In 1905, the French government approached a psychologist by the name of Alfred Binet and commissioned the first intelligence test. The purpose of the test was to determine which children could profit from education and to weed out the rest. Binet was faced with a very difficult task: how does one measure an abstract and amorphous entity as intelligence?
Binet reasoned that an intelligent person is one who can adapt to the environment and get along well in the world. He crafted a detailed test with many questions designed to determine how well children understand the world around them. The test was administered to large samples of children of different ages. But how can such a test be scored?
A child’s knowledge about the environment and ability to adapt to the environment changes with development, therefore the test must be scored differently for various ages. Binet devised an ingenious way to take into account the child’s age. He determined “average mental levels” for each age group by tallying the average number and type of questions answered correctly by each age group.
The famed intelligence quotient was computed by dividing the child’s mental age by his or her chronological age. While the value of the IQ test is debated, the term “intelligence quotient” clearly is dated. IQ is a misnomer because the quotient hasn’t been used for more than 60 years.
How do we study intelligence today? Like Binet, today’s psychologists view intelligence as our ability to solve problems, understand ideas, learn, and adapt to the world around us. Intelligence tests are administered by a psychologist and take several hours to complete. The most commonly used intelligence test for children and adults consist of many subtests that measure components of intellect such as memory, general knowledge, vocabulary, mathematical ability, planning, and more. The results provide information about an individual’s pattern of intellectual strengths and weaknesses.
Unlike Binet’s test, today’s IQ score is not a quotient. Instead it is computed by mathematically converting the subtest scores into one specialized score that compares the individual’s performance with what is average for a given age.
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