|
|
 |
EXPANDING MINDS Are we getting smarter? April 20, 1998 |
|---|
This forum's introduction
Questions answered in this forum:
Why do we still look at IQ scores? Is technology the cause of rising IQ scores? Has environmental or health factors increased IQ scores? Do current IQ tests reflect the idea of multiple intelligences? How does a person's race or socioeconomic background affect his or her IQ scores? Should student testing be changed to reflect the times? Viewer Comments
NewsHour Backgrounders
March 18, 1998
New findings unscramble the mystery of dyslexia.
August 27, 1997
A Gergen Dialogue with Howard Gardner, author of "Extraordinary Minds."
June 13, 1997
Does science prove the existence of woman's intuition?
November 26, 1996
Stephen Jay Gould talks about evolution.
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of law.
Outside Links
American Psychological Association
An online IQ test.
Andrew Mannion of Melbourne, Australia, asks:
Why is IQ still around? Stephen Gould's book "The Mismeasure of Man" pretty successfully debunked the notion of IQ as a measure of anything significant - or so I thought! He demonstrated through historical case studies the cultural, gender, political, scientific and socio-economic biases of IQ tests. So why is it still a significant concept ? Why do some people and organizations still concern themselves with measuring IQ?
Prof. Alice Honig of Syracuse University responds:
We are concerned with measuring intellectual quotients because they are powerful predictors of school success and academic learning.
Over decades, having assessed children at risk for the Department of Social Services, I can say that children differ enormously in their problem solving skills. Some children have severe difficulties with abstract reasoning. Syllogistic "If-Then reasoning" is at the heart of scientific deductions from first principles. Such logical reasoning is also at the heart of being to observe and measure real world facts and events and then carry out inductions from data to arrive at theoretical explanations of events and understanding of causal relationships that allow us to predict (As Einstein did so powerfully in his work).
People differ tremendously in such skills. If an engineer or surgeon or mathematician or teacher cannot use careful reasoning and deal with abstract symbols and ideas, then our sciences, our engineering advances, our abilities to lure young people into becoming enthusiastic and powerful learners will be severely compromised. New age "feel-good about it," too great reliance exclusively on vague hunches...with such thinking as the major modes...we cannot find cures for AIDS or build spacecraft that depart and come back safely, just to mention some blatant examples.
Does this mean that all intellectual abstract reasoning skills are immutably given in the genes? Of course not. But we had better have far more respect for such skills and nurture and reward their development than we do nowadays!. Calling youngsters who wrestle hard to study and develop such skills " nerds" and call good basketball players "stars" shows how little our current society values just those powerful thinking tools we so desperately need to solve the problems of warring nations or of plagues and epidemics.
Prof. Ulric Neisser of Cornell University responds:
Tests are still around for two reasons, one practical and one scientific. At the practical level, tests are used to help teachers understand children's school performance (that's what Binet invented them for), to inform personnel decisions (e.g. in the Army), to assist in the college admission process, etc. (Strictly speaking only the first of these uses involves real "IQ" tests, but the tests employed in the other contexts are highly correlated with IQ.) Although they are occasionally misused, mental tests are generally more consistent and more valid than any other available basis for making such judgments. At the scientific level, the stable individual differences that are indexed by the tests present an array of intriguing questions. To what extent do those differences result from variations in genetic endowment, to what extent from varied experiences with the environment? Are there a number of fundamentally distinct intellectual abilities, or are they mostly just variants of a single underlying g factor? And lately: why have test scores been rising so steadily for so long?
Gould's book is not a good source of information about tests. His account of the racist beliefs and practices held by many early psychometricians is important history, but tells us little about testing today. (The fact that doctors committed atrocities in Tuskegee or Dachau does not invalidate the findings of modern medical science either - though it may suggest caution in some cases.) And Gould's passionate critique of Spearman's g is actually rather thin, relying chiefly on rhetoric and ignoring empirical evidence. (My own skepticism about g has other sources.) As for the question of bias: while there is no doubt that the mean scores of some ethnic groups are lower than those of others, this does not yet show that the tests are biased against those groups. In fact, most studies have failed to find any evidence of bias. When test scores are used to predict later performance, for example, they predict it just as well for Blacks as for Whites. Interpreting the low test scores of some groups as signs that the tests themselves are at fault is like blaming the messenger for bad news.
Next: Has technology created a new intelligence?
Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. PBS Online Privacy Policy
Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved.
