Module+Eleven+Overview

media type="custom" key="27385332" Today, intelligence is generally considered to be the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt to new situations. Psychologists debate whether intelligence is one general ability or several specific abilities. More recently, some theorists have expanded the definition of intelligence to include social intelligence, especially emotional intelligence. While a certain level of intelligence is necessary for creativity, beyond that level, the correlation is weak. Psychologists have linked people’s intelligence to brain anatomy and functioning as well as to cognitive processing speed. Modern intelligence testing began more than a century ago in France when Alfred Binet developed questions that helped predict children’s future progress in the Paris school system. Lewis Terman of StanfordUniversity used Binet’s ideas to develop the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. German psychologist William Stern derived the formula for the famous intelligence quotient, or IQ.

Modern aptitude and achievement tests are widely accepted only if they are standardized, reliable, and valid. Aptitude tests tend to be highly reliable but they are weak predictors of success in life. One way to test the validity of a test is to compare people who score at the two extremes of the normal curve: the challenged and the gifted.

Studies of twins, family members, and adopted children point to significant genetic determinants of intelligence scores. These and other studies also indicate that environment significantly influences intelligence test scores. Environmental differences are perhaps entirely responsible for racial gaps in intelligence. Psychologists debate evolutionary and cultural explanations of gender differences in aptitudes and abilities.

Aptitude tests, which predict performance in a given situation, are necessarily “biased” in the sense that they are sensitive to performance differences caused by cultural experiences. However, the major tests are not biased in that they predict as accurately for one group as for another. Stereotype threat can adversely affect performance and sometimes appears in intelligence testing among African-Americans and women.