Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Does Your IQ Score Accurately Reflect Your Intelligence ?

IQ tests measure things that can be measured! Many areas of human excellence, however, cannot easily be measured – such as artistic and musical creativity, emotional maturity, intuition, sensitivity to the needs of others, keeping a cool head in emergencies, being able to impersonate other people, and inventiveness. Some people may excel in these areas and yet perform poorly in tests that are language-based. Students who have failed in language- or number-based GCE’s often do very well on university courses in the arts. Similarly, some people who are poor at languages are excellent at computer sciences.

Einstein’s schoolwork was not very good – yet IQ tests are supposed to correlate well with school performance. Einstein claimed that his initial idea on the relativity of time and space struck him in a moment of inspiration while he was daydreaming that he was riding on a sunbeam. This kind of imaginative thinking is difficult to measure using IQ tests.

Cottrel, Stella. (1999) The Study Skills Handbook, 3rd edn. Palgrave Macmillan, p47.

No comments:

Post a Comment