Do standardized tests really work?

Have you ever taken a test that was meant to tell you your intelligence? Maybe an IQ test?  Maybe you took the SAT, or the ACT.  How

People first started studying human intelligence over a century ago.  Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton (1822-1911) was fascinated with measuring human traits.  When he learned of his cousin's discovery of natural selection, he wondered if it is possible to measure natural ability.  In 1884 he measured over 10,000 people on their abilities doing things such as measuring reaction time, sensory acuity, muscular power, and body proportions.  But he did not find any correlated results with this first study.  Even though this study wasn't successful he did give us some techniques we still use along with coining the phrase "nature and nurture."

Modern intelligence testing was started by Alfred Binet (1857-1911).  France passed a law that required all children to go to school.  France then needed to be able to identify children with special needs objectively.  Binet came up with the idea of mental age, where he assumed children develop intellectually at different rates so a "dull" child just performs like a younger child and a "bright" child performs like an older child.  He decided to take the average performance of a child who was 9 years old and give them work for a 9 year old, but if the child was "duller" he would give that child work meant for a 7 year old.

Binet's test was altered by Lewis Terman at Stanford University to become the Stanford-Binet test.  This test was then altered by a German psychologist, William Stern, to create the famous intelligence quotient, or IQ Test.

To measure an IQ test you take your mental age and divide it by your chronological age and then times it by 100 to get rid of the decimal point.  So if I am 21, and my mental age is 21, then my IQ score would be 100.

Modern testing is much different than testing used to be.  Two ways to now test intelligence are achievement tests, and aptitude tests.  An achievement test, tests someone on things they have already learned, whereas an aptitude test tries to predict someone's ability to learn a new skill.  So the final exam at the end of one of my classes would be an achievement test, but the SAT I took to get into college would be an aptitude test.

Psychologist David Wechsler created the most widely used intelligence test, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), and a version for children, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC).  The WAIS includes 15 subjects, some of which are: similarities (example, in what way are wool and cotton alike?), vocabulary (naming objects and defining words), block design (seeing a picture and being given blocks and being told to recreate the image with the blocks), and letter-number sequencing (repeating numbers, alphabetizing letters, etc.

Here are some examples of questions on the WAIS:

An accurate intelligence test needs to be standardized, reliable, and valid.

Standardized: 

With a standardized test the average score should fall around 100.  Using the normal curve, this is what Wechsler intelligence scores look like:

From 1918-1998 intelligence scores in every country studied were rising steadily.  However, very recently it has seemed to level off and even reverse in some cases.

Reliable: 

Reliability tests if the test yields consistent results as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test or on retesting.

The easiest way to test reliability is to retest people, if the two scores agree or correlate, then the test is reliable.  The WAIS and the WISC are very reliable tests with a correlation of +.9 while comparing testing and retesting.


Validity:

A test can be reliable but not valid.   For example, if you showed someone a picture of a blue triangle and asked them what the shape was, and they got it right, then you repeated the test a week later, it would be a reliable test, but not valid in measuring intelligence.  Validity is just the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.  To be valid the tests need to have content validity,  testing behavior of interest; an example would be like doing a list of everyday driving things on a drivers test.  It is better though, if the test also has predictive validity, where the test can also predict how someone will perform in the future.  But the sad fact is, aptitude tests are never as predictive as they are reliable.

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How does aging affect our intelligence?  Crystallized intelligence is the accumulated knowledge such as verbal skills, vocabulary, facts, etc, and it increases up to old age.  Fluid intelligence however, is our ability to reason speedily and abstractly, and it begins decreasing in the twenties and thirties up until you're about 75 and then it decreases more rapidly.

What is intelligence?

What is intelligence? How can we best assess it?  Dose our amount of intelligence come form our genetics or our environment?

Intelligence:

the mental quality consisting of the ability to learn 

from experience, solve problems, and use 

knowledge to adapt to new situations

So how do we measure our ability to learn from experience, solve problems and use knowledge to adapt to new situations?  Is intelligence one aptitude or many?  One thing intelligence experts agree on, is that intelligence is a concept, not a "thing."  Intelligence is also almost always culturally influenced.  General intelligence is sometimes referred to as a 'g' score so if g is referred to in this blog, think of general intelligence.

Different people are good at different things so sometimes it is hard to measure overall intelligence.  Most intelligence tests don't account for this.  Intelligence tests are usually testing convergent thinking, where there is one best or right answer for each question.  But what if instead we were measuring intelligence in terms of creativity?  For example, write down as many uses for a brick that you can think of in the next one minute...ready? GO!  There is no right or wrong answer for that question.  But there would be ways to analyze it and to see if you're answers were logical, creative, unique, etc.

There are many different people who have studied intelligence and they all have their own theories; here are a few of them.

Charles Spearman (1863-1945)

Spearmen believed a basic intelligence predicts our abilities in varied academic areas.  This seems to be true in some cases because things such as verbal and spatial abilities do have a tendency to correlate.  Spearman came up with the g score, thinking that these different specific activities all attribute to your overall general intelligence.

Thurstone (1887-1955)

Thurstone broke down intelligence into seven factors
1. word fluency
2. verbal comprehension
3. spacial ability
4. perceptual speed
5. numerical ability
6. inductive reasoning
7. memory

The strength in this theory is that seven different intelligence scores tell you much more about a person's intelligence than just one g score does.

Howard Gardner (1943-)

Gardner looked at the many different types of intelligence.  It doesn't seem fair that someone can be brilliant at one thing and still fail a standardized test just because they "lack intelligence" in those specific areas.  This is common with people who have savant syndrome, a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill.  Gardner argues that we don't have just one intelligence, we have several.  For example, I did exceptionally well on my creative writing section of the SAT however I did poorly on the math section.  So even though my verbal/linguistic abilities might be high my logical/mathematical might be low.

The problem with standardized tests like the SAT is that they only test verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical.  So what about the people who are musical? Or good at understanding themselves and other people? There are so many intelligences that standardized tests don't test us on.  But something to consider is, are all abilities actually intelligences? Or are they just talents separate from intelligence?


Robert Sternberg (1949-)

Sternberg created the theory of three intelligences:

1. Analytical intelligence
2. Creative intelligence
3. Practical intelligence

The nice thing about these three things, is that they can be reliably and accurately measured. The problem with this theory is that it could be more similar to Spearman's theory where they all actually have an underlying g factor.  The problem we see in schools if we go by Sternberg's theory, is that in school the only intelligence that is truly tested and honed is analytical intelligence.

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Everyone has taken a standardized test at some point whether it is the SAT, ACT, or an IQ test.  But did you know there is no agreed upon test that measure Creativity?

Sternberg and his colleagues did however identify five components of creativity:
1. Expertise
2. Imaginative thinking skills
3. A venturesome personality
4. Intrinsic Motivation
5. A creative environment

If you think you're lacking creative skills or just want a creative boost, here are some things you can do:

1. Develop your expertise: what do you like learning about the most? What do you care about and enjoy the most? Follow your passion!
2. Allow time for incubation: think hard about something, then leave it be for awhile before coming back to it
3. Set aside time for the mind to roam freely: jog, go for a walk, exercise, meditate, do yoga; do something that takes your mind away from attention absorbing things such as TV, your phone, or social media
4. Experience other cultures and ways of thinking: live abroad, travel, try new things, new foods, gain multicultural experiences and work on facilitating your flexible thinking skills

Another aspect of intelligence that isn't tested on standardized tests, is emotional intelligence.  There was a test however that was created by John Mayer, Peter Salovey and David Caruso that measures emotional intelligence by these four components:

1. Perceiving emotions
2. Understanding emotions
3. Managing emotions
4. Using emotions

Do you feel good about the types of intelligence they are measuring in our school systems today?