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A. Psychological Assessment is the use of specified testing procedures to evaluate the abilities,
behaviors, and personal qualities of people
B. History of Assessment
1. Methods used in China in the 1800s were observed by missionaries
and later brought to England
2. Sir Francis Galton was a central figure in the development Western
intelligence testing
a) Tried to apply Darwinian evolutionary theory to the study of
human abilities
b) Postulated four ideas regarding intelligence assessment
(i) Differences in intelligence were quantifiable
(ii) Differences between individuals formed a normal
distribution
(iii) Intelligence could be measured objectively
(iv) The extent to which two sets of test scores were
related could be statistically determined by a
procedure he called co-relation, later to become
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correlation
c) Galton began the eugenics movement, advocation of improving
humankind by selective inbreeding while discouraging
reproduction among the biologically inferior
C. Basic Features of Formal Assessment
1. Formal assessment procedures should meet three requirements:
a) Reliability: Instruments must be trusted to give consistent
scores
b) Validity: Instruments must measure what the assessor intends
it to measure
c) Standardization: Instruments must be administered to all
persons in the same way under the same conditions
2. Methods of obtaining reliability, validity, and standardization:
a) Reliability
(i) Test-retest reliability
(ii) Parallel forms
(iii) Internal consistency
Split-half reliability
b) Validity
(i) Face validity
(ii) Criterion validity, or predictive validity
(iii) Construct validity
3. Norms and Standardization
a) Norms are typical scores or statistics
b) Standardization is the administration of a testing device to all
II.Intelligence Assessment
A. Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the
ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn
quickly, and learn from experience
B. Origins of Intelligence Testing
1. Alfred Binet developed an objective test that could classify and
separate developmentally disabled children from normal
schoolchildren
a) Designed age-appropriate test items
b) Computed average scores for normal children at different ages
expressed in mental age and chronological age
2. Features of Binet’s approach
a) Scores interpreted as an estimate of current performance, not
as a measure of innate intelligence
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b) Wanted scores to identify children needing special help, not
to stigmatize them
c) Emphasized training and opportunity
d) Constructed his test on empirical, rather than theoretical, data
C. IQ Tests
1. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
a) Adapted for American schoolchildren by Lewis Terman of
Stanford University.
b) Provided a base for the concept of intelligence quotient (IQ),
with “IQ being the ratio of mental age (MA) to chronological
age (CA), multiplied by 100” (in order to eliminate decimals)
c) IQ = MA . CA ′ 100
d) Revised in 1937, 1960, 1972, and 1986
2. The Wechsler Intelligence Scales
a) Wechsler—Bellevue Intelligence Scale developed by David
Wechsler and first published in 1939
b) Renamed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) in
1955 and revised and re-released in 1981 (WAIS-R)
c) WAIS-R is designed for individuals 18 years of age and older,
and has six verbal and five performance subtests:
(i) Verbal
(a) Information
(b) Vocabulary
(e) Comprehension
(d) Arithmetic
(e) Similarities
(f) Digit span
(ii) Performance
(a) Block design
(b) Digit symbol
(c) Picture arrangement
(d) Picture completion
(e) Object assembly
d) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 3rd Ed. (WISC-III) (1991)
designed for children ages 6 to 17 years
e) Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Revised
(WPPSI-R) (1989) designed for children ages 4 to 6.5 years
III. Theories of Intelligence
A. Psychometric Theories of Intelligence
1. The most commonly used statistical technique is factor analysis
2. The goal of factor analysis is to identify the basic psychological
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dimensions of the concept being investigated
3. Individual contributors
a) Charles Spearman concluded presence of “g,” a general
intelligence underlying all intelligent performance
b) Raymond Cattell determined general intelligence could be
broken into two relatively independent components
(i) Crystallized intelligence, the knowledge the
individual has already acquired and the ability to
access that knowledge
(ii) Fluid intelligence, the ability to see complex
relationships and solve problems
c) J. P. Guilford developed the structure of intellect model
specifying three features of intellectual tasks:
(i) Content, or type of information
(ii) Product, or form in which information is presented
(iii) Operation, or type of mental activity performed
B. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
1. Stresses importance of cognitive processes in problem solving
2. Three types of intelligence represent different ways of characterizing
effective performance
a) Componential intelligence is defined by the component or
mental processes that underlie thinking and problem solving
b) Experiential intelligence captures people’s ability to deal with
two extremes: novel vs. very routine problems
c) Contextual intelligence is reflected in the practical management
of day-to-day affairs
C. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and Emotional Intelligence
1. Theory expands the definition of intelligence beyond skills covered on
an IQ test
2. Gardner identifies numerous intelligences, covering a range of human
experience
a) Linguistic intelligence
b) Logical-mathematical ability
c) Naturalist
d) Spatial ability
e) Musical ability
f) Bodily Kinesthetic ability
g) Interpersonal ability
h) Intrapersonal ability
3. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is related to Gardner’s interpersonal and
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intrapersonal intelligences. EQ has four parts:
a) The ability to perceive, appraise, and express emotions
accurately and appropriately
b) The ability to use emotions to facilitate thinking
c) The ability to understand and analyze emotions and to use
emotional knowledge effectively
d) The ability to regulate one’s emotions to promote both
emotional and intellectual growth
IV. The Politics of Intelligence
A. History of Group Comparisons
1. Henry Goddard (early 1900s) advocated testing of immigrants and
selectively excluding those found to be “mentally defective”
2. “Evidence” for exclusion derived from case studies of two families, the
Juke and the Kallikak families, that allegedly had produced defective
human offspring for generations
B. Heredity and IQ
1. Heritability is based on an estimate within a given group, but cannot
be used to interpret between group differences
2. A heritability estimate of a particular trait, such as intelligence, is based
on the proportion of the variability in test scores on that trait that can
be traced to genetic factors
3. For human characteristics in general, differences between gene pools
of different racial groups are minute, as compared to genetic
differences among individual members of the same group
C. Environments and IQ
1. Research has most often focused on global measures of environment,
such as the influence of socioeconomic status on IQ
2. “Head Start” taught us that:
a) IQ can easily be affected by the environment
b) An enriched environment must be sustained if the results are
to last
D. Culture and the Validity of IQ Tests
1. Systematic bias makes some tests invalid and unfair for minorities
2. Ongoing concern exists as to whether it is possible to devise an IQ test
that is “culture-fair”
3. Stereotype Threat–the threat of being at risk for confirming a negative
stereotype of one’s group–can bring about the poor performance
encoded in the stereotype
V.Creativity
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A. Creativity is the individual’s ability to generate ideas of products that are both novel and
appropriate to the circumstances in which they were generated
B. Assessing Creativity
1. Many approaches to rating individuals as creative or uncreative focus
on divergent thinking, the ability to generate a variety of unusual but
appropriate solutions to a problem.
2. Exceptional Creativity and Madness
a) The exemplary creator who emerges from assessments of
creativity as almost off the scale
b) Gardner alludes to a common stereotype of the exemplary
creator—their life experiences border on or include the
experience of madness
VI. Assessment and Society
A. The primary goal of psychological assessment is to make accurate assessments of people
that are as free as possible of errors of assessors’ judgments
B. Three ethical concerns are central to the controversy of psychological assessment
1. The fairness of test-based decisions
2. The utility of tests for evaluating education
3. The implications of using test scores as labels to categorize
individuals
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Western culture places high value on intelligence, so much so that we begin intelligence
testing of our children as soon as they enter the public school system. Children are
routinely tested, using a variety of assessment instruments. Testing is followed by school
counselors meeting parents to provide feedback regarding the child’s performance.
Inevitably, the child’s scores become “cocktail party conversation,” with parents
comparing their children’s scores, even though their children may not have been assessed
using the same instruments, or under the same circumstances. Discuss with the class the
range of potential problems that can result from such activities.
2. Given the current three-part definition of intelligence as proposed by Sternberg, ask if
members of the class feel that any one aspect of intelligence is more important than the
others?