Theory Meets Practice - Week 3

As we continue to explore different definitions of intelligence and various ways of testing, I wonder if and how certain disabilities are factored into the score. For example, in our book, there are ten different skills listed that fall under the category of crystallized intelligence. Many of these skills rely the test administrator to read aloud a word or short passage. How do these tests accommodate for test takers that have hearing impairments? Writing down these passages or instructions counteracts what the test creators wanted for their test, which was to have an intelligence test that did not rely directly on the participant's reading abilities.

I think intelligence tests are inherently problematic and we will not find a way to "measure" intelligence without alienating some group or ignoring external factors. In my opinion, there is no one way of defining intelligence because there are so many ways it can be expressed or influenced. There are some people who may be proficient in multiple areas of what we may call intelligence, and this may be the definition of intelligence that we are looking for, but again, there are too many factors that may have influenced this person's upbringing.

Even in schools, we can see multiple sources of what we could call intelligence. Children in the "gifted and talented" programs would be easy to label as more intelligent, but perhaps they just learn at a faster pace than others and are thus placed into theses accelerated programs. The children in grade-level courses are by no means unintelligent; perhaps they have certain learning disabilities that limit the speed at which they can learn content, or maybe their home environment is not conducive to the extra work and projects that the accelerated programs require. The point being, there is really no one concrete way of measuring intelligence. My cousin, for example, performed poorly in school because he has severe dyslexia and it made all schoolwork extremely difficult and time-consuming. Today, he is a master plumber and extremely good at what he does. He outperformed other employees years older than him, even without the years of experience that they had. He was called a prodigy by his employer. My cousin almost didn't graduate from high school, and he certainly did not attend college. The only reason that he doesn't start his own plumbing company, he says, is because he wouldn't be able to do the paperwork. I certainly wouldn't call him less intelligent than others because he struggles with reading and writing, as some intelligence tests would. I find intelligence tests to be less than helpful because it can only truly measure "intelligence" in a select few, as long as external and personal factors are ignored.