It is the evaluation of an individual’s mental capabilities and cerebral power. It helps to assess how well a person can utilize logic and information to make predictions or answer questions.
Regardless of the intelligence level, every student is capable of learning. However, some learners struggle in school due to a weakness in a particular area of intelligence. They may need additional help through special education programs. By conducting IQ tests, teachers can identify the students who’ll need such help.
Additionally, IQ tests help recognize students who are capable of doing well in ‘gifted education’ programs. Many universities and colleges conduct similar tests to choose students.
Many people think that intelligence is the sole reason behind the achievement of successful people. However, according to psychologists who study intelligence, this isn’t completely true. With the help of IQ tests, it can only be forecasted how well people will perform in specific situations like thinking abstractly in art, engineering, or science. Exceptional achievement relies on several additional factors such as persistence, opportunity, ambition, etc.
IQ tests appear with many different objectives. For example, some IQ tests are meant to evaluate kids at certain ages, while some others are meant for people with particular disabilities.
Many widely used IQ tests measure two types of intelligence abilities – crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence. The former depends on a person’s knowledge and verbal ability and generally improves as they get older. The latter relates to a person’s ability to think abstractly, reason, and solve problems without having any pre-existing knowledge.
Though there’re some debates on whether or not a person’s IQ can be improved, there are some brain-training activities that may be of help. For example, improving problem-solving skills may help an individual improve their IQ. Relational framing activities may help to improve someone’s general intelligence. These activities include analyzing and comparing opposites and contrasting ideas and images, finding relationships between separate images, etc. Memory activities not only help to improve memory but language and reasoning skills as well. And as language and reasoning are both utilized to measure intelligence, memory activities may help to improve intelligence. Some popular forms of these activities include crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, and concentration card games. Executive function is deeply connected to fluid reasoning – a part of human intelligence. Therefore, executive control activities such as brainteasers, Pictionary, Scrabble, etc., may help someone to raise their intelligence. Basically, someone trying to improve their IQ needs to focus on activities that are related to crystallized and fluid intelligence.
