Measuring a child’s IQ is an obsolete way to determine intelligence, and in fact, labels youngsters unfairly, according to a University of Alberta professor. From the Science Blog
The traditional IQ measure, as can be expected when graphed, is a curve in the classic ‘bell’ shape where most people are distributed around the average intelligence (or intelligence score) and few people are at the extreme ends of low and high intelligence.
With street-smartness increasingly becoming the prerequisite of survival and even success, this kind of research into ‘smarter’ measures of intelligence is long overdue. Sure, research has been going on for a long time to find a better alternative to IQ, but this study must be the first of its kind to acknowledge what I think is the essence of intelligence : that it is not absolute, but influenced by such factors as learning and cultural demands, cognitive abilities, even school attendance, as well as individual ability to process information such as language and face recognition.
In other words, a person can be ‘intelligent’ (or smart, to use the better word) in some situations and not in others. Which is a fact that conventional tools of intelligence measurement do not consider.
And the more I see the generation now-and-me youth, the more it occurs to me how conventional ways of labelling a person intelligent or otherwise suck.