IQ Tests: Not Effective Measures for Intelligence, New Research Finds
How is intelligence measured? In a groundbreaking study led by the Adrian Owen of the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University, researchers have found that a simple IQ score is misleading when assessing a person’s intellectual capacity.
The paper, published in the journal Neuron, involved over 100,000 people from around the globe. Participants were asked to complete 12 cognitive tests to measure how well they perform in reasoning, memory, attention and planning. While performing the tasks, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques in one group of participants to determine the differences in cognitive abilities based on the activities in their brain.
The researchers theorised that a simple IQ test may not be sufficient in measuring human intelligence because it does not take into account the multiple factors and cognitive abilities of a person (or the various aspects of intelligence).
The findings suggest that given a broader range of cognitive tasks, the differences in the ability to relate to at least three components of intelligence, such as short-term memory, verbal aptitude and reasoning, create the so called “cognitive profile”.
"In the past, when people tried to examine how intelligence is related to the brain, they generally approached it with an assumption that there is one dominant form of intelligence which is sub-served by a specific system in the brain. What we found is that the brain regions associated with whatever the ’G Factor’ is – what general intelligence is – actually housed more specialized systems, not just one," explained Adam Hampshire of the Brain and Mind Institute, co-author of the study.
He argued that their approach was different and has never been done before in previous studies because they focused on analysing the structure of intelligence by looking at the way the brain is organised into specialised functional systems or the networks that have specified cognitive functions.
The researchers also found that certain factors could affect brain function and these are – age, gender and the tendency to play computer games. Their findings suggest that age has profound negative effect on a person’s memory and reasoning skills whilst playing computer games helped some individuals perform better in tests measuring short-term memory and reasoning skills.
“We very often hear these comparisons (of intelligence) and it’s a terrible oversimplification. People should be sceptical when they hear these reports of population differences in IQ; it shouldn’t be a unitary measure.” Hampshire said. The team is looking forward to seeing a new, more comprehensive intelligence model in the future that will be able to accurately measure human intelligence.
Source of this article:
©Copyright 2013 by http://www.naturaltherapyforall.com Hypnotherapy Leicester All Rights Reserved.