Criticism and views
Binet
Alfred Binet, a French psychologist, did not believe that IQ test scales qualified to measure intelligence. He neither invented the term "intelligence quotient" nor supported its numerical expression.[citation needed] He stated:
The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.
—Binet, 1905
Binet had designed the Binet-Simon intelligence scale in order to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum. He argued that with proper remedial education programs, most students regardless of background could catch up and perform quite well in school. He did not believe that intelligence was a measurable fixed entity.
Binet cautioned:
Some recent thinkers seem to have given their moral support to these deplorable verdicts by affirming that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.[88]
The Mismeasure of Man
Some scientists dispute psychometrics entirely. In The Mismeasure of Man, Harvard professor and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that intelligence tests were based on faulty assumptions and showed their history of being used as the basis for scientific racism, although did not at any point attempt to scientifically refute intelligence tests. He wrote:
…the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups—races, classes, or sexes—are innately inferior and deserve their status.(pp. 24–25)
He spent much of the book criticizing the concept of IQ, including a historical discussion of how the IQ tests were created and a technical discussion of why g is simply a mathematical artifact. Later editions of the book included criticism of The Bell Curve.
Gould did not dispute the stability of test scores, nor the fact that they predict certain forms of achievement. He did argue, however, that to base a concept of intelligence on these test scores alone is to ignore many important aspects of mental ability.
Relation between IQ and intelligence
According to Dr. C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, intelligence is a person's capacity to (1) acquire knowledge (i.e. learn and understand), (2) apply knowledge (solve problems), and (3) engage in abstract reasoning. It is the power of one's intellect, and as such is clearly a very important aspect of one's overall well-being. Psychologists have attempted to measure it for well over a century.
Several other ways of measuring intelligence have been proposed. Daniel Schacter, Daniel Gilbert, and others have moved beyond general intelligence and IQ as the sole means to describe intelligence.[89]
Test bias
The American Psychological Association's report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns[9] states that IQ tests as predictors of social achievement are not biased against people of African descent since they predict future performance, such as school achievement, similarly to the way they predict future performance for European descent.[9]
However, IQ tests may well be biased when used in other situations. A 2005 study stated that "differential validity in prediction suggests that the WAIS-R test may contain cultural influences that reduce the validity of the WAIS-R as a measure of cognitive ability for Mexican American students,"[90] indicating a weaker positive correlation relative to sampled white students. Other recent studies have questioned the culture-fairness of IQ tests when used in South Africa.[91][92] Standard intelligence tests, such as the Stanford-Binet, are often inappropriate for children with autism and dyslexia; the alternative of using developmental or adaptive skills measures are relatively poor measures of intelligence in autistic children, and have resulted in incorrect claims that a majority of children with autism are mentally retarded.[93]
Outdated methodology
A 2006 paper argues that mainstream contemporary test analysis does not reflect substantial recent developments in the field and "bears an uncanny resemblance to the psychometric state of the art as it existed in the 1950s."[94] It also claims that some of the most influential recent studies on group differences in intelligence, in order to show that the tests are unbiased, use outdated methodology.
Some argue that IQ scores are used as an excuse for not trying to reduce poverty or otherwise improve living standards for all. Claimed low intelligence has historically been used to justify the feudal system and unequal treatment of women (see sex and intelligence). In contrast, others claim that the refusal of "high-IQ elites" to take IQ seriously as a cause of inequality is itself immoral.[95]
The view of the American Psychological Association
In response to the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs established a task force in 1995 to write a consensus statement on the state of intelligence research which could be used by all sides as a basis for discussion. The full text of the report is available through several websites.[9][96]
In this paper the representatives of the association regret that IQ-related works are frequently written with a view to their political consequences: "research findings were often assessed not so much on their merits or their scientific standing as on their supposed political implications".
The task force concluded that IQ scores do have high predictive validity for individual differences in school achievement. They confirm the predictive validity of IQ for adult occupational status, even when variables such as education and family background have been statistically controlled. They agree that individual differences in intelligence are substantially influenced by genetics and that both genes and environment, in complex interplay, are essential to the development of intellectual competence.
They state there is little evidence to show that childhood diet influences intelligence except in cases of severe malnutrition. The task force agrees that large differences do exist between the average IQ scores of blacks and whites, and that these differences cannot be attributed to biases in test construction. The task force suggests that explanations based on social status and cultural differences are possible, and that environmental factors have raised mean test scores in many populations. Regarding genetic causes, they noted that there is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis.
The APA journal that published the statement, American Psychologist, subsequently published eleven critical responses in January 1997, several of them arguing that the report failed to examine adequately the evidence for partly-genetic explanations.
High IQ societies
A high IQ society is an organization that limits membership to people who are within a certain high percentile of IQ test results. (For example, Mensa International)
Pop culture usage
Many websites and magazines use the term IQ to refer to technical or popular knowledge in a variety of subjects not related to intelligence, including sex,[97] poker,[98] and American football,[99] among a wide variety of other topics. These tests are generally not standardized and do not fit within the normal definition of intelligence. Intelligence tests such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Stanford-Binet, Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities, or the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-II, to name some of the best constructed, are not merely placing a test taker's score within the norm, as presumably are the thousands of alleged "IQ Tests" found on the internet, but they are also testing factors (e.g., fluid and crystallized intelligence, working memory, and the like) that were previously found to represent pure measures of intelligence using factor analysis. This claim may not be made for the hundreds of online tests marketing themselves as IQ Tests, a distinction that may be unfortunately lost upon the public taking them.
Postingan
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar