Types of Items Used to Measure Intelligence Flashcards
Questions that are wide ranging and tap general knowledge, learning, and memory.
Interests, education, cultural background, and reading skills are some influencing factors in the score achieved.
Ex. In what continent is the Philippines?
Information
In general, these questions tap social comprehension, the ability to organize and apply knowledge, and what is colloquially
referred to as “common sense.”
Ex. Why should children be cautious in speaking to strangers?
Comprehension
Pairs of words are presented to the examinee, and the task is to determine how they are alike.
The ability to analyze relationships and engage in logical, abstract thinking are two cognitive abilities tapped by this type of test.
Ex. How are a pen and a pencil alike?
Similarities
Problems are presented and solved verbally.
At lower levels, the task may involve simple counting.
Arithmetic
The task is to define words. This test is thought to be a good measure of general intelligence, although education and cultural opportunity clearly contribute to success on it.
Vocabulary
The task is to select from four pictures what the examiner has said aloud.
This tests taps auditory discrimination and processing, auditory memory, and the integration of visual perception and auditory input.
Receptive Vocabulary
The task is to name a picture displayed in a book of stimulus pictures. This test taps expressive language and word retrieval ability.
Picture Naming
The examiner verbally presents a series of numbers, and the examinee’s task is to repeat the numbers in the same sequence or backward.
This subtest taps auditory short-term memory, encoding, and attention.
Digit Span
Letters and numbers are orally presented in a mixed-up order. The task is to repeat the list with numbers in ascending order and letters in alphabetical order.
Success on this subtest requires attention, sequencing ability, mental manipulation, and processing speed.
Letter-Number Sequencing
The subject’s task here is to identify what important part is missing from a picture.
This subtest draws on visual perception abilities, alertness, memory, concentration, attention to detail, and ability to differentiate essential from nonessential detail. Provides a good nonverbal estimate of intelligence.
Successful performance on a test such as this still tends to be highly influenced by cultural factors.
Ex., the testtaker might be shown a picture of a chair with one leg missing.
Picture Completion
In the genre of a comic-strip panel, this subtest requires the testtaker to re-sort a scrambled set of cards with pictures on them into a story that makes sense.
Because the testtaker must understand the whole story before a successful re-sorting will occur, this subtest is thought to tap the ability to comprehend or “size up” a situation.
Additionally, attention, concentration, and ability to see temporal and cause-and-effect relationships are tapped.
Picture Arrangement
A design with colored blocks is illustrated either with blocks themselves or with a picture of the finished design, and the examinee’s task is to reproduce the design.
This test draws on perceptual-motor skills, psychomotor speed, and the ability to analyze and synthesize.
Factors that may influence performance on this test include the examinee’s color vision, frustration tolerance, and flexibility or rigidity in problem-solving.
Block Design
The task here is to assemble, as quickly as possible, a cut-up picture of a familiar object.
Some of the abilities called on here include pattern recognition, assembly skills, and psychomotor speed.
Useful qualitative information pertinent to the examinee’s work habits may also be obtained here by careful observation of the approach to the task (e.g., does the examinee give up easily or persist in the face of difficulty?)
Object Assembly
Ex., You were given the dot-and-dash equivalents of several letters in Morse code and then had to write out letters in Morse code as quickly as you could.
In Wechsler, this involves using a code from a printed key.
The test is thought to draw on factors such as attention, learning ability, psychomotor speed, and concentration ability.
Coding
The task is to visually scan two groups of symbols, one search group and one target group, and determine whether the target symbol appears in the search group.
The test is presumed to tap cognitive processing speed.
Symbol Search
