Intelligence Testing Bias

Intelligence is the all – purpose ability to do well on cognitive tests, to solve problems, and to learn from experience. The word itself though is measured differently throughout different cultures and societies. Many Americans think of it as the ability to reason, put thinking skills to use, think creatively, and to analyze things critically while in some other cultures it’s the ability to survive in extreme situations. The idea of intelligence was first introduced by Charles Spearmen. He suggested that it captures a common general ability that is reflected in performance on various cognitive tests. He studied young children who would do well in math but not in reading and vise versa and from this he came up with g, or that intelligence is a general ability.

There are three ways to measure one’s intelligence quotient, or IQ. They are as followed: validity, reliability, and standardization. Reliability is the extent to which a test measures what it is intended to measure. Validity is the extent to which a test yields a consistent, reproducible measure of performance. Finally standardization is the development of uniform procedures for administering and scoring a test, and the creation of norms for the test.

French psychologists Alfred Binet developed an intelligence test based off of the three most common ways to measure intelligence and while doing this he came up with the idea of comparing this to one’s mental age. The mental age is an individual’s level of mental development relative to that of others in your age group. When comparing the mental age in intelligence, psychologists usually compare it to the chronological age, or the actual age. From this test came the intelligence quotient formula, also known as the Stanford – Binet test. The Stanford – Binet is one of the most widely used tests for testing intelligence.

There are several other tests besides the Stanford – Binet, for example the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, also known as the WAIS...