Forensic Application of Intelligence Testing

Forensic application of intelligence testing

Beloit College

Chen Ruoya

During early 1900s, French psychologist Alfred Binet was asked by the government to design a testing system to determine children’s abilities to be prepared to enter school. Binet and his colleague, Theodore Simon, started to design a set of questions which were supposed to measure attributes like attention, memory and problem-solving skills, all of which were considered necessary for young children to start school. After the test was taken by all the children, they then chose the questions which best predicted those children’s success in school. Those questions made up the original Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. During World War I and World War II, US military officers to screen army recruits. After the war, American psychologist David Weshler adopted the European system of intelligence testing and based on that,developed a new one, of which the scoring system was no longer based on mental age and actual age, but based on comparison with the average results the test-takers got. The application of intelligence testing started from identifying the learning-impaired Parisian children to current contribution to Scholastic Aptitude Test, and recently are also applied in forensic settings. Nevertheless, many lawyers and judges have an unrealistic view of what these tests can accomplish; additionally, they are more likely to assume the accuracy of these tests because of the tests’ scientific nature. So this is the crucial time for us to look into what these tests can actually do and also what are the limitations they have for their forensic application.

The importance of IQ score could be seen in many places in legal system. It is important to note that IQ is a statistical concept, derived by psychological testing. With an average or mean IQ score being 100 and with a standard deviation being 15, an IQ score of 70 falls within the mentally retarded range, as long as the other criteria are...