Intelligence

Intelligence

Let’s say hypothetically speaking that a four year old boy could take five times five and come up with twenty-five. Is this pure luck, is it intelligence, maybe it is a bit of both? He could be a very good problem solver perhaps. Intelligence can be taken several different ways. Intelligence can be based on one’s problem solving skills, one’s trial and error methods, maybe one’s pure luck, one’s IQ score and intelligence test.

An IQ (intelligence quotient) is one’s mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100. Does this really say all there is to say about someone’s intelligence. Some say yes, some say no. there is a case for both. If one’s chronological age is higher than their mental age, maybe they just are not intelligent. But then again one can defend them by saying look at the questions on the test and who make the test. They are made by upper-middle class or upper class white male. I think this is unfair to several of people. Are the test really an adequate reliability? Most test are deemed adequate. When people are retested more times than not the scores are the same. I just believe an intelligence test does not completely prove it one is intelligent or just average or not even average. And there are a lot of researchers and just people that debate whether IQ test are valid and predict vocational success.

There is a lot of evidence saying that intelligence is hereditary and that the environment also has a lot to do with intelligence. Theorists estimate that heritability of IQ ranges as high as eighty percent and the only reason its eighty percent is because the other twenty percent is attributed to the environment. To test their theory they studied regular families, adopted families, and they looked at twins (identical and fraternal). Their biggest findings were in twins. Twins grow up in very similar environments but identical twins share more genetic kinship than fraternal twins. The correlation for identical twins is .86 and fraternal is .60. The correlation indicates that fraternal twins have a lot in common but identical twins have more in common. I believe this just depends on the twins because I’m a fraternal twin and my cousins are identical. My sister and I are a lot more a like than they are and our intelligence is a lot closer together than their’s