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The one responsible for introducing the concept of an ‘mental age test’ was a German named William Stern (1871-1938), and score them by dividing an individual’s "MENTAL AGE" , as assessed by a standardized mental test, over his/her actual age and times it by a hundred. But in 1916 an American named Lewis Terman introduced the term IQ.
. Lewis Terman At the early 20th century, a Frenchmen psychologist named Alfred Binet (1857 – 1911) was asked by the school authorities of Paris to give a standardized measure of intelligence to be used in education. His was the 1st mental test to do so. In 1905 Binet and Theodore Simon published a scale of intelligence for children from 3 to 13. It was then used by an American named Henry H. Goddard. From then on this scale had been modified and revised by others through out the United States and other countries. Some other revisions and scales were the Stanford-Binet Revisions published by Terman in 1916, and Wechsler-Bellevue Scale by David Wechsler in 1939 which is an adult scale for ages between 7 to 70.
Some Facts : People had believed that intelligence is fixed and unchangeable, an inherited product of the genes that is no more under our control. But one young English Army officer, Charles Spearmen (1863 - 1945), as a pioneer of psychological testing, becomes interested in the possibility of applying to measure of performance at psychological tasks, a nearly developed technique for estimating the possible links between sets of scores. Spearmen convinced him self that examination of the relationship between people’s scores at different mental tasks would help to reveal some underlying qualities of the mind that played a part in all mental abilities. As simple to say, he regards a person’s test score as being far more than an indication of the person’s mental output but as a measure of one’s capability to perform a task. Other theories are by Edward L. Thorndike, L.L. Thurstone and J.P. Guildford. Thorndike maintained that there are three types of intelligence rather than only one, i.e. abstract, mechanical and social. Thurstone theory is that he identified several basic factors in intelligence which he called primary mental abilities. They are spatial, perceptual, numerical, verbal relations, memory, vocabulary, induction, reasoning, and deduction. Guildford believes that some gifted persons have different potential in doing other things. Some may be gifted in creativity and some are competent in organization of information. There is no single mechanism of the brain that causes people to be more or less intelligent. The average intelligence levels of individuals do not stay constant. There have been large changes from one generation to the next, and big improvements in some minority groups. Early experiences and opportunities exert a big influence on intellectual levels. Genetic influences do not affect people’s intelligence directly, except in some cases involving specific deficits. There is no such thing as a gene for intelligence. Some may ask is high IQ a necessity and is it possible for one to be a genius at a low IQ? The answer for the first question is it’s not necessary and yes it is possible for a low IQ person to be a genius. For example George Stephenson (picture below) born in 1781, a railway engineer whose face appears on every English five pound note was a remarkable inventive genius. Never went to school as a child and could not even spell his name but do simple arithmetic before he was 18 years of age. He was undoubtedly intelligent, his illiteracy, coupled by a practical mean’s lack of interest in abstract problems, could almost certainly have resulted in a low IQ test.
. George Stephenson
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