EBSCOhostNew Search | View Folder | Preferences | Help | Exit ANDREWS UNIV 31 of 80 Result List | Refine Search Print E-mail Save Folder has 0 items. Formats: Citation HTML Full Text Title: CONTEMPORARY THEORIES AND ASSESSMENTS OF INTELLIGENCE: A PRIMER , By: Esters, Irvin G., Ittenbach, Richard F., Professional School Counseling, 10962409, Jun99, Vol. 2, Issue 5 Database: Academic Search Elite CONTEMPORARY THEORIES AND ASSESSMENTS OF INTELLIGENCE: A PRIMER Contents The Role of Theory in Test Development The Fluid-Crystallized Theory of Intelligence (Gf-Gc) The Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive Theory Carroll's Three Stratum Theory of Intelligence Discussion References Most if not all school counselors have become familiar with various measures of human intelligence, either in graduate course work, on-the-job experience, or both. One would be hard pressed to find a school counselor without at least the most rudimentary understanding of the assessment of human intelligence. For many counselors, the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children Revised and the newly developed third edition (WISC-R, WISC-III; Weschler, 1974, 1991) represents the most common form of intellectual assessment in the schools. During the past five decades, school counselors and school psychologists have overwhelmingly relied on the Weschler scales for programming and for making decisions about special education services (Esters, Ittenbach, & Han 1997; Wilson & Reschly, 1996). One recent study reported that school counselors ranked the WISC-R as the most useful and the most widely used standardized test in counseling (Giordano, Schwiebert, & Brotherton, 1997). In fact, of the top 10 standardized tests ranked according to usefulness, four were intelligence tests. These four intelligence tests, primarily the Weschler series, have served schools well for many years. They were not, however, developed with a clear understanding of what intelligence actually is. With the advent of newer and more sophisticated theories of intelligence, the testing community has begun to demand that instruments which purport to measure human intelligence be not only psychometrically defensible, but grounded in sound theory. Contemporary views of intelligence developed in recent years have given rise to newer, arguably better measures of the human intellect than the Weschler scales and similar instruments. The present article provides readers, particularly school counselors, with an overview of several contemporary theories and the assessment instruments inspired by them. Since the primary interest here is the quantification of human intelligence, we discuss those theories of intelligence derived from empirical studies in the psychometric tradition. The authors intend to present the school counselor with a primer on human intelligence as interpreted from the psychometric perspective. The Role of Theory in Test Development A theory of intelligence is useful to educators and school counselors only if it leads to a better understanding of how children learn or if it assists in predicting future performance. This, put in terms of modem practice, means identification and measurement of the particular construct of interest, in the present case, intelligence. In education and counseling, decisions are based on assessments, either informal or formal. In presenting general principals of assessment, Linn and Gronlund (1995) note that one of the first considerations when devising an assessment instrument is to specify clearly what is to be assessed. They go on to add that specification of the characteristics to be measured should precede the selection or development of assessment procedures (p. 6). Unfortunately, in regard to the traditional assessment of human intelligence, this basic tenant of assessment has been violated. In other words, some tests designed to measure human intelligence were developed without a clear definition of the very construct they were intended to measure. In 1905, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon were commissioned by the French Ministry of Public Instruction with the charge of devising a method to identify children who might not benefit from traditional instruction (Hunt, 1993). What resulted was the first formal test of intelligence they called the Measuring Scale of Intelligence (Binet & Simon, 1905). This first formal intelligence assessment instrument has gone through numerous revisions, translations, and reformations to become the Stanford-Binet, Fourth Edition (SB-IV; Thorndike, Hagen, & Sattler, 1986), one of the most popular intelligence test batteries to date. The aforementioned Weschler Scales, perhaps the most utilized tests in our schools, have also undergone several revisions. Analogs, which test the intelligence of adults as well as preschool-aged children, were added to the scale originally developed for use with children. As there was no formal theory of intelligence upon which to base these earliest tests, intelligence was initially viewed to be what the test tests, hardly an acceptable theory for such an important construct. One problem for test developers was that human intelligence had not, to that time, been operationally defined to the extent that theory could be used as a guiding framework for intelligence tests. The most prevalent theory of intelligence during the early 1900s was one which viewed intelligence as a one-factor construct. Spearman (1927) noted that, because of the high intercorrelation among cognitive ability measures, intelligence must stem from one basic process he labeled g. While this theory is significant in an historical sense, advances in statistical procedures, namely factor analytic techniques, have demonstrated the theory to be conceptually and technically lacking when taken alone as a comprehensive account of the human intellect. In essence, theory should drive test development. However, in the case of the Weschler and Binet Scales, the cart was put before the horse. According to what we now know about the nature of assessment, particularly regarding the psychometric integrity of our instruments, test development should be guided by an organizing theory or framework. A description of three contemporary theories--each in the psychometric tradition and the instruments they are inspiring--follows. The Fluid-Crystallized Theory of Intelligence (Gf-Gc) The Weschler Scales and the Stanford-Binet, although not originally developed with theory in mind, have somewhat conformed to one popular theory of intelligence: Horn and Cattell's Fluid-Crystallized Theory of Intelligence (Gf-Gc; Horn & Cattell, 1966). The name given to this theory, if taken literally, suggests a simple dichotomy consisting of fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. This is not altogether correct. The definition of intelligence according to Gf-Gc theory does, however, present human intelligence as a nine-factor construct with fluid and crystallized factors as the core components. In this theory, the nine factors believed to compose human intelligence are: Fluid Reasoning (Gf) Crystallized Intelligence (Gc) Visual Processing (Gv) Auditory Processing (Ga) Processing Speed (Gs) Short-Term Memory (Gsm) Long-Term Retrieval (Glr) Quantitative Knowledge (Gq) Correct Decision Speed (CDS) It should be noted that this theory flies directly in the face of the notion of g. It should be further noted that the Horn and Cattell Gf-Gc theory has far more statistical evidence to back it up than pure unitary construct theory. The best example of an intelligence test which uses Gf-Gc theory as an organizing framework is the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised, Tests of Cognitive Ability (WJ-R; Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). The WJ-R consists of 21 cognitive subtests, 7 of which have direct analogs in Gf-Gc theory. The battery also consists of 14 achievement subtests, two of which correspond to the Quantitative Knowledge (Gq) factor. Although most intelligence testing experts would agree that the WJ-R is a superior instrument to the Weschler scales, it has not been widely used in schools. Another instrument grounded in Gf-Gc theory is the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (McCallum & Bracken, 1997). As the name of this instrument implies, the test is language-free and can be administered and taken with the use of simple gestures such as head nodding and finger pointing. Given that the test is a nonverbal test of intelligence, not a test of nonverbal intelligence, and that it correlates highly with scores from the WJ-R, it may prove to be especially useful when a language barrier is thought to restrict the true measure of intelligence. The Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive Theory The Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) theory of intelligence (Das, Naglieri, & Kirby, 1994) is another contemporary theory of cognition. PASS theory allows for a broad range of cognitively mediated responses to a problem with an emphasis on process rather than product. The attentional processes enable the individual to selectively attend to relevant stimuli while ignoring stimuli irrelevant to the problem at hand. Simultaneous processing, as the name implies, enables the individual to simultaneously process several interrelated components of a problem while successive processing, again as indicated by its name, allows for the integration of linearly related stimuli. Central to this theory is the planning process, which guides the remaining three processes through the generation of strategies (Das et al., 1994). The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children and the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test (K-ABC, KAIT; Kaufman & Kaufman, 1983, 1993) are two intelligence tests which utilize the simultaneous-successive framework. Only two of the components of the PASS theory are incorporated in the K-ABC due to the belief that attentional and planning processes are undeveloped in children, for whom the test was designed. The adult analog of the K-ABC, the KAIT began its development with sequential (successive) simultaneous processes as a guiding framework, but late in the development of the test, the framework was abandoned for the more popular Gf-Gc framework. Needless to say, this caused some problems related to the psychometric integrity of the test (Flanagan, 1995). One test, the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS; Naglieri & Das, 1997), in development for more than a decade, uses the complete PASS theory as a guiding framework. That is to say, unlike the KAIT and K-ABC which utilize only two components of PASS theory (successive and simultaneous processes), the CAS incorporates all four components of the PASS theory (planning, attention, successive, and simultaneous processes) into its subtests. Each component is measured by a scale composed of several different subtests designed to assess the test taker's competency in that particular component of the theory. The authors of the CAS assert that one primary difference between the CAS and other intelligence tests is that the CAS measures cognitive processes instead of mental abilities (Naglieri, 1997). Carroll's Three Stratum Theory of Intelligence The third, and most comprehensive theory of intelligence is Carroll's (1993) Three Stratum Theory of cognitive abilities. Carroll's theory is the result of almost 500 re-analyses of studies into the nature of human intelligence over the past 50 years. The Three Stratum Theory of cognitive abilities is perhaps the most widely accepted account of the structure of human cognition to date. In this theory, Carroll proposes that cognitive abilities are best explained if two competing ideas about intelligence, namely, that intelligence is a unifactorial construct (g), and that intelligence is a multifactorial construct (Gf-Gc) are combined. Carroll's theory is in many ways a hierarchical meta-theory consisting of three different levels, or strata, of cognitive abilities. Stratum III in the Carroll model is a measure of general intellectual functioning reminiscent of Spearman's (1927) conceptualization of g. The second level, Stratum II, is comprised of several broad abilities that resemble the Gf-Gc factorial structure as presented in Horn's model (e.g., Horn, 1994). Stratum I, the third level, is comprised of many specific, narrowly defined abilities such as listening ability, memory span, perceptual speed, and word fluency. Carroll also contends that intermediate factors might fall among the three strata. No test has been developed with Carroll's complete theory as an overarching framework. In fact, it is not likely, given the scope of the theory, that a single test will be able to encompass all of the ability groups in an efficient manner. Several leading researchers in the field of intellectual assessment have suggested a cross-battery approach which enables clinicians to administer almost any intelligence battery and augment it with subtests from other instruments. In so doing, the assessment can be customized to many different situations (Flanagan & McGrew, 1997). By systematically selecting subtests from different batteries, the clinician can be assured that all major ability groups within the Three Stratum Theory are covered. For a more complete discussion of the three preceding theories, as well as a discussion of the psychometric integrity and implications for a multicultural society of the instruments described, the reader is referred to Esters et al. (1997). Discussion The three theories explained in this article are, by no means, a comprehensive account of the field of intelligence. They are, however, the leading theories that have served as frameworks or have the potential to serve as frameworks for the development of psychometrically defensible intelligence assessment instruments. Other, perhaps more intuitively appealing theories exist. Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, for example, has enjoyed much attention in introductory education and psychology texts as has Robert Sternberg's Triarchic Theory. These theories do not, however, compare well with those discussed here as frameworks for tests and are not included in the present discussion. How might the school counselor benefit from being aware of the theories discussed here? If practice follows research, it is highly likely that the Weschler scales will be supplanted as the work horses of intelligence tests. It also stands to reason that school counselors will continue to be called upon to interpret intelligence tests, whichever ones school districts choose to use, to teachers, parents, and students. It is not the intention of the present authors to suggest that school counselors become experts in intellectual assessment. It is, however, beyond argument that as long as school districts rely, at least partially, on intelligence tests to classify students, the school counselor should be familiar with such instruments and the theories from which they were produced. Given the questions yet to be answered about human intelligence and intelligence testing, including issues of definition, cultural fairness, and the static versus dynamic nature of intelligence, school counselors will find it beneficial to be familiar with the capabilities and, perhaps more importantly, with the limitations of the most sophisticated and psychometrically validated instruments. It may be that the contemporary theories of intelligence and the next generation of intelligence tests will help us answer some of the most fundamental questions about students' success in school and in life. It may also prove true that so many other factors enter into the equation, that a measure of intelligence is not as predictive of success as some believe. In either case, armed with a more thorough understanding of intelligence assessment instruments and theories from which they were developed, school counselors will be able to communicate more knowledgeably with students, parents, and teachers about what intelligence tests can and cannot tell us regarding the students we serve. All correspondence should be sent to Irv Esters, The University of Southwestern Louisiana, P.O. Drawer 43091, Lafayette, LA 70504-3091. Email esters@usl.edu. References Binet, A., & Simon, T. (1905). Methodes nouvelles pour le diagnostic du niveau intellectuel des anormaux. L'Annee Psychologique, 11, 191-244. Carroll, J. B. (1993). Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor-analytic studies. Cambridge, England: Oxford University Press. Das, J. P., Naglieri, J. A., Kirby, J. R. (1994). Assessment of cognitive processes: The PASS theory of intelligence. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Esters, I. G., Ittenbach, R. E, & Han, K. (1997). Today's IQ tests: Are they really better than their historical predecessors? School Psychology Review, 26, 211-223. Flanagan, D. P. (1995). Review of the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test. In J. C. Conoley & J. C. Impara (Eds.), The twelfth mental measurements yearbook (pp. 527-530). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, Buros Institute. Flanagan, D. E, & McGrew, K. S. (1997). A cross battery approach to assessing and interpreting cognitive abilities: Narrowing the gap between practice and cognitive science. In D. E Flanagan, J. L. Genshaft, & E L. Harrison (Eds.), Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues (pp. 314-325). New York: Guilford. Giordano, F. G., Schwiebert, V. L., & Brotherton, W. D. (1997). School counselors' perceptions of the usefulness of standardized tests, frequency of their use, and assessment training needs. The School Counselor, 44, 198-205. Horn, J. L. (1994). Theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence. In R. J. Steinberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human intelligence (pp. 443-451). New York: Macmillan. Horn, J. L., & Cattell, R. B. (1966). Refinement and test of the fluid and crystallized general intelligences. Journal of Educational Psychology, 57, 253-270. Hunt, M. M. (1993). The story of psychology. New York: Anchor. Kaufman, A. L., & Kaufman, N. L. (1983). Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC). Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service. Kaufman, A. L., & Kaufman, N. L. (1993). Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test: Manual. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service. Linn, R. L., & Gronlund, N. E. (1995). Measurement and assessment in teaching (7th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. McCallum, R. S., & Bracken, B. A. (1997). The universal nonverbal intelligence test. In D. E Flanagan, J. L. Genshaft, & E L. Harrison (Eds.), Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues (pp. 268-280). New York: Guilford. Naglieri, J. A. (1997). Planning, attention, simultaneous, and successive theory and the Cognitive Assessment System: A new theory-based measure of intelligence. In D. P. Flanagan, J. L. Genshaft, & P. L. Harrison (Eds.), Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues (pp. 247-267). New York: Guilford. Naglieri, J. A., & Das, J. P. (1997). Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System. Chicago: Riverside. Spearman. (1927). The abilities of man. New York: Macmillan. Thorndike, R. L., Hagen, E. E, & Sattler, J. M. (1986). Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (4th ed.). Chicago: Riverside. Weschler, D. (1974). Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children - Revised. San Antonio: The Psychological Corporation. Weschler, D. (1991). Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (3rd ed.). San Antonio: The Psychological Corp. Wilson, M. S., & Reschly, D. J. (1996). Assessment in school psychology training and practice. School Psychology Review, 25, 9-23. Woodcock, R. W., & Johnson, M. B. (1989). Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised Tests of Cognitive Abilities. Chicago: Riverside. ~~~~~~~~ By Irvin G. Esters and Richard F. Ittenbach Irvin G. Esters, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at The University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette Richard F. Ittenbach, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of Mississippi, University, MS. Copyright of Professional School Counseling is the property of American School Counselor Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Source: Professional School Counseling, Jun99, Vol. 2 Issue 5, p373, 4p Item: 2514716 Top of Page Formats: Citation HTML Full Text 31 of 80 Result List | Refine Search Print E-mail Save Folder has 0 items. © 2003 EBSCO Publishing. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use