I have always really hated IQ tests and other measures of "intelligence." How can one possibly measure what is so difficult to define? Part of this is personal. (But doesn't everything come down to something personal?) When I was in elementary school I was put in the "gifted" program, and then promptly kicked out again when I did poorly on an IQ test. I have this distinct memory of the test, looking over these questions and thinking, "what is this?," and then filling in answers randomly. Not the way to get a good IQ score.
When I was in college I got interested in the evolution of "intelligence" or "higher cognitive abilities" in humans. I read "The Mismeasure of Man," by Steven Jay Gould, which discussed problems with measurements of intelligence, including IQ tests and phrenology (i.e. measuring how intelligent you are based on the circumference of your head, or what kind of lumps you have in your skull). I also took a class on "quantitative methods in archaeology," which took a very critical look at the ways numbers both help and obscure archaeological conclusions. These were both very influential, as before I had never really questioned numbers. Statistics in the news, a graph in a scientific article ... if there's a number associated with it, it's right, right? Now I'm almost more skeptical of a number than blatant speculation (which is usually pretty fun), as I need to know where that number came from in order for it to mean anything, and usually I don't.
I also read, years past, an excellent science book, "Principles of Brain Evolution," by Georg Striedter. In it he briefly discussed measurements of intelligence. From what I recall, apparently researchers thought that most reptiles were pretty "unintelligent" because they were unable to perform simple behavioral tasks that many mammals (even mice, those dumb cuties) can complete easily. It turns out that they were just rewarding the reptiles wrong ... mammals love food, and a titillating sugary or succulent meaty treat is a wonderful incentive for them to learn the task. Reptiles, on the other hand, love heat, and once researchers learned to reward them with a little puff of warmth the reptiles performed very well. So all those people who think that mammals are so superior in terms of intelligence? Design your experiments right! They just don't think like you do!
Anyway, what got me all riled up about this was an article on the Scientific American blog about autism. Apparently many autistic people are thought to be mentally retarded. I remember when I was angry with my older, autistic brother I would scream at him that he was "a retard," and he would get sad and upset. I used that epithet because it was the only thing that actually got to him emotionally. According to the researchers cited in this article, however, the tests used to measure "intelligence" in children are flawed especially when it comes to autistic people. Here's a direct quote from the article:
"... testing for intelligence in autistic people is hard. The
average person can sit down and take a verbally administered, timed
test without too many problems. But for an autistic person with limited
language capability, who might be easily distracted by sensory
information, this task is very hard. The most commonly administered
intelligence test, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)
almost seems designed to flunk an autistic person: it is a completely
verbal, timed test that relies heavily on cultural and social knowledge.
It asks things like "What is the thing to do if you find an envelope in
the street that is sealed, addressed and has a new stamp on it?" and
"What is the thing to do when you cut your finger?"" (Rose Eveleth, SA blog)
Wow hell yeah that would be hard for an autistic person. Asking them questions about social knowledge? My brother would just say "NO" and then talk about all the food he isn't allowed to eat (he has gluten and other food allergies). So autistic people score waaaay lower than average on this test, but if you test them with the Raven's Progressive Matrices or the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI), which are intelligence tests based on completing patterns and designs with mostly non-verbal instructions, they do so so so much better. And it's both high and low functioning autistic kids that do so much better. The idea here is that maybe autistic people are not "mentally retarded" but just see the world in a completely different way.
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