General Mental Ability
We hear much about the IQ (intelligence quotient) score which is a measure that allows us to compare anyone child with all other children, regardless of chronological age. It is important not to get too enthusiastic or too depressed when you first learn the score of your child. The teacher or psychologist can eitplain both the advantages and the limitations of tests and test scores. Present-day psychologists and other professionals are giving some new critical attention to methods of testing, IQ testing included, while beginning to pay more attention to processes in intellectual development. While one child may possess the mental equipment necessary for responding to conventional test situations, another may find himself behind in responding. Another may be very good at rdsponse and thus may seem more intelligent. Even slowness in muscular development may make a child appear inferior when in fact his mental prowess is quite keen.
Modern school practices give particular attention to school readiness, grade placement, and curriculum modification, emphasizing the individual and his particular rate of development. Psychologists are now giving more attention to the environmental aspects of intelligence. We now know that the standard IQ tests, which are geared to the culture of the middle-class child, can actually penalize bright children from a ghetto culture. Language barriers, often found among Puerto Rican and Chicano children, add to the problem of intelligence testing. The failure to perform on some test may be due to a lack of expressive capacity rather than lack of general ability. How the child approaches some test item or problem relates to the kind of competence highly regarded in the child's particular culture. When children are compared within a given subculture, the tests may prove useful. It has been round, for example, that some children in Nigeria score very high on general intelligence tests when the items are relevant to their local culture. It is certainly safe to say that no ethnic origin, no culture, and no part of the world has a monopoly on intellectual ability or special talent. Intellectual ability is found to be universal when we define intelligence as the ability to acquire new information, to profit from experience. to adjust to new situations, and to adjust to one's own cultural climate. Intelligence is the aggregate of all the learning experiences of any individual. We get a useful view of intelligence as we observe' a sample of mental growth in children.
As an illustration of the nature of menfal growth. Jet us consider the development of the ability to generalize and recognize abstrac ideas. The ages and accompanying descrJptions are of the average child in a middle-class North American culture.
At the age of three and onc-half years the child can identify the longer of two sticks or the larger of two bails. (Length and size are abstract ideas, although for us adults these ideas are so simple that we may forget they are abstractions.) At four years of age the child can point to the longer of two lines drawn on paper, thus using the same concept in a more abstract setting. At four and one-half years he or she can select drawings of faces as pretty or not pretty. At five children can distinguish between heavy and light. By six years of age the child can cell the difference in composition between. two objects, such as wood and glass. Not, however, until the average thild is seven years old can he or she describe the similarity of two objects, such as a peach and a pear.
Many research studies made on the nature of mental growth have given us answers to a number of practical questions. They indicate, for example, that superior children grow at a more rapid rate throughout the growing period of their mental development, continue to develop for a longer time, and reach a higher level at maturity. Children of high intelligence generally excel in school achievement. They have a wider range of interests, do well in sports, read more Dooks, and are better adjusted emotionally than the average. Longrange studies show that they are highly successful in later life. Of course, some individuals of superior intelligence run into problems as bildren, and others do as adults.
In contrast to the mentally bright children and those of average intelligence, we find the mentally handicapped children. Many slow children can be directed through proper home handling and schooling to make satisfactory adjustments to life. Since this is a problem :equiring special attention, we offer no advice here. Suffice it to say, However, that with proper training these children can acquire a nu:mber of important skills .
