Twins and orphans : the inheritance of intelligence / by Alex. H. Wingfield.

  • Wingfield, Alexander H. (Alexander Hamilton)
Date:
1928
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Twins and orphans : the inheritance of intelligence / by Alex. H. Wingfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sense of not being directly affected by specific training. But what can be measured are the responses which an individual makes when confronted with a variety of situations requiring intelligent behaviour for successful adaptation to the situations thus presented. And in our stock intelligence tests a multitude of varying situations are presented, each of such a nature that an individual could respond successfully, providing his mind had grown normally in a normal environment. It is assumed that if a group of individuals be given similar educational opportunities, then the differences found among the group will be due to differences in native intelligence. The makers of intelligence tests did not sit down and draw up a definition of intelligence and then proceed to make a series of tests which would measure what they had defined. Rather they proceeded as the physicists did when they devised instruments for measuring elec tricity before they were able to give a satisfactory defini tion of what they were measuring. In a similar manner the intelligence test makers made their tests first and then gave the name of “ intelligence ” to that which the tests measured. It is generally conceded that the better intelligence tests do succeed in measuring some mental function. This function, which the test-makers call “ intelligence,” has certain well-defined qualities: (a) It appears to increase with a child’s growth up to the middle of the “ teens ” and then to stop; ( b ) up to sixteen or there abouts it bears a constant ratio to the child’s chronological age; ( c) it is independent of special schooling or special