BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

others. Galton administered a battery of tests measuring qualities such as
reaction time, breathing capacity and head size.
The intelligence test as we know it was formulated by the French
psychologist Binet. He assumed that intelligence should be measured by
tasks requiring reasoning and problem solving abilities. Binet thought that
a slow learning child was like a normal child but retarded in metal growth.
So he concluded that a slow learning child would perform the same as a
younger child in intelligence tests. He devised a scale of mental age.
Average mental age (MA) scores correspond to chronological mental age
(CA). A bright child's MA is above his CA, and a slow learning child's
MA is below his CA. An advantage of the mental aged scale is that it can
easily be interpreted.
The American psychologist Lewis Terman used Binet's method to
develop a scale for intelligence. This index is called Intelligence Quotient
(IQ), and this scale expresses intelligence as a ratio of mental age (MA) to
chronological age (CA):
IQ = MA/CA × 100
The 100 is used to make the result better to compare. Numbers like
101, 125 and 89 are easier to handle than 1.01, 1.25 and .89. It is easy to
conclude that when a child is smarter than the average (his MA is higher
than his CA), his IQ will be above 100, and otherwise.
Failure on one kind of item is scored the same way as a failure on another
item. So this test does not show any particular strengths or weaknesses.
To distinguish between various aspects of intelligence, the
Wechsler Intelligence scale is developed. This test is almost identical to
Binet's test, but it is divided in two parts, a verbal scale and a performance
scale. Another failure of the tests is that performance increases with
practice. There are books containing intelligence tests, and when you
practice them a couple of time, you know how to handle every problem so
you will score pretty high on an IQ-test.
Emotions
The word emotion includes a wide range of observable behaviors,
expressed feelings, and changes in the body state. This diversity in
intended meanings of the word emotion makes it hard to study. For many
of us emotions are very personal states, difficult to define or to identify
except in the most obvious instances. Moreover, many aspects of emotion
seem unconscious to us. Even simple emotional states appear to be much
more complicated than states as hunger and thirst.
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