Psychological tests, especially intelligence tests are widely used tools. The effectiveness of a tool depends on the skill, scientific knowledge, and competence of its users. A long stick can be used to help a disabled person walk across the street or for assault on fellowmen. Similarly, psychological tests can either be used or misused.
Ability tests can help a teacher divide children into groups sharing almost equal level of ability, or can be used to label some children as dull and incompetent. Poor performance on an intelligence test may attach a stigma to the child, inviting teacher and parental discrimination.
Discriminatory practices initiated on the basis of intelligence test performance are unethical and should be abandoned- On the other hand, tests should be used to know the strengths and weaknesses of the child, and to draw up his cognitive profile with an intention to help him through appropriate remedial programs.
The IQ tests tap only a part of human’s overall competence. There are many more skills to be assessed, such as competence in social situations, creativity, and close positive relationship. Intelligence or high IQ is not necessarily the ultimate human value. It only predicts school-related success not the life success.
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Therefore, it is impossible to separate intelligence from scholastic achievement. As a schoolboy, Robert Sternberg, who is known for his Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, did very poorly on intelligence tests Sternberg, and now a Professor of Psychology at the Yale University believes this intelligence is more than what IQ tests measure (Sternberg, 1985, 1987).
Sternberg’s three-part theory of intelligence suggests that the traditions intelligence tests have three major limitations: (a) the IQ tests fail to measure creative insight, (b) they ignore the practical side of intelligence, and (c) since IQ tests are limited to a fixed time schedule, they wrongly equate intelligence with speed.
The intelligence tests are biased in favor of the middle-class and higher class populations. They underestimate the intellectual potentialities of children belonging to minority groups and other cultures. That is why, African-American tend to score about 15 points lower on IQ tests than the white American (Brody & Brody, 1976).
Language and the nature of the test items create problems in estimating intelligence. The test-developers have failed to separate what children have already learnt from what their abilities are to acquire the knowledge (Sternberg, 1985).
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Miller-Jones (1989) pointed out that answers to some intelligence test items seems to have been arbitrarily decided. For example, a 4-6 year old child taking 1973 edition of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence scale was asked, “What a house is made of?” His answer was “A house is built of walls.” But according to the test developer, the correct answer was “The house is made of wood bricks and stone”.
The child’s answer was relatively correct, but he failed to earn a score on the test. When scores obtained in IQ tests are thought to give a fixed and unchanging indicator of an individual’s intelligence, it brine misjudgment. Similar difficulties occurs when an intelligence test is used as the sole indicator of whether a child is placed in a special education program or in a class meant for gifted children.
Psychologists have pointed out that intelligence tests are less predicts of creative abilities that lead to scientific discoveries and inventions. It provides less meaningful information for the actual planning of educational instruction At best the IQ tests provide an AQ or Academic Quotient predictive of academic achievement (Kagan, Havemann, and Ernest, 1976).
In spite of its limitations, IQ tests provide important information about the individuals, when used judiciously by trained and expert investigators. The alternatives to intelligence testing are not yet promising. The test should be done repeatedly and its results should be used along with information collected from other sources.