intelligence as belonging only to the thinking, knowing side of the mind. Today they see it as far broader, reaching into how well a person handles emotions, people and the demands of daily life.
That thinking-and-knowing side has a technical name. Anything cognitive relates to knowing — to processes such as perceiving, reasoning, remembering, understanding and problem solving. Early study of intelligence stayed almost entirely inside this cognitive domain, which is why the first tests measured reasoning and knowledge rather than social or emotional skill.
How Psychologists Define It
There is no single definition of intelligence that every psychologist accepts, and it is worth asking why. We never actually see intelligence; we only see intelligent behaviour and reason backwards to the ability behind it. Because different psychologists watched different behaviours, they stressed different things.
Lewis Terman emphasised the ability to think, especially to reason with abstract ideas. Edward Thorndike emphasised the ability to learn from experience. More recent workers stress the ability to adapt — to meet whatever a changing environment throws at us. The definition that pulls these strands together, and the one this book will lean on, was given by David Wechsler.
Notice how much Wechsler’s wording carries. “Global capacity” treats intelligence as something general, running across many tasks. “Purposefully” and “rationally” cover goal-directed, reasoned thought. “Deal effectively with the environment” adds the practical, adaptive side that pure reasoning leaves out.
One Ability, or Many?
Behind the definitions lies a deeper disagreement about the very shape of intelligence. Some psychologists view it as a single characteristic — one broad power along which people simply have more or less. On this view a generally bright person tends to do well at most mental tasks.
Others see intelligence as a bundle of several distinct components that work more or less independently, so that a person may be strong in one and weak in another. This is why one classmate excels at mathematics yet struggles with essays, while another shows the reverse.
This is not a minor quarrel; it drives almost every theory in the sections that follow. As you read the classical and modern theories, keep asking of each one: does it treat intelligence as a single thing, or as many?
Quality or Process — Heredity and Environment
A second long-running debate asks whether intelligence is a fixed quality or an active process. If it is a quality, it is largely inherited and innate — a fixed endowment received from one’s ancestors. If it is a process, it is switched on and shaped by the environment, developing as the person interacts with the world and gathers experience.
The modern answer refuses to choose. Intelligence grows out of the interaction between heredity, the genetic potential a person is born with, and environment, the surrounding conditions of family, schooling, nutrition and culture that this potential develops within. Each new situation a person meets adds experience, and that experience feeds back into how well the next problem is solved.
What ties the two together is adaptation — the process of adjusting one’s behaviour to fit the demands of a situation. As Fig. 1.1-1 shows, heredity and environment feed into intelligence, which then reveals itself in purposeful, rational and adaptive behaviour rather than as a hidden inner quantity.
Diagram
Fig. 1.1-1 – heredity and environment drawn as two inputs meeting and interacting to produce intelligence, with a single arrow leading onward to purposeful, rational and adaptive behaviour
The modern view also stresses the social setting. Intelligence is judged partly by how well a person meets society’s present demands — thinking, reasoning, remembering and understanding well enough to cope with real situations. On this reading, an “intelligent” act is one that works in the world, not merely one that scores well on paper.
1.2 Classical Theories of Intelligence
The classical theories all try to answer one question left open in the last section: what is intelligence actually made of? Is it a single all-purpose ability, or a set of distinct powers that happen to travel together? Each theory below is really a different answer to that question, backed by a different kind of evidence. Read them as a conversation across half a century, in which each theorist reacts to the one before.
1.2.1 Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory
In 1904 the English psychologist Charles Spearman began from a simple observation. A student who scored well on one kind of mental test — say, arithmetic — tended to score well on quite different ones too, such as vocabulary or spatial puzzles. The scores rose and fell together.
To study this pattern Spearman used, and helped invent, factor analysis — a statistical method that examines the web of correlations among many test scores and works out the smaller number of underlying factors that could produce them. The correlations he found pointed to something shared by every mental task.
He named that shared something the general factor (g) — a general mental ability that runs through all intellectual work. Alongside it he placed a set of specific factors (s) — narrower abilities tied to one particular kind of task. On this view every mental performance draws on g plus the particular s that the task happens to need, so that performance \(= g + s\).
A worked picture helps. A student’s average marks across physics, chemistry, mathematics, literature and craft reflect a common stock of ability, which is g. His unusually high marks in mathematics and chemistry reflect a specific ability for those subjects — an s. Because g is shared, marks across subjects correlate positively; because each s is separate, being strong in literature says nothing about being strong in mathematics.
The two factors behave very differently, and the syllabus asks you to know how.
The main use psychologists made of the theory is important. If a single g underlies all mental work, then a good test of g would predict performance almost everywhere — and this is exactly the ambition behind standardised IQ tests, which are built to estimate the amount of g a person has.
The theory’s single agreed criticism concerns these in-between abilities. Everyday observation shows clusters — a person may be good at all verbal tasks, or all numerical ones — that are wider than a single specific factor but narrower than universal g. Spearman’s scheme has no room for such group factors, and he himself came to sense their existence late in life without ever fully working them out. It was this gap that the next theorist set out to fill.
Diagram
Fig. 1.2-1 – Spearman’s model as overlapping circles for verbal, mathematical, spatial and mechanical tasks, all sharing a common central region labelled g, with each circle also carrying its own outer band labelled s
1.2.2 Thurstone’s Theory of Primary Mental Abilities
The American psychologist L. L. Thurstone did not accept that intelligence was a single ability. Working in the 1930s with his own refined version of factor analysis, he argued that intelligence is better described as a combination of several roughly independent factors, each broad enough to guide a whole family of tasks.
He called these factors Primary Mental Abilities — the intermediate, group-level abilities that Spearman’s scheme had missed. Instead of one general g running everything, Thurstone found a set of primaries, each giving a kind of functional unity to a group of related mental activities. He identified seven.
The seven Primary Mental Abilities are: the Numerical factor (N), the ability to do arithmetic quickly and accurately; the Verbal comprehension factor (V), the ability to understand words, ideas and verbal relations; the Spatial factor (S), the ability to imagine and manipulate objects in space; the Memory factor (M), the ability to memorise and recall quickly; the Word Fluency factor (W), the ability to produce isolated words rapidly; the Inductive Reasoning factor (R), the ability to draw a general rule from particular instances; and the Perceptual Speed factor (P), the ability to perceive details quickly and accurately.
Because these primaries are distinct, a person can be strong in some and ordinary in others — which fits the everyday fact that a fluent writer need not be a fast calculator. Test batteries were later built to measure the separate primaries rather than a single lumped score.
The single criticism the syllabus attaches to the theory targets its boldest claim — the denial of g. When the seven primaries were themselves examined, they turned out to be positively correlated with one another rather than fully independent, which again suggests some general ability working underneath. Thurstone himself eventually conceded this, softening his opposition to g. The lesson is that the “one versus many” debate does not have to be settled all-or-nothing: intelligence may hold a general factor and distinct group abilities at the same time.
Diagram
Fig. 1.2-2 – a central hub labelled “Primary Mental Abilities” with seven spokes radiating to the seven factors: Numerical, Verbal, Spatial, Memory, Word Fluency, Inductive Reasoning and Perceptual Speed
1.2.3 Cattell’s Fluid and Crystallised Intelligence
Raymond Cattell took the debate in a fresh direction. Rather than counting factors, he asked what kinds of intelligence exist, and answered with two — one we are largely born ready to use, and one we build over a lifetime.
The first is fluid intelligence — the largely inherited ability to reason, think and solve problems in new situations, independent of what one has been taught. It sets the limits of our information processing and depends on healthy neurological development rather than on schooling or culture. We call on it whenever we face an unfamiliar puzzle with no ready-made method. Fluid intelligence is essentially fully developed by the end of adolescence and then slowly declines with age.
The second is crystallised intelligence — the accumulated store of knowledge, vocabulary and skills that we gather from experience and education over the years. It is the intellectual competence to apply what we have already learned. Unlike fluid intelligence, it holds steady and can even keep rising well into later life, because experience keeps adding to it.
The evidence for the split is the way the two follow different paths across life, shown in Fig. 1.2-3. On tasks that demand quick reasoning in strange conditions, younger people usually lead; on tasks that draw on a lifetime’s vocabulary and general knowledge, older people often do better. This everyday contrast answers one of our opening questions.
Diagram
Fig. 1.2-3 – a lifespan graph with age on the x-axis and level of intelligence on the y-axis, showing fluid intelligence rising then declining after adolescence while crystallised intelligence rises and then holds roughly steady into old age
Cattell’s theory is powerful for explaining age changes, but it has a real limitation. By sorting intelligence into two broad kinds, it highlights general ability and says little about the narrow, specific factors that make one person uniquely good at one particular task — the very detail Spearman’s s and Thurstone’s primaries were trying to capture. The two kinds also interact more than the neat split suggests, since we use fluid ability to build crystallised knowledge in the first place.
1.2.4 Guilford’s Structure of Intellect Model
If Cattell simplified intelligence to two kinds, J. P. Guilford, in 1967, went to the opposite extreme and multiplied it into many. His Structure of Intellect model is the most detailed classical map of mental abilities ever drawn, and also the most complex.
Guilford proposed that intelligence is not one factor, or seven, but as many as 180 distinct abilities. Every one of these abilities, he argued, can be located by a three-way classification: it is a particular operation carried out on a particular kind of content, producing a particular kind of product. Think of it as three questions asked of any mental act — what are you doing, what are you doing it to, and what comes out.
There are six operations, the ways of processing information: cognition (recognising and understanding), memory recording, memory retention, divergent production (generating many possible answers), convergent production (arriving at the single best answer) and evaluation (judging).
There are five contents, the kinds of material the mind works on: visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic (meanings) and behavioural (social information).
There are six products, the forms the result can take: units, classes, relations, systems, transformations and implications.
Multiplying the three dimensions gives the model its famous total: \(6 \times 5 \times 6 = 180\) possible abilities, one for each small cell of the cube in Fig. 1.2-4 — each cell a unique combination of one operation, one content and one product.
Diagram
Fig. 1.2-4 – Guilford’s Structure of Intellect shown as a three-dimensional cube; one axis labelled with the six operations, one with the five contents, one with the six products, so that each small cell represents one of the 180 abilities
One distinction inside the model is worth pausing on, because it reaches beyond Guilford’s theory into everyday testing.
The single criticism most often levelled at the model follows straight from its size. If intelligence has 180 separate abilities, then no one test — and no short battery of tests — can fairly indicate a person’s intelligence; measuring the full model would be enormously time-consuming and unwieldy. Its very completeness makes it hard to put to work, which is why later psychologists searched for simpler, more usable accounts. Those newer accounts are the subject of the next section.
1.3 Modern Theories of Intelligence
The classical theories tried to break intelligence into its parts — one factor, seven, or a hundred and eighty. The modern theories change the question. Instead of asking what pieces intelligence is built from, they ask how it actually works and where it shows up in real life. They treat intelligence as a set of thinking processes that people use to reason and solve problems, and they pay close attention to forms of ability that classroom tests tend to miss.
1.3.1 Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
Robert Sternberg put forward his triarchic theory in 1985. “Triarchic” simply means “governed by three,” and the theory holds that intelligence takes three basic forms, which together help a person handle the changes life keeps throwing up. Sternberg’s insight was that being clever in an exam hall and being clever on a busy street are not the same thing, and a full theory must cover both.
The first form is analytical intelligence, also called componential intelligence. It is the ability to think critically — to take a problem apart, analyse it and reason out a solution. Sternberg said it works through three kinds of component. Metacomponents are the higher-order processes that plan the work, deciding what to do and how. Performance components actually carry the task out. Knowledge-acquisition components handle the learning of new information and new ways of doing things. People strong in analytical intelligence tend to score well on standard tests of academic potential.
The second form is creative intelligence, also called experiential intelligence, and it concerns how well we use experience. It has two sides. Novelty is the ability to deal with a completely new situation by inventing fresh pathways to a solution, where others simply freeze. Automation is the ability to perform a much-practised task smoothly and automatically, so that it needs almost no attention and can run alongside other thinking. Being good at one does not guarantee being good at the other.
The third form is practical intelligence, also called contextual intelligence, and Sternberg thought it the most interesting of all. It is the intelligence of everyday problem solving — of getting things to work in the real world. It operates through three processes: adaptation, changing oneself to fit the existing environment, as when we carry an umbrella in the monsoon; selection, choosing or moving to a more suitable environment when the present one cannot be improved; and shaping, altering the environment itself to suit our needs, as a parent might fix a family dinner hour so that everyone eats together. People high on practical intelligence are what we usually call “street-smart.”
Diagram
Fig. 1.3-1 – Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory as a branching chart: the theory splits into Componential/Analytical (branching to metacomponents, performance, knowledge acquisition), Experiential/Creative (branching to novelty, automation) and Contextual/Practical (branching to adaptation, selection, shaping)
The theory’s great strength is this breadth — it pulls analytical, creative and practical ability into a single picture and reminds us that school success is only one slice of intelligence. Its main weakness is a familiar one for the newer theories: it rests heavily on subjective judgement and lacks strong experimental evidence, and it does not spell out clearly how the three forms relate to one another.
1.3.2 Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
In 1983 Howard Gardner argued that it is a mistake to speak of intelligence in the singular at all. In his theory of multiple intelligences there are several relatively independent intelligences, and we can understand the whole nature of intelligence only by understanding each of them on its own terms. Some, such as verbal and mathematical ability, are easy to spot because tests already measure them; others are just as real but usually overlooked.
Gardner did not simply assert these intelligences; he drew on several kinds of evidence, including the way brain damage can wipe out one ability while leaving others intact, and the existence of prodigies who are extraordinary in a single domain and average elsewhere. That pattern is hard to explain if intelligence is one single thing.
The syllabus fixes eight intelligences, and you should be able to name each with a typical example.
The linguistic intelligence is well-developed verbal skill and sensitivity to the sound, meaning and rhythm of words; it is high in authors, poets and orators. The logical-mathematical intelligence is the ability to reason conceptually and abstractly and to solve logical and numerical problems; it is high in scientists, engineers and programmers. The spatial intelligence is the ability to think in images and visualise accurately; it is strong in sailors, sculptors, painters and architects. The bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence is the ability to control one’s body movements and handle objects skilfully, seen in athletes, dancers and surgeons.
The musical intelligence is the ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch, timbre and tone, shown by composers, conductors and musicians. The interpersonal intelligence is the capacity to read and respond to the moods, motivations and desires of others and to interact with them effectively; it is evident in teachers, counsellors and leaders. The intrapersonal intelligence is the capacity for self-awareness — being in tune with one’s own feelings, values, beliefs and thoughts. The naturalistic intelligence is sensitivity to plants, animals and the features of the natural world, seen in botanists, farmers and ecologists.
Diagram
Fig. 1.3-2 – a central circle labelled “Multiple Intelligences” with eight spokes to the eight types: Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinaesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalistic
The single criticism the syllabus attaches to Gardner concerns evidence. When the supposed intelligences are measured, only weak correlations turn up, and critics argue that several of them look more like talents or aptitudes than separate intelligences. Because there is little hard psychometric proof and a large reliance on subjective judgement, mainstream psychologists have questioned how much the theory really adds. Even so, its influence on teaching — the idea that different children shine in different ways — has been enormous.
With the classical and modern theories now in view, we can settle the question the chapter opened with.
1.4 Measuring Intelligence: IQ and Types of Tests
The theories tell us what intelligence might be. To study it as a science, though, psychologists have to measure it — and here they run into the difficulty raised in Section 1.1, that intelligence cannot be seen directly. Their answer is to measure it indirectly, by giving a person a set of carefully chosen mental tasks and reading intelligence off the performance. The result is usually reported as a single number: the IQ.
1.4.1 Mental Age, Chronological Age and IQ
The story of the IQ begins with a practical need. When Alfred Binet built the first workable intelligence test, he wanted to compare a child’s mental performance against what is normal for children of that age. That comparison needs two ages, not one.
The first is the chronological age (CA) — simply a person’s actual age, counted from the date of birth. The second is the mental age (MA) — the age level that a person’s mental performance matches. If a child solves the tasks that a typical eight-year-old can solve, that child is said to have a mental age of eight, whatever the calendar says. Mental age tells us the level a person is working at; chronological age tells us the level expected for their years.
Putting the two together came a little later. In 1912 William Stern proposed expressing a person’s intelligence as the ratio of mental age to chronological age. Terman, working with Merrill at Stanford, then adopted this idea and multiplied the ratio by 100, so that the result would be a whole number rather than an awkward decimal. This gives the intelligence quotient (IQ).
The formula follows directly:
\[IQ = \frac{MA}{CA} \times 100\]
where MA is the mental age and CA the chronological age, both measured in years, and the factor of 100 is used only to remove decimals.
The meaning of the number matters more than any sum. When a person’s mental age equals their chronological age, the ratio is one and the IQ works out to 100 — the exact average for that age. An IQ clearly above 100 means the person is performing ahead of their years; an IQ clearly below 100 means they are performing behind. So the IQ is really a way of placing a person against age-mates, not a raw score of how much they know.
The ratio formula has a built-in limit, and it explains why modern tests have moved on. Mental age keeps climbing through childhood, but the growth of measured intelligence roughly levels off in the mid-teens. Once mental age stops rising steadily, dividing it by an ever-increasing chronological age would make the IQ drift downwards for no real reason, so the ratio IQ becomes meaningless for adults. Modern scales such as the Wechsler tests therefore drop the ratio and instead compare an adult’s score directly against other adults of the same age — a method we meet in the next section.
1.4.2 Types of Intelligence Tests
Many different intelligence tests exist, and it helps to sort them. They differ mainly in two ways: how the test is given, and what kind of task it uses.
By how they are administered, tests fall into two kinds. An individual test is given to only one person at a time, in a one-to-one setting. Because the tester works with a single testee, they can check that every instruction has been understood and can observe the person’s behaviour closely; the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is a well-known example. A group test can be given to many people at once. It is far quicker and cheaper, but the tester learns much less about each individual, and a slow or anxious testee may perform poorly simply because no one notices their confusion; Raven’s Progressive Matrices is a common example.
By the kind of task, tests are either verbal or non-verbal. A verbal test is language-based: every question and answer runs through words, so reading, writing and vocabulary are needed throughout. A performance test — also called a non-verbal test — asks the testee to do or manipulate something concrete, such as fitting blocks or completing a pattern, with little use of language. This difference has a fair-testing consequence worth remembering: performance on a verbal test is strongly shaped by a person’s schooling and language background, whereas a non-verbal test leans on this far less. That is exactly why non-verbal tests are preferred when a test must be fair across cultures, a point developed in Section 1.5.
Tests also differ in how they are scored. On an age scale, credits are awarded and then compared against the testee’s chronological age to yield a mental age — the approach the older Binet-type tests use. On a point scale, a fixed number of points is simply awarded for each correct response, as in the Wechsler tests. Figure 1.4-1 lays these bases of classification side by side.
Diagram
Fig. 1.4-1 – a classification tree headed “Intelligence Tests” splitting first by administration into Individual and Group, and separately by nature of task into Verbal and Performance (non-verbal), with one example test named under each branch
1.5 Intelligence Tests and Scales
Having seen how tests are classified, we can now look closely at two of them. The syllabus fixes one individual test and one group test as worked examples. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale shows what a modern individual test looks like; Raven’s Progressive Matrices shows how a group test can be made fair across cultures.
1.5.1 The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III
David Wechsler designed his first intelligence test, the Wechsler-Bellevue Scale, in 1939, and revised versions have appeared ever since. This chapter looks at the third revision, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III), published in 1997.
Wechsler was reacting to a real gap. The popular tests of his day were mostly verbal and so failed to measure the non-verbal side of a person’s ability. He answered this by building tests that combine a verbal and a performance component, giving separate scores for each as well as a combined score.
Aim of the test
The aim of the WAIS-III is to measure the general intelligence of an adult across both verbal and non-verbal abilities, and to yield separate estimates of verbal ability, performance ability and overall ability. It is an individual test, given to one person at a time.
The six verbal subtests
The verbal component of the WAIS-III uses six core subtests.
- Vocabulary: the testee defines a set of words of increasing difficulty.
- Similarities: the testee explains how two given things are alike.
- Arithmetic: the testee solves arithmetic problems mentally, within a set time.
- Digit Span: the testee repeats a series of spoken numbers, in forward and in backward order.
- Information: the testee answers general-knowledge questions of increasing difficulty.
- Comprehension: the testee explains how to handle everyday problems, showing practical and social understanding.
The five performance subtests
The performance, or non-verbal, component uses five core subtests.
- Picture Completion: the testee spots the important feature missing from a picture.
- Digit Symbol-Coding: the testee pairs numbers with symbols using a key, working against the clock.
- Block Design: the testee reproduces a design using red-and-white blocks.
- Matrix Reasoning: the testee chooses the piece that completes a visual pattern.
- Picture Arrangement: the testee puts a mixed set of picture cards into an order that tells a sensible story.
Diagram
Fig. 1.5-1 – WAIS-III structure: a Verbal column listing the six verbal subtests and a Performance column listing the five performance subtests, the two columns feeding into a Verbal Scale IQ and a Performance Scale IQ, which combine into a Full Scale IQ
Administration
The WAIS-III is a standardised test with established norms, and it must be given by a trained administrator working from official manuals. Testing one adult takes roughly seventy-five to a hundred and ten minutes. The tester follows fixed instructions so that every testee is examined under the same conditions, which is what makes scores comparable.
Scoring
Scoring moves in steps. The raw score on each subtest is first turned into a scaled score, standardised to a mean of 10. These scaled scores are then combined to give three IQ scores: the Verbal Scale IQ from the verbal subtests, the Performance Scale IQ from the performance subtests, and the Full Scale IQ from all of them together. Each IQ score has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.
This is where the WAIS differs from the old ratio IQ of Section 1.4.1. It does not divide mental age by chronological age. Instead it uses a deviation IQ — a score that compares an adult’s performance directly with that of other adults of the same age, showing how far above or below the average of that age group the person falls. This neatly sidesteps the problem that mental age stops rising in adulthood.
One honest caution rounds off the picture. The scale’s norms may fit some ethnic and socio-economic groups better than others, and its scoring is intricate, so results are best read by a trained psychologist rather than treated as a bare number.
1.5.2 Raven’s Progressive Matrices
Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) is the syllabus’s example of a group test, and it works on a completely different principle from the Wechsler scale. It was developed by John C. Raven in 1938, and it is non-verbal: every item is a visual pattern.
In each item the testee sees a matrix — a grid of figures arranged by a rule — with one piece missing, and must choose the missing piece from six to eight options so that the whole pattern is completed. There is usually no time limit. Because the task is purely visual, the test needs no reading, writing or spoken language, as Fig. 1.5-2 illustrates.
Diagram
Fig. 1.5-2 – a sample Progressive Matrices item: a grid of geometric figures following a rule with the bottom-right cell blank, and a row of numbered answer options below from which the missing figure must be chosen
That non-verbal design is what makes RPM a culture-fair test — a test built to keep cultural bias to a minimum so that it can be applied fairly to people from very different backgrounds. Language-heavy tests reward a particular schooling and vocabulary; a pattern test does not. No test can be entirely free of cultural influence, but a non-verbal matrix comes far closer than most.
Aim and underlying factors
The aim of RPM is to measure general intelligence — Spearman’s g — with as little cultural and linguistic bias as possible. Raven, who was influenced by Spearman, held that it taps two components of general ability: eductive ability, the clear-thinking capacity to make sense of a complex, unfamiliar situation and work out the rule; and reproductive ability, the capacity to store learned information and reproduce it. The matrices lean mostly on eductive ability.
The three versions
The test comes in three forms so that it can suit testees of different ages and abilities.
Administration
RPM can be given to a group or to one person, and the standard form sets no time limit, so testees work at their own pace. Items grow steadily harder — this is what “progressive” means — and a testee who does unexpectedly well on an easier version can be moved up to a harder one.
1.6 Levels of Intelligence
Everyone is born with some intelligence, but not in equal measure — some people have more intellectual capacity and some less. Once intelligence tests existed, these differences could be described in an orderly way. The classification most widely used is the one built into the Wechsler scale, which sorts IQ scores into named levels.
| IQ range | Classification |
|---|---|
| 130 and above | Very Superior |
| 120–129 | Superior |
| 110–119 | High Average |
| 90–109 | Average |
| 80–89 | Low Average |
| 70–79 | Borderline |
| 69 and below | Extremely Low |
Notice how the table is built around 100. Most people cluster near the middle, and the numbers thin out towards both ends, so that very high and very low scores are both rare. Figure 1.6-1 shows this as a curve. The two ends of that curve — the gifted at one extreme and below-average individuals at the other — are what this section examines, because their needs are special.
Diagram
Fig. 1.6-1 – a bell-shaped normal curve of IQ scores centred on 100, with the Wechsler classification bands (Extremely Low, Borderline, Low Average, Average, High Average, Superior, Very Superior) marked along the base, showing most people near the centre and few at either tail
1.6.1 The Gifted
A person is described as gifted when they show strong evidence of unusually high ability. In IQ terms this usually means a score of about 130 and above — roughly the top two per cent of people. Modern writers stress that giftedness is more than a high number. Joseph Renzulli, for instance, described gifted behaviour as the meeting of three things: above-average ability, strong commitment to the task, and high creativity. On this view a gifted person is not just quick, but driven and inventive too.
Gifted children share several strengths, though no child shows all of them all the time. Five stand out.
- They learn rapidly and grasp new ideas quickly, and usually have an excellent memory.
- They use a large vocabulary and advanced language, and think in abstract, complex and logical ways.
- They are intensely curious, hold a wide range of interests, and ask searching questions.
- They have a long attention span with strong powers of concentration and observation.
- They are often creative and insightful, and their talents may reach well beyond academics into art, music or sport.
High ability, however, brings its own difficulties, and gifted children can struggle in ways that surprise people. Four problems are common.
- They may feel emotionally insecure or frustrated, and grow bored when their schoolwork is too easy for them.
- They may find it hard to make friends and can become socially isolated, being out of step with age-mates.
- They may set themselves impossibly high standards, turning perfectionism into harsh self-criticism and low self-esteem.
- They are often preoccupied with their own thoughts and prone to day-dreaming, so they can seem inattentive.
Recognising both sides matters. A gifted child who is simply left to coast, without work that challenges them or company that understands them, may end up unhappy despite obvious ability.
1.6.2 Below-Average Intelligence
At the other end of the range are individuals whose intellectual functioning is well below average. Here the modern, respectful term is intellectual disability; the DSM-IV, the classification this book follows, used the older term “mental retardation” for the same condition. Whatever the label, the important point is that a person is far more than a score.
An intellectual disability is not defined by a low IQ alone. Three conditions must hold together: intellectual functioning significantly below average, judged by a standardised test (broadly, an IQ below about 70); a matching weakness in adaptive functioning, meaning the everyday skills needed to cope with the demands of ordinary life; and onset before the age of eighteen. It is the combination — low measured intelligence and difficulty coping with daily life, appearing in childhood — that matters, not any single number.
The DSM-IV divides intellectual disability into four levels of increasing severity — mild, moderate, severe and profound — each with its own IQ band and its own broad pattern across six areas of functioning.
The four levels also differ greatly in how common they are. Among people with an intellectual disability, the great majority — around eighty-five per cent — fall in the mild range, about ten per cent in the moderate range, three to four per cent in the severe range, and one to two per cent in the profound range. In other words, the milder the level, the more common it is.
It is vital to read the table for what it is. These are broad patterns, not a diagnostic checklist. Identifying an intellectual disability calls for a trained professional using a full, standardised assessment of both intelligence and everyday functioning; it can never be judged from a table, a single score, or an online quiz.
1.7 Emotional Intelligence
For most of this chapter intelligence has meant thinking — reasoning, remembering, solving problems. In recent decades psychologists have brought emotion into the picture too. The result is the idea of emotional intelligence, and it fills a gap that pure cognitive tests leave open: some people who are only ordinarily “clever” handle feelings, people and pressure with real skill, while some brilliant reasoners handle them badly.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to appraise and understand emotions — both one’s own and those of the people around one — and to express and regulate one’s own emotions appropriately for the situation. A person with this ability manages relationships well, whether in the family, among friends or at work.
Just as cognitive ability is summarised by an IQ, emotional ability is summarised by an emotional quotient (EQ) — a rough measure of how emotionally intelligent a person is. The idea was later made famous by Daniel Goleman, who described emotional intelligence in terms of knowing one’s own emotions, managing them, motivating oneself, recognising the emotions of others, and handling relationships.
The two quotients are best kept apart in the mind.
A person with a high EQ tends to show five characteristics.
- They perceive and stay sensitive to their own feelings and emotions.
- They read non-verbal cues — body language, facial expression, tone of voice — to sense what others are feeling; this is empathy, the ability to understand another person’s emotions.
- They control and regulate their own emotions and how they show them, staying calm and in harmony with those around them.
- They connect their thoughts and emotions so that feelings help rather than hinder their decisions and problem solving.
- They understand the nature and the sheer power of emotions, and how emotions colour their other mental processes.
The concept is now taken seriously because it seems to matter for a good life. Emotional intelligence is thought to help a person reduce stress, cooperate with others and find contentment, both at home and at work. Nurtured in students, it can support academic success while also preparing them for the emotional demands of adult life.
1.8 Aptitude, Achievement and Interest
Intelligence is not the only quality that decides how well a person will do in a field of work or study. Three closely linked qualities sit alongside it — aptitude, achievement and interest — and each is measured with its own kind of test. This section explains what each term means, why it is worth measuring, and how it is measured.
1.8.1 Aptitude and the General Aptitude Test Battery
Some people seem “cut out” for a particular kind of work before they have had any training in it. That natural readiness is what psychologists call aptitude.
The key word is potential. An aptitude is not a skill the person already has; it is the raw capacity that training and practice can turn into a skill. A child with a musical aptitude is not yet a musician, but is well placed to become one if taught. Aptitude and interest work together: a strong aptitude backed by genuine interest, and then developed through training, is what produces real achievement.
Because aptitude points to the future, it is worth measuring before a person commits to a path. An aptitude test estimates how far someone is likely to benefit from training in an area, which makes it valuable for guiding subject choices, selecting people for jobs or courses, and placing employees where they will do best.
The best-known aptitude test is the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), developed by the United States Employment Service to help decide the work for which a person is best suited. It uses twelve tests — some worked with paper and pencil, some with apparatus — to measure nine different aptitudes.
- General learning ability: the capacity to grasp instructions and learn quickly.
- Verbal aptitude: the ability to understand the meanings of words and ideas.
- Numerical aptitude: the ability to do arithmetic quickly and accurately.
- Spatial aptitude: the ability to think about objects in space and picture the three-dimensional from the two-dimensional.
- Form perception: the ability to notice fine detail in objects, pictures and graphs.
- Clerical perception: the ability to spot detail and differences in written or tabulated material, rather like proof-reading.
- Motor coordination: the ability to coordinate eyes and hands to make quick, precise movements.
- Finger dexterity: the ability to handle small objects skilfully with the fingers.
- Manual dexterity: the ability to move the hands skilfully in larger movements than finger dexterity requires.
The GATB is a well-regarded tool for the vocational guidance of young people and adults. It cannot, however, measure every aptitude — qualities such as mechanical comprehension, reasoning and imagination lie outside its reach.
1.8.2 Achievement Tests
If aptitude is potential before training, achievement is the result after it.
An achievement test measures how much a person has learned in a given area. Tuckman called it a proficiency test, because it shows the extent to which a person has gained certain knowledge or skill as a result of instruction. The examinations that schools hold at the end of a term, and most competitive examinations, are everyday examples of achievement tests.
Achievement tests are useful in more ways than simply grading a learner, and the syllabus asks you to know their uses. They can reveal a weakness in a training programme, so that the teaching itself can be improved. They let education boards examine whether a syllabus and its teaching methods are working. They pinpoint a particular learner’s difficulty, so that the method of instruction can be changed for that learner. And their results can indicate a person’s strengths and weaknesses, hint at fields they might do well in, and even show how effective a teacher or a school has been.
Two special kinds are worth naming. A diagnostic test is designed to find academically weak learners so that remedial help can be arranged, while a standardised end-of-course test checks how much a learner knows about a subject after being taught it.
1.8.3 Aptitude and Achievement Tests Compared
Aptitude and achievement tests are easy to confuse, because both use similar-looking questions. The difference lies in what they are being used to find out.
A neat test decides which is which. If a test is used to predict how a person will perform in future, it is being used as an aptitude test; if it is used to find out what a person has already accomplished, it is being used as an achievement test. Because both, in the end, describe a person’s ability, the two are now often combined into a single ability test, or battery.
1.8.4 Interest and Its Measurement
Ability and potential are not the whole story, because a person may be able to do something well and yet have no wish to. This pull towards some activities and away from others is interest.
Interest is measured because it is closely tied to satisfaction and happiness in life. Knowing what genuinely absorbs a person is a large part of making a sound career choice, and interest also feeds into academic success. Crucially, interest and aptitude interact: a field that a person is both suited to and drawn to is where achievement is most likely to follow, which is why counsellors look at the two together rather than one alone.
Interest is measured with an interest inventory — a questionnaire that records a person’s likes and dislikes and compares them with the interest patterns of people who are content in various occupations. The Strong Interest Inventory is a well-known example, and it groups occupations around a small number of broad interest types, such as realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional work. A close match between a person’s likes and those of people happy in a given occupation is a useful clue about where they might thrive.
1.9 Summary
The nature of intelligence
- Intelligence is inferred from behaviour rather than seen directly; Wechsler defined it as the global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally and deal effectively with the environment.
- It grows out of the interaction between heredity and environment, and shows itself in how well a person adapts to real situations.
- Psychologists have long debated whether it is one general ability or many separate ones — the debate the theories set out to settle.
Classical theories
- Spearman’s two-factor theory: every performance uses a general factor (g), inborn and common to all tasks, plus a task-specific factor (s); its main weakness is that it cannot account for in-between group factors.
- Thurstone’s primary mental abilities: intelligence is seven distinct group abilities — numerical, verbal, spatial, memory, word fluency, inductive reasoning and perceptual speed; its weakness is denying g, since the seven turned out to be correlated.
- Cattell split intelligence into fluid (largely inherited reasoning in novel situations, which declines with age) and crystallised (accumulated knowledge, which holds or rises with age); it says little about the specific abilities that make each person unique.
- Guilford’s Structure of Intellect maps up to 180 abilities from six operations, five contents and six products; its weakness is being far too complex to test in practice.
Modern theories
- Sternberg’s triarchic theory describes three forms — analytical (reasoning and analysis), creative (novelty and automation) and practical (the “street-smart” processes of adaptation, selection and shaping); it lacks strong experimental evidence.
- Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences lists eight relatively independent intelligences — linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic; its weakness is weak empirical support.
- The balanced modern view keeps both sides of the old debate: a general factor working through a range of specific abilities.
Emotional intelligence
- Emotional intelligence (Salovey and Mayer) is the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions and to use this understanding to guide thinking and action; it is summarised as an emotional quotient (EQ).
- Emotionally intelligent people show five marks: awareness of their own feelings, reading others’ non-verbal cues, regulating their emotions, using emotions to make good decisions, and grasping the power emotions have over thinking.
Measuring intelligence
- Mental age is the age level a person’s performance matches and chronological age is their actual age; the ratio IQ is mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100, so that 100 is exactly average.
- The ratio IQ breaks down for adults because mental age stops rising in the mid-teens, so modern scales use a deviation IQ that compares a person against same-age peers.
- Tests are classified by administration (individual versus group) and by task (verbal versus non-verbal/performance); non-verbal tests are fairer across cultures because they lean less on language and schooling.
- The WAIS-III is an individual test with six verbal and five performance subtests, yielding a Verbal Scale IQ, a Performance Scale IQ and a Full Scale IQ, each with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.
- Raven’s Progressive Matrices is a non-verbal, culture-fair group test that measures eductive and reproductive ability and comes in Standard, Coloured and Advanced versions.
Levels of intelligence
- The Wechsler scale grades IQ from Very Superior (130 and above) down to Extremely Low, with most people clustered near the average of 100.
- The gifted (IQ of about 130 and above) learn fast, reason abstractly and are curious, focused and creative, but may face boredom, social isolation, perfectionism and day-dreaming.
- Intellectual disability means below-average intelligence together with weak adaptive functioning, appearing before the age of eighteen; the DSM-IV grades it as mild, moderate, severe and profound, each with its own IQ band and level of support needed.
Aptitude, achievement and interest
- Aptitude is the innate potential for a kind of work before any training; it is measured to guide careers, and the GATB measures nine aptitudes through twelve tests.
- Achievement is what a person has actually learned after training; achievement tests reveal weaknesses in learners, in teaching and in syllabi.
- An aptitude test predicts future performance while an achievement test records past learning; taken together, the two describe a person’s ability.
- Interest is a tendency to become absorbed in an activity and continue it; it is measured with interest inventories to guide career choice, since interest and aptitude together drive achievement.
1.10 Key Terms
- Achievement test: a test that measures how much a person has already learned in an area after training or instruction.
- Adaptation: adjusting one’s behaviour to fit the demands of a situation.
- Adaptive functioning: the everyday skills a person needs to cope with the ordinary demands of life.
- Age scale: a scoring method that awards credit by age and compares it with the testee’s chronological age to give a mental age.
- Analytical intelligence: in Sternberg’s theory, the ability to reason out, analyse and evaluate problems (also called componential intelligence).
- Aptitude: a person’s innate potential or readiness to acquire, with training, a particular skill or kind of work.
- Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, skill in controlling body movements and handling objects.
- Chronological age (CA): a person’s actual age, counted from the date of birth.
- Cognitive: relating to knowing — thinking, reasoning, remembering, understanding and problem solving.
- Content (Guilford): in the Structure of Intellect model, the kind of material the mind works on (visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic or behavioural).
- Convergent production: thinking that narrows many possibilities down to the single correct answer.
- Creative intelligence: in Sternberg’s theory, the ability to handle novelty and to automate well-practised tasks (also called experiential intelligence).
- Crystallised intelligence: the accumulated knowledge and skills gathered from experience and education, which hold or rise with age.
- Culture-fair test: a test designed to minimise cultural bias so that it can be applied fairly across different backgrounds.
- Deviation IQ: an IQ that compares a person’s score with those of others of the same age, rather than using a mental-age ratio.
- Diagnostic test: an achievement test used to identify academically weak learners so that remedial help can be arranged.
- Divergent production: thinking that opens outward to generate many possible answers; closely linked to creativity.
- Eductive ability: the clear-thinking capacity to make sense of a complex, unfamiliar situation and work out its rule.
- Emotional intelligence: the ability to understand and manage one’s own and others’ emotions and use them to guide thinking and action.
- Emotional quotient (EQ): a measure summarising how emotionally intelligent a person is.
- Empathy: the ability to sense and understand another person’s emotions.
- Environment: the surrounding conditions — family, schooling, nutrition, culture — within which inherited potential develops.
- Factor analysis: a statistical method that examines correlations among many test scores to find the smaller number of underlying factors behind them.
- Fluid intelligence: the largely inherited ability to reason and solve problems in new situations; it declines with age.
- Full Scale IQ: the overall IQ on the Wechsler scale, combining the verbal and performance scores.
- General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB): a widely used aptitude test that measures nine aptitudes through twelve tests.
- General factor (g): in Spearman’s theory, the inborn general ability common to all mental tasks.
- Gifted: describing a person of unusually high ability, generally an IQ of about 130 and above.
- Group factors: abilities broader than a single specific factor but narrower than general g, such as a verbal or numerical cluster.
- Group test: an intelligence test that can be given to many people at the same time.
- Heredity: the genetic potential a person is born with.
- Individual test: an intelligence test given to only one person at a time.
- Intellectual disability: below-average intelligence together with weak adaptive functioning, appearing before the age of eighteen.
- Intelligence: the global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally and deal effectively with the environment.
- Intelligence quotient (IQ): a single number expressing a person’s mental ability relative to others of the same age.
- Interest: a tendency to become absorbed in an activity and to continue with it.
- Interest inventory: a questionnaire that records a person’s likes and dislikes and compares them with those of people in various occupations.
- Interpersonal intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, the ability to read and respond to other people’s moods and motives.
- Intrapersonal intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, self-awareness and being in tune with one’s own feelings and thoughts.
- Linguistic intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, well-developed verbal skill and sensitivity to language.
- Logical-mathematical intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, the ability to reason abstractly and solve logical and numerical problems.
- Mental age (MA): the age level that a person’s mental performance matches.
- Multiple intelligences: Gardner’s view that intelligence is not one ability but several relatively independent intelligences.
- Musical intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, the ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and tone.
- Naturalistic intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, sensitivity to plants, animals and the features of the natural world.
- Operation (Guilford): in the Structure of Intellect model, the way information is processed, such as cognition, memory or evaluation.
- Performance Scale IQ: the IQ derived from the non-verbal (performance) subtests of the Wechsler scale.
- Performance test: a non-verbal test in which the testee manipulates materials with little use of language.
- Point scale: a scoring method that awards a fixed number of points for each correct response.
- Practical intelligence: in Sternberg’s theory, the “street-smart” ability to solve everyday problems (also called contextual intelligence).
- Primary Mental Abilities: Thurstone’s seven distinct group abilities that together make up intelligence.
- Product (Guilford): in the Structure of Intellect model, the form the result of thinking takes, such as units, classes or relations.
- Raven’s Progressive Matrices: a non-verbal, culture-fair group test of general intelligence that uses visual patterns.
- Reproductive ability: the capacity to store learned information and reproduce it.
- Spatial intelligence: in Gardner’s theory, the ability to think in images and visualise accurately.
- Specific factors (s): in Spearman’s theory, the narrower abilities each tied to one particular task.
- Verbal Scale IQ: the IQ derived from the verbal subtests of the Wechsler scale.
- Verbal test: a language-based test in which the questions and answers run through words.
- Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS): an individual intelligence test that combines verbal and performance components.
1.11 Points to Ponder
- Binet built his test to help struggling children, yet worried it would be used to label them. If intelligence can be caught in a single IQ number, can a person’s future be predicted from it — and even if it can, should it be?
- Spearman found one general factor running through everything, while Gardner insists on eight separate intelligences. Can both views be true at the same time, or must one of them eventually give way to the other?
- Fluid intelligence fades with age while crystallised intelligence keeps growing. Does this mean a person is “most intelligent” at one particular point in life, or that the very meaning of intelligence changes as we grow older?
- A culture-fair test uses only shapes and patterns so as to avoid favouring any background. Is a genuinely culture-free test even possible, or does every test quietly smuggle in some culture of its own?
- If emotional intelligence matters as much for a happy, successful life as cognitive intelligence does, why do most schools and formal tests still reward mainly the cognitive kind?
- Aptitude points to what a student could become good at, while interest points to what they are drawn towards. When the two pull in different directions, which should weigh more heavily in choosing a path?
1.12 Objective Questions
- The most comprehensive definition of intelligence — the global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally and deal effectively with the environment — was given by [1 mark]
- Alfred Binet
- Charles Spearman
- David Wechsler
- Howard Gardner
- In Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory, the factor that is inborn and common to every mental activity is the [1 mark]
- specific factor
- general factor
- primary factor
- group factor
- The number of Primary Mental Abilities identified by Thurstone is [1 mark]
- five
- seven
- eight
- nine
- Guilford’s Structure of Intellect model proposes a total of [1 mark]
- 120 abilities
- 150 abilities
- 180 abilities
- 200 abilities
- “Novelty” and “automation” are the two parts of which component of Sternberg’s triarchic theory? [1 mark]
- componential (analytical)
- experiential (creative)
- contextual (practical)
- metacomponential
- Which of the following is NOT one of Gardner’s eight intelligences? [1 mark]
- naturalistic
- interpersonal
- mechanical
- bodily-kinaesthetic
- Emotional intelligence was defined as a form of social intelligence by [1 mark]
- Raymond Cattell
- Peter Salovey and John Mayer
- J. P. Guilford
- L. L. Thurstone
- To obtain the ratio IQ, the mental age is [1 mark]
- added to the chronological age
- subtracted from the chronological age
- divided by the chronological age, then multiplied by 100
- multiplied by the chronological age
- Besides the Verbal Scale IQ and the Performance Scale IQ, the third IQ score yielded by the WAIS-III is the [1 mark]
- Ratio IQ
- Full Scale IQ
- Working Memory IQ
- Processing Speed IQ
- Raven’s Progressive Matrices is best described as a [1 mark]
- verbal individual test
- non-verbal, culture-fair group test
- verbal culture-loaded test
- performance test of achievement
- Match each psychologist in Column A with the theory they proposed in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Charles Spearman | i. Triarchic Theory |
| b. L. L. Thurstone | ii. Two-Factor Theory |
| c. Howard Gardner | iii. Multiple Intelligences |
| d. Robert Sternberg | iv. Primary Mental Abilities |
Fill in the blank: The largely inherited ability to reason and solve problems in new situations, which declines with age, is called _______ intelligence. [1 mark]
Fill in the blank: A test built to minimise cultural bias, so that it can be applied fairly to people of different backgrounds, is called a _______ test. [1 mark]
Assertion (A): The ratio IQ is not a suitable measure of intelligence for adults. Reason (R): Mental age stops rising steadily after the mid-teens, while chronological age keeps increasing. [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
Assertion (A): Non-verbal tests are generally fairer than verbal tests for people from different cultural backgrounds. Reason (R): Performance on a verbal test is strongly influenced by a person’s schooling and language. [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
State whether True or False: According to the DSM-IV, an intellectual disability is diagnosed on the basis of a low IQ score alone. [1 mark]
State whether True or False: According to Cattell, crystallised intelligence can keep increasing well into old age. [1 mark]
1.13 Check Your Concepts
State the definition of intelligence given by David Wechsler. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Write the formula for the intelligence quotient (IQ) and state what each symbol in it represents. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
What is meant by a culture-fair test? [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Name the three types of intelligence in Sternberg’s triarchic theory. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Differentiate between fluid intelligence and crystallised intelligence. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Differentiate between an individual test and a group test of intelligence. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Differentiate between an aptitude test and an achievement test. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain, with reasons, any three characteristics of Spearman’s ‘g’ factor. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
State any three characteristics commonly seen in gifted children. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain Sternberg’s practical (contextual) intelligence, giving one everyday example of each of its three processes — adaptation, selection and shaping. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe how the ratio IQ is worked out, and explain why it is unsuitable as a measure of intelligence for adults. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
“Intelligence is a single, general ability.” Evaluate this claim, drawing evidence from at least two theories studied in this chapter. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences: name its eight intelligences and state one criticism of the theory. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Describe the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III, including its verbal and performance components and the way it is scored. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Compare Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory with Thurstone’s theory of Primary Mental Abilities, and state one criticism of each. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
1.14 Case-Based Questions
- Eight-year-old Meera teaches her grandfather to use a new payment app in minutes, but he keeps forgetting the steps. In the evening, however, he easily beats her at word games and recalls dozens of old songs and proverbs she has never heard.
- Which kind of intelligence is Meera showing when she picks up the new app so quickly, and which is her grandfather showing in the word games? [2 marks]
- Using Cattell’s theory, explain why the two of them are strong in different tasks. [2 marks]
- Differentiate between the two kinds of intelligence involved. [2 marks] [6 marks]
- Rohit is only an average student in class tests, yet at the school fair he runs a busy second-hand book stall, sizing up customers, bargaining smartly, and organising a team of volunteers so that everything runs smoothly.
- Which of Sternberg’s three intelligences does Rohit show most strongly at the stall? Give a reason. [2 marks]
- Which of Gardner’s intelligences supports his skill in handling customers and volunteers? [2 marks]
- Do Rohit’s average class marks mean he is not intelligent? Justify your answer. [2 marks] [6 marks]
- A school wants to compare the reasoning ability of a group of children fairly. Some have studied in English-medium schools, while others have had very little formal schooling.
- Would a verbal test or a non-verbal test be fairer for this comparison, and why? [2 marks]
- Name one test that would be suitable here. [1 mark]
- Explain what is meant by calling such a test “culture-fair”. [1 mark] [4 marks]
- During a sudden crisis at work, a team leader stays calm, notices that a junior colleague is anxious and quietly reassures her, and settles a heated argument between two others before it grows.
- Which broad ability is the team leader displaying? [1 mark]
- Identify two characteristics of an emotionally intelligent person shown in this situation. [2 marks]
- Name the two psychologists who defined this ability. [1 mark] [4 marks]