A Brief History of Intelligence Tests

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Chapter 7 Thought, Language, and Intelligence
quickly learning new things; profiting from experience; adapting well to changing environments; having a good sense of direction; appreciating patterns in nature; being good
at music, dance, or athletics; showing eye-hand coordination; understanding oneself and
others; and displaying polished social skills (Berry & Bennett, 1992; Eysenck, 1986;
Gardner, 1999; Hunt, 1983; Meyer & Salovey, 1997; Sternberg, 1996; Sternberg, Lautrey,
& Lubart, 2003).
So what, exactly, is intelligence? Psychologists have never been able to agree on an
answer to this question, but many of them accept a working definition proposed by
Robert Sternberg (1985, 1997b). According to Sternberg, intelligence can be described
in terms of three characteristics: (1) being able to learn, remember, reason, and perform
other information-processing skills, (2) using those skills to solve problems, and (3) being
able to alter or adapt to new or changing environments.
Standard tests of intelligence measure some of these characteristics, but they don’t
address all of them. Accordingly, some psychologists argue that these tools are not able
to capture all that should be tested if we want to get a complete picture of someone’s
intelligence in its broadest sense. Others say that broadening the definition of intelligence too much will make it meaningless. Still others suggest dropping the term altogether in favor of the more descriptive and less emotionally charged concept of cognitive ability. To better understand the controversy, let’s take a look at how standard
intelligence tests were created, what they are designed to measure, and how well they
do their job. Later, we will consider some alternative intelligence tests that have been
proposed by those who find fault with traditional ones.
A Brief History of Intelligence Tests
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Tutorial: Determining
IQ—Stanford-Binet and
IQ Tests
intelligence The possession of knowledge, the ability to efficiently use that
knowledge to reason about the world,
and the ability to use that reasoning
adaptively in different environments.
Stanford-Binet A test for determining
a person’s intelligence quotient, or IQ.
IQ test A test designed to measure intelligence on an objective, standardized
scale.
The story of modern intelligence tests begins in 1904, when the French government
appointed psychologist Alfred Binet (pronounced “bih-NAY”) to a committee whose
job was to identify, study, and provide special educational programs for children who
were not doing well in school. As part of his work, Binet developed a set of mental
tasks that provided the model for today’s intelligence tests. Binet assumed that
reasoning, thinking, and problem solving all depend on intelligence, so he chose tasks
that would highlight individual differences in children’s ability to do these things (Binet
& Simon, 1905). Children taking Binet’s test were asked to unwrap a piece of candy,
repeat numbers or sentences from memory, identify familiar objects, and the like
(Rogers, 1995).
Binet also assumed that children’s cognitive abilities increase with age. So after trying out test items on children of various ages, he categorized each item according to
how old a child had to be to get the item right. For example, a “six-year-old item” was
one that a large majority of six-year-olds could answer correctly but that five-year-olds
could not. In other words, Binet’s test contained a set of age-graded items (Binet &
Simon, 1908). It measured a child’s “mental level,” later called mental age, by determining the age level of the most advanced items that the child could consistently answer
correctly. Children whose mental age equaled their actual age, or chronological age, were
considered to be of “regular” intelligence (Schultz & Schultz, 2000).
At about the time Binet published his test, Lewis Terman at Stanford University
began to develop an English-language version that has come to be known as the
Stanford-Binet test (Terman, 1906, 1916). Table 7.1 gives examples of the kinds of
items included on the test. Terman added items to measure the intelligence of adults
and revised the scoring scale. Mental age was divided by chronological age, and the
result was multiplied by 100. This figure was called the intelligence quotient, or IQ. So
a child whose mental age and chronological age were equal would have an IQ of 100,
which is considered “average” intelligence. A ten-year-old who scored at the mental age
of twelve would have an IQ of 12/10 100 = 120. From this method of scoring came
the term IQ test, a name now widely used for any test designed to measure intelligence
on an objective, standardized scale.
The method used to score the Stanford-Binet allowed testers to rank people based
on their IQs. This goal was important to Terman and others who promoted the test in