History of measuring intelligence

Origins of measuring intelligence can be found in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Instead of IQ tests we know today, other methods were used - measuring the so called reaction time, the time an individual need to react to a certain sensum. 

Origins of measuring intelligence

Origins of measuring intelligence can be found in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Instead of IQ tests we know today, other methods were used - measuring the so called reaction time, the time an individual need to react to a certain sensum. But in the end it was found out that this measuring does not correspond to reality and these test results do not correspond to academic achievments.

Intelligence - ability to solve tasks

An important personality in the history of measuring intelligence was Alfréd Binet who believe there is a connection between the size of human brain and intelligence. Therefore he commited many years to measuring the brains of students and pupils more or less gifted. But the reached differences were so negligible they were not supporting the hypothesis. Therefore Binet came up with a new concept of intelligence - he approached the intelligence as an ability to solve tasks and problems. 

How to pick out gifted children

Based on this new concept of intelligence Binet established standardized tasks for various age groups. If a child is able to answer 90% of the questions correctly, is then regarded as mentally healthy with high probability of good academic achievements. Binet wanted to find out how to pick out more gifted children apart from the less gifted who would need special care. 

This was an impulse to create an instrument that could determine how much is a child mentaly retarded or on the contrary how much is a child ahead of other children of the same age. In connection with this instrument a new concept of mental age was created - this one is used for determine the value of intelligence, a so called intelligence quotient - IQ (mental age / chronological age x 100). 

IQ tests

First IQ test appeared in 1905 and since then it has been modernized and modified to the forms we know today. The Iq test are used more and more often (e.g. the US Army used them during 1st World War, IQ has been tested when recruiting new employees). 

Nowadays we know several tests for measuring intelligence which take more than an hour of time.