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IQ, an abbreviation for "intelligence quotient", is a score derived from a set of standardized tests that were developed with the purpose of measuring a person's cognitive abilities (" intelligence") in relation to one's age group. It is expressed as a number normalized so that the average IQ in an age group is 100 — in other words an individual scoring 115 is above-average when compared to similarly aged people. It is usual, but not invariable, practice to standardise so that the standard deviation (σ) of scores is 15. Tests are designed so that the distribution of IQ scores is more-or-less Gaussian, that is to say that it follows the bell curve. Scores on a given test in a given population have tended to rise across time throughout the history of IQ testing (the Flynn effect), so that tests need repeated renormalisation if these standards are to be maintained.
IQ scores are generally taken as an objective measure of intelligence. Because intelligence is difficult to define, the definition "Intelligence is what the IQ test measures" has been seriously proposed.
Modern ability tests produce scores for different areas (e.g., language fluency, three-dimensional thinking, etc.), with the summary score calculated as a some general measure, whose significance is disputed. Significantly, individual subtest scores correlate highly: with one another, and over diverse tests.
While it might be argued that IQ tests encode their creator's beliefs about what constitutes intelligence, analyses of an individual's scores on a wide variety of tests will reveal that they all measure a single common factor and various factors that are specific to each test. This kind of analysis has led to the theory that underlying these disparate cognitive tasks is a single factor, termed the g factor, that represents the common-sense concept of intelligence.
Opponents argue that it is much more useful to know which are the strengths and weaknesses of a person than to know that he or she holds a measureable superlative on n percent of the populace in some "general intelligence" measure. Such opponents often cite the example of two people with the same overall IQ score but very different ability profiles. However, most people have highly balanced ability profiles. Differences in subscores are greatest among the most intelligent, which may lead them to this misconception.
Others argue that IQ testing is unnecessarily narrow and have proposed wider testing that covers emotional/social intelligence, creativity, artistic intelligence, etc. Proponents of this viewpoint often say "one's IQ is merely a measure of how good one is at doing IQ tests."
The modern field of intelligence testing began with the Stanford-Binet test. It is worth noting that Alfred Binet, who created the IQ test in 1904, was aiming to identify students who could benefit from extra help in school: his assumption was that lower IQ indicated the need for more teaching, not an inability to learn. Indeed, this interpretation is still held by modern experts. The term "intelligence quotient" comes from this test, in which each student's score was the quotient of his or her tested academic age with his or her actual age. Modern IQ tests do not calculate scores in this way, but the term IQ is still in common use.
(The following numbers apply to IQ scales with a standard deviation σ = 15.) Scores between 85 and 115 are considered average—so a person scoring 95 is simply average, not below-average. The "normal" range, or range between -2 and +2 standard deviations from the mean, is between 70 and 130. A score below 70 is an indicator of mental retardation, and a score above 130 is an indicator of intellectual giftedness.
Some writers say that such scores outside the range 55 to 145 are essentially meaningless because there have not been enough people tested in those ranges to make statistically sound statements. Moreover, at such extreme values, the normal distribution is a less accurate estimate of the IQ distribution.
Most IQ tests are designed so that the average IQs of males and females are equal. However, men tend to score higher in the parts of the test that cover spatial and quantitative abilities, and women generally score higher in the verbal sections. Some research has shown that the variance in men's IQ scores is greater than the variance among women's, as seen in other cognitive test scores. This is why more men than women are found in both very high and very low scoring groups.
The Bell Curve, published in 1994 by Richard Herrnstein and Charles MurrayCharles A. Murray (b. 1943) is the author of several non-fiction books concerning modern social issues and politics. He is most notable for his coauthorship of the highly controversial book The Bell Curve with Richard Herrnstein in 1994. His other works i, created great controversy among the scientific community and the public by suggesting that the average IQ of races differDuring the 17th century, Western philosophers began arguing over the relative role of "nature" or "nurture" in shaping human capacities and tendencies. By the 19th century, most of the Western world had come to the view that this was a question that would. They claim that the mean IQ scores of African Americans are one standard deviation (15 points) lower than those of European Americans, and they attribute between 40 - 80% to genetic factors. Critics publicly claimed that their evidence for a 'genetic' factor was exacerbated by the lack of account for some of the social factors believed to determine IQ, such as economic status, stress in environment, and access to education. As a result of the book's controversial claims, Murray received bomb threats and was denounced as a racist by a number of public figures, including Jesse JacksonThe Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. born October 8, 1941) is a civil rights and political activist in the United States. Early Life He was born as Jesse Louis Burns in a poor household in Greenville, South Carolina. He married Jacqueline Lavinia Brown o.
Arthur JensenArthur Jensen is an American educational psychologist, born August 24, 1923 and educated at the University of California, Berkeley (B. 1945), San Diego State College (M. 1952) and Columbia University (Ph. Jensen was a major practitioner of individual diff was one of the earliest researchers to propose that the IQ gap between blacks and whites is best explained by a hypothesis that attributes at least some of the cause to genetic factors. His 1969 paper in "Harvard Education Review" also stated that compensatory education was not very effective and that "genetic differences were more important than cultural or socioeconomic differences in explaining individual differences in IQ within the white population."Many compilations of average IQ by country place East Asian countries at the top of such lists. Some argue that this is in part attributed to some IQ tests' inherent bias towards testing spatial reasoning. They argue that pictographic languages like ChineseThe Chinese language (/, /, or ; pinyin: hany, huay, or zhongwen) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Although most Chinese view the many varieties of spoken Chinese as a single language, regional variations in spoken language are compara or JapaneseThe Japanese language is a spoken and written language used mainly in Japan. The Japanese name for the language is Nihongo . History and classification Historical linguists do not all agree about the origin of the Japanese language; there are several comp develop spatial reasoning better than Roman languages prevalent in Europe and America. The same reasoning has been used to explain why students from Asia-Pacific countries (eg Singapore, South Korea) tend to score better than average in tests of mathematics. Some argue that the East Asian advantage can also be explained by more rigorous education programs. Opponents of these interpretations point out that people of East Asian descent who are born and educated in the United States and primarily speak English score better on average on IQ tests than their white peers.
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