Trouble With Geniuses

One would assume that intelligence testing in the United States began with psychiatrists or government officials. It was actually a football coach who coached the University of South California at the start of the century. He

A further refinement of the Stanford-Binet scale and translation (for American culture) was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman, who adopted Stern’s proposal that an individual's intelligence level be measured as an intelligence quotient (I. Q.). The IQ score presumably represented an individual’s rate of mental development as a quotient, between "mental age" and actual "chronological age" times 100 (to remove the decimal). Terman's test, known colloquially as the Stanford-Binet test, formed the basis for modern intelligence

Gladwell reveals that to excel in the world, one must be born with or introduced to the right tools. These tools may include being born into a high class home, when one is born, as well as being recognized early in school. When Lewis Terman, in 1921, conducted the Genetic Study of Genius observation, he only took into account the subjects I.Q. scores. It wasn’t until later, when he noticed the divergence of three different groups A, B, and C, did he realize that it wasn’t only about scores. The groups were separated by societal class, group A born from the high end of the scale while C was from the lower end. Group A, as well as most of B, did superb at the same time that group C fell out. Intelligence

In “Outliers: The Story of Success”, Malcolm Gladwell explains some factors of success that many people overlook. He covers many topics regarding how people become successful, one I found particularly interesting was how intelligence correlates to success. According to Gladwell’s findings, “Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn't seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.” At first, this claim seems ridiculous; how can anyone with a higher IQ not have any advantage over someone with a lower IQ?

Passion and determination towards long term goals (otherwise known as ‘grit’) are parts of cognitive development. (Kantrowitz 2016). Grit is seen to be necessary for academic expertise in all fields ranging from sciences to the arts. (Ericsson, Prietula and Cokely 2007). Natural born Intelligence Quotient, also known as ‘IQ’, is described as a person’s ability to complete problems and understand concepts. This is compared across the population to give an average IQ score (Latham 2006). However, can this number accurately measure whether a human will become an expert in a field sooner than a grittier person? The focus of this essay is to evaluate whether grit or IQ has the most positive effect on cognitive development.

Binet was involved in creating one of the more recent forms of intelligence test, referred to as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. A similar test is that formulated by Wechsler (Neisser et al. 1996). These led to the measure of IQ (“intelligence quotient”) being founded, where an individual’s “mental age is divided by their chronological age and multiplied by 100” (Gardner 2006, p. 3). The tests measure intelligence through verbal and non-verbal tasks, assessing scholastic aptitude, school achievement and specific abilities (Neisser et al. 1996, p. 78).

Executive level brain functions (“executive functions” for short) are a tool for managing cognitive processes such as working memory, reasoning, and problem solving. Tough points out that the present-day education system places considerable emphasis on measurable intelligence (i.e., IQ, pattern detection, and recognition of words and symbols) instead of focusing on the development of executive functions. If schools instead identified these executive functions and worked to build upon them, they will develop in children greater persistence, self-control, determination, and motivation. Additionally, Tough claims that a child’s executive brain function is quite malleable and can be influenced in ways measurable intelligence cannot. To emphasize his point, he includes a study done by Carmit Segal called the Coding-Speed Test in which participants were tested on how their personalities interacted with incentives. Segal concluded that those who performed poorly “may not have been low in IQ, but they were low in whatever quality it is that makes a person try hard on an IQ test without any obvious incentive” (Tough 69). Participants who were able to tap into their ability to care about such a boring test ended up surpassing those who put little effort in, demonstrating that motivation (an executive function) is swayed by incentives while IQ is not. Finally, Tough highlights the fact that matured executive function leads to the development of better character, resulting in a fruitful future. Successful students usually possess six key character traits – optimism, self-control, motivation, conscientiousness, grit, and identity – that lead to higher GPAs and earning potential. (Notice that this list does not include IQ nor economic background). These traits, as Tough details, are developed through successes

In 1904, a French psychologist (Alfred Binet) created the first intelligence test in order to help the French Ministry of Education segregate children that may have difficulty learning in a regular classroom. At that time, he did not know that his test would be the basis for IQ tests administered over 100 years later. He has a Stanford University psychologist, Lewis Terman, to thank for expanding his work and creating the Stanford-Binet intelligence test that took root in the United States in 1916 and is still popular today. However, along with its popularity came criticism. Critics see the current version of the Stanford - Binet test and other intelligence tests, despite attempts to make them culturally fair, as limiting to individuals who are not from the major social norm. They claim that cultural bias in test questions is why certain races do not perform as well as others on the test.

     Scientific research in child development flourished from the early 1900’s. One major stimulus was the introduction (1916) by the American psychologist Lewis Terman of the test known today as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. This test led to a number of studies about children’s intellectual development. In the 1920’s scientists at more than a dozen leading universities began large-scale observational studies of children and heir families; these included the Berkeley Growth Study at the University of California (started in 1929 and still active today), the Fels Growth Study at Antioch College, and the Harvard Growth Studies. All used the longitudinal method, in which the same children are observed and tested at over a specific time period (The Volume Library 1990: Volume 2).

In 1905 Binet and Simon tested their measurements on another fifty children whom their school teachers considered to be of average intelligence for their ages. This test was to enable Binet to examine the levels of intelligent behaviors between children of the same age. Some of the tests on Binets scale were very simple, including asking a child to follow the direction of movement of a lighted match, and then maybe slightly harder was to repeat back a three digit sequence of numbers or sentences. There were a few harder tests involved which would require a child to make a sentence out of maybe three or four words, or to reproduce a drawing from memory.

Debates on the relationship between birth order and intelligence have been remaining controversial. Birth order is considered as a person's ranking by age among his or her siblings. There have been numerous researchers studying about this subject to find whether firstborns generally have a higher IQ scores than their siblings. Some scientists conclude that birth order strongly influents intelligence; however, others oppose to this, claiming that birth order has no effect on intelligence. In this paper, my study deals with the birth order effects on intelligence.

Before the 1950s, most educators and school systems tended to follow Louis Terman’s example and based most decisions about gifted individuals on IQ and scholastic achievement scores. Standardized group intelligence tests, such as California Test of Mental Maturity, were often used to determine IQ. In these tests, educators were looking for exceptional ability in verbal or performance IQ, or a combination of the two. For the final identification, individual IQ tests such as the Wechsler scales and the Stanford Binet were used. Most school systems around this time considered an IQ of 130 or above to fall in the "gifted" range. This information comes from a book by Frederick B. Tuttle, Laurence A. Becker, and Joan A. Sousa (48).

Binet. Another key individual in the development of intelligence is Alfred Binet, who was a very influential psychologist of the early twentieth century. He was a French psychologist who is known especially for his work with intelligence and is remembered as the father of the first intelligence test (Binet, 1903). He was a self-taught psychologist who was studying medicine (but did not finish his medical studies) and later shifted into psychology because it was much an interest to him (Zusne, 1957). He was interested in the development of his children and in 1903 he published a book L’étude expérimentale de I’intelligence (Binet, 1903) which included empirical data of the observations he made with his children and an extensive

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, discusses the idea of intelligence being more than a matter of cognitive ability. In part one and two of the book, Goleman discusses how the brain processes emotions. In these chapters the author describes the cortex and the limbic system. Rationality is job of the cortex while the limbic system processes your emotions. He suggests that the emotional intelligence can be a learned skill. In the next chapter Daniel Goleman uses studies to show that many high IQ scoring students have underperformed in their lives while many average people have become huge successes. Goleman stated that if the IQ scoring has little to do with success and that your 80% success is based on your emotional intelligence.

Academic success is largely attributed to intellectual ability in everyday life, even though this supports the literature that is intellectual ability does have a large role over academic success it is only one of many factors that can influence academic success, in this study the effect of intellectual ability will be tested against academic success of students to verify and reproduce the results that exist in abundance within multiple studies (Chamorro-Premuzic & Arteche, 2008). Therefore, we will be testing whether the relationship between intellectual ability and academic performance is significant or not. This constructs the first hypothesis for the study: