Death, taxes, and bad intelligence tests

doi:10.1016/0160-2896(91)90035-C

Intelligence

Volume 15, Issue 3, July–September 1991, Pages 257-269

https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-2896(91)90035-C Get rights and content

Abstract

Thirteen approaches to the measurement of intelligence are briefly described and discussed. On the one hand, bad intelligence tests seem as inevitable as death and taxes. On the other hand, there are promising developments in measurement. The most promising developments are not cosmetic changes in conventional tests (such as comouter-adaptive tests), but rather tests based on new, broader theories of intelligence. These latter tests have been slow in development, partly because of difficulties in operationalization, and partly because of the uneasy alliance between the worlds of academia and publishing companies.

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From this perspective, a more differentiated IQ estimate should lead to more valid results. In addition to the conception of general intelligence as reflected by hierarchical models (e.g. Jensen, 1998) alternative approaches suggested a wide range of different components of intelligence (Gardner, 1983; Guilford, 1964, 1967; Sternberg, 1987, 1991). One of the classical and most widely accepted intelligence-factor models has been proposed by Thurstone (1938).
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Whether essential processing of spatial information is lateralized asymmetrically in the human cortex is still a matter of debate. In this study, items of an Item Response Theory calibrated test for spatial ability were used to ensure stimulus homogeneity and validity. Subjects were preselected as extreme groups of good and poor spatializers. Mapping of true DC-recorded slow potential shifts (SPSs) resulted in distinctly discriminable topographies with spatial and verbal-analytic material as well as with spatial performance groups within the spatial block. Left fronto-central negativity maxima in the verbal condition clearly contrasted with occipito-parietal peak activity in the spatial condition. Poor spatializers showed higher amplitudes as well as a tendency to asymmetric activity in right parietal (parieto-temporal) areas, whereas in good spatializers the activity was localized symmetrically in occipital and occipito-parietal regions. The findings emphasize the importance of the right posterior cortex for spatial processing (negativity maxima at occipital and right parietal sites) and suggest a task-specific lower cortical efficiency or, seen from a processing perspective, a higher Investment of Cortical Effort (ICE) on the part of poor spatializers.
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^☆: This article was supported by a grant from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement to the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, Robert J. Sternberg, Associate Director.

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EditorialDeath, taxes, and bad intelligence tests☆

Abstract

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive

Cognitive Psychology

Temne and Eskimo perceptual skills

International Journal of Psychology

Ecological and cultural factors in spatial perceptual development

Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science

Radical cultural relativism and the concept of intelligence

Towards a universal psychology of cognitive competence

Méthodes nouvelles pour le diagnostic du niveau intellectual des anormaux

L'Année Psychologique

Le développment de l'intelligence chez les enfants

L'Année Psychologique

Intelligence and “inspection time”

The zone of potential development: Implications for intelligence testing in the year 2000

Mental tests and measurements

Mind

Test of g: Culture Fair, Scale 3

On intelligence…more or less

The cultural context of learning and thinking

Evoked potentials and intelligence

Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa

Brain response correlates of psychometric intelligence

Nature

The theory of intelligence and the psychophysiology of cognition

Children's learning and transfer of inductive reasoning rules: Studies of proximal development

The dynamic assessment of retarded performers: The learning potential assessment device, theory, instruments, and techniques

Inquiry into human faculty and its development

Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligence

The seven frames of mind

Psychology Today

East is a big bird

The biological basis of intelligence Part 1: Theory

The biological basis of intelligence Part II: Measurement

A Piagetian test of general intelligence

Development Psychology

Editorial
Death, taxes, and bad intelligence tests☆