Are intelligence quotient (IQ) tests an accurate barometer of a person’s smarts, anyway?
First, a quick history of these tests.
In 1916, Stanford University psychologist Louis Terman published the Stanford-Binet test, planting the seed for the field of giftedness and making the term intelligence quotient, or IQ, part of the popular vocabulary.
Fascinatingly, the predominant view in 1916 was that giftedness was a phenomenon that is “early to ripe, early to rot,” or a sign of individuals who are physically weak and emotionally unstable.
How times have changed.
But increasingly, the legitimacy of these tests is being debated among educators, social scientists, and hard scientists who argue that they are blunt and narrow tools that only measure a piece of the intelligence pie.
According to one recent study, IQ tests are misleading because a minimum of three different exams are needed to measure someone's brainpower and that different circuits within the brain are used for different thought processes.
This means that separate tests of short-term memory, reasoning and verbal skills are needed to measure someone's overall intelligence.
Convergent thinking refers to intelligence rated by IQ tests, or tests that measure rational, problem-solving abilities: basically, it means one “right answer” for a given problem
And in any case - can creative brilliance be revealed in an IQ test? What about all those brilliant ballerinas, artists and hatmakers out there who may struggle with numbers, say?
According to the seminal work of psychologists Joy Paul Guildford and E. Paul Torrance , people generally use two different approaches to problem solving: convergent thinking and divergent thinking.
Convergent thinking refers to intelligence rated by IQ tests, or tests that measure rational, problem-solving abilities: basically, it means one “right answer” for a given problem.
In contrast, divergent thinking is more fluid, intuitive and flexible - coming up with many solutions or ideas for problems that don’t have one solution, say.
Clearly, if you’re going to be creative, you need to apply divergent thinking.
So are these tests fair to the divergentically minded?
Rest assured all you arty types, says Dr. Scott Kaufman, a psychologist at Barnard College, Columbia University.
He argues that “thoughtful reasoning, divergent production, pattern detection, learning' are all part of the creative process, and are measured in an IQ test.”
A true prodigy is as rare as 1 in 5 million or 1 in 10 million
As for the question of how rare such genius is?
Intellectually gifted children are often defined as those whose intellectual (cognitive) abilities place them within the top 10 per cent of age peers.
But according to Ohio State University psychologist Joanne Ruthsatz, who has studied and followed more than 30 child prodigies – the largest cohort ever studied -- “a true prodigy is as rare as 1 in 5 million or 1 in 10 million.”
The ABC series Making Child Prodigies this year estimated there are less than 4,000 exceptionally skilled kids in Australia, and only about 100 who could be considered prodigies.
And where can they be found?
The 2015 Australian Mensa Gifted Children’s Survey by Alan D. Thompson and Karen King found that Australian Mensa child members are concentrated within the capital cities, with some slight spread into regional areas.
Make of this what you will.
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