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Al Capone

Intelligence/Testing

Intelligence, a vaguely defined mental quality generally taken to comprise such things as the abilities to learn from experience, to adapt to new situations, and to deal with abstract concepts.
Non- Language Testing
The manifestations of human intelligence cannot be discussed without treating the role of language in determining those manifestations. The more complex aspects of intelligence can hardly be measured at all without using language. This fact explains the inaccuracies of so-called nonlanguage tests of mental ability in measuring learning potential or predicting performance on tasks incorporating verbal behavior.
Pioneers Of Intelligence Testing
The testing of intelligence is a development of the last 100 years. Francis Galton in England, Hermann Ebbinghaus in Germany, and James McKeen Cattell in the United States all experimented in the late 19th century with the testing of mental abilities, but they were concerned primarily with simple perception tests, and their studies were inconclusive.
Binet. The outstanding pioneer in the development of the modern intelligence test was the French psychologist Alfred Binet. In the early years of the 20th century, Binet, with his student Théodore Simon, began to work on a test that would identify mental retardation among French schoolchildren. The result was the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale (1905), which contained problems designed to measure memory, reasoning ability, ability to compare objects, numerical facility, comprehension, time orientation, the ability to combine ideas into meaningful wholes, knowledge of common objects, wealth of ideas, and so on. Binet continued to work on the scale until his death in 1911, producing revisions in 1908 and 1911 that incorporated suggestions made by other psychologists.
Other Individual Intelligence Tests.
Binet's work attracted attention all over the world and particularly in the United States. The first attempt to adapt his test for...