Intelligence Quotient IQ

an index of intellectual development and of the level of attained knowledge and information, obtained on the basis of various testing methods.

The French psychologist A. Binet first elaborated the idea of a quantitative evaluation of the level of children’s intellectual development through a system of tests (1903). For every age period, calculated in years, a level (or norm) of attained knowl-edge and skills is set equal to 100. Deviations from this standard allow one to judge the progress or lag in intellectual development. The Austrian psychologist W. Stern introduced the term itself in 1911. In the USA, for example, the IQ index aids in selection into the army, in the evaluation of the preparedness of students, and in sociological and psychological investigations.

The system of tests for the determination of IQ includes both tasks demanding an oral answer to questions and manipulative problems’for example, putting together a whole figure from its parts. The person being tested is required to solve, in a limited amount of time, simple arithmetical problems, to answer a series of questions, and to define the meanings of certain terms and words. The responses are evaluated according to a previously established fixed scale. The total score obtained on all the tasks is translated by means of tables previously worked out for large contingents of examinees into the corresponding IQ index. The age of the examinee is taken into account in the evaluation.

In the opinion of the majority of psychologists, the IQ esti-mates, for the most part, the attained level of knowledge.