Testing for Intelligence

There is no single test that can measure all the complexities of the human brain. There are still many unknowns concerning the brain. Scientifically, humans are known to have multiple intelligences. Howard Gardner originally described nine intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic (movement), interpersonal (social understanding), and intrapersonal (self-understanding), naturalistic (understanding nature), and existential (thinking about life and death) (Berger, 2012).

All of the intelligences are valid, however of the nine, I would focus more on measuring interpersonal-a child’s social understanding. It is my belief that knowing how to live well with others supersedes other intelligences, not to say by any means that the others are not important. When an individual is able to interact well with others, in whatever capacity of weakness this person exhibits, someone is willing to work with this individual to help him/her reach their greatest potential in that area. How we treat one another and position ourselves to learn from another is foundational towards developing the whole person. I would want to know the level of a person’s social understanding; it would help me in learning how to be most effective in that particular person’s life.

Australian psychologists using earlier versions of these tests have relied on the American data in the manuals when evaluating a child's level of performance. Yet data from previous research, and from the recently completed standardization of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence - Third Edition (WPPSI-III), has revealed that on average Australian children score slightly higher than their American peers on this test. This difference is assumed to reflect a higher mean level of parental education, and a similar effect is expected to be observed in the WISC-IV standardization sample (Hannan, 2013).

Berger, K. S. (2012). The developing person through childhood (6th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Hannan, T. (2013). Assessing children: Hits and myths. Austrialian Psychological Society. Retrieved from http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/inpsych/assess_children/