So You Think You Can Think?

by JoAnne Krumpe, PhD |

How smart do you think you are? Measuring intelligence has been the focus of educational psychologists, cognitive scientists and neurobiologists for over the past 30 years, and has been the province of philosophers for millennia. Most of us agree that mental quickness, ability to retain information and use it to solve important problems are identifiers of having high intelligence. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is a test score obtained from a battery of sub-tests that sums up this skill level. This test battery correlates well with success in academic performance.

Why all the fuss about IQ? Many families sense that their child may be “gifted and/or talented” and would like to enroll them in a program that fully develops their skills. Other families feel that their student has high intelligence yet for one reason or the other they are not performing at school. What could be the problem and what could be the remedy? The most recent IQ testing system (WAIS IV, 2009) offers reliable scoring for clients aged 5 through 85. This test is felt to be culturally neutral and can pin-point areas of specific information processing problems.

The General Intelligence Factor (“g”) is a more broad-based measure of problem solving ability. It is known that the “g” factor correlates well with IQ. But “g” may be a better reflection of conventional measures of life successes (income, academic achievement, job performance, career prestige) and a better predictor of undesirable life outcomes (school dropout, unplanned childbearing, poverty). Heredity plays a significant role in the measure of “g.”

What about gifted artists, athletes or musicians? Howard Gardner of Harvard University described these characteristics as types of Multiple Intelligence (MI). He has documented “the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways” (Gardner, 1983).

What about street smarts? Clearly there are rewards for cleverness and penalties for being gullible. Salovey (1993) described emotional intelligence (EI) as the ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions. High on the list of important EI characteristics is emotional resilience, the ability to withstand stress. Testing college students under stress, Song (2009) found that “g” and EI each have a unique power to predict academic performance, however, “g” was the stronger predictor. The results also showed that EI, but not “g” was related to the quality of social interactions with peers.

IQ and EI testing can identify areas of individuals’ strengths and weakness. Teaching measures can then be implemented that can foster positive changes in performance.

References:

1. Jensen, A.R. (1998). The g factor: The science of mental ability. Westport , CT : Praeger.
2. Gardner, H. (1983) “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence”, NY, NY, Basic Books.
3. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990). Emotional Intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 9: 1989-1990.
4. WAIS–IV–Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (2009). Pearson Education, Inc., San Antonio, TX.
5. Song, L, et. Al. 2009. The differential effects of general mental ability and emotional intelligence on academic performance and social interactions Intelligence. (in press; available on line).

For more info, contact JoAnne Krumpe, PhD at (775) 233-0717.