J. Intell., Volume 7, Issue 4 (December 2019) – 5 articles

Fifteen years ago, Frey and Detterman established that the SAT (and later, with Koenig, the ACT) was substantially correlated with measures of general cognitive ability and could be used as a proxy measure for intelligence (Frey and Detterman, 2004; Koenig, Frey, and Detterman, 2008). Since that finding, replicated many times and cited extensively in the literature, myths about the SAT, intelligence, and academic achievement continue to spread in popular domains, online, and in some academic administrators. This paper reviews the available evidence about the relationships among the SAT, intelligence, and academic achievement, dispels common myths about the SAT, and points to promising future directions for research in the prediction of academic achievement. Full article

In a recent theoretical article, I proposed that the efficiency of mitochondrial functioning is the most fundamental biological mechanism contributing to individual differences in general intelligence (g; Geary, 2018). The hypothesis accommodates other contributing mechanisms at higher levels of analysis (e.g., brain networks), and is attractive because mitochondrial energy production undergirds the developmental, maintenance, and expression of these other mechanisms and provides a means to link individual differences in g to individual differences in health and successful aging in adulthood. I provide a brief summation here and a few clarifications to the original article. Full article

One of the stated purposes of this Special Issue is to “discuss when and why intelligence has disappeared” in education. In this paper, I argue that intelligence is still heavily involved in public education in the United States due to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Moreover, due to several factors, including high-profile court cases, intelligence tests are legally used in an inconsistent manner in special education decision-making throughout the U.S. These cases illustrate the complex issues surrounding the psychometric properties of intelligence tests, historical conflicts surrounding racial equity, differences in federal versus state policies, and methodological concerns surrounding special education policies are discussed. Full article

Intelligence typically is defined as consisting of “adaptation to the environment” or in related terms. Yet, it is not clear that “general intelligence” or g, traditionally conceptualized in terms of a general factor in a psychometrically-based hierarchical model of intelligence, provides an optimal way of defining intelligence as adaptation to the environment. Such a definition of adaptive intelligence would need to be biologically based in terms of evolutionary theory, would need to take into account the cultural context of adaptation, and would need to take into account whether thought and behavior labeled as “adaptively intelligent” actually contributed to the perpetuation of the human and other species, or whether it was indifferent or actually destructive to this perpetuation. In this article, I consider the similarities and differences between “general intelligence” and “adaptive intelligence,” as well as the implications especially of the differences. Full article

When a cognitive ability is assessed repeatedly, test scores and ability estimates are often observed to increase across test sessions. This phenomenon is known as the retest (or practice) effect. One explanation for retest effects is that situational test anxiety interferes with a testee’s performance during earlier test sessions, thereby creating systematic measurement bias on the test items (interference hypothesis). Yet, the influence of anxiety diminishes with test repetitions. This explanation is controversial, since the presence of measurement bias during earlier measurement occasions cannot always be confirmed. It is argued that people from the lower end of the ability spectrum become aware of their deficits in test situations and therefore report higher anxiety (deficit hypothesis). In 2014, a structural equation model was proposed that specifically allows the comparison of these two hypotheses with regard to explanatory power for the negative anxiety–ability correlation found in cross-sectional assessments. We extended this model for usage in longitudinal studies to investigate the impact of test anxiety on test performance and on retest effects. A latent neighbor-change growth curve was implemented into the model that enables an estimation of retest effects between all pairs of successive test sessions. Systematic restrictions on model parameters allow testing the hypothetical reduction in anxiety interference over the test sessions, which can be compared to retest effect sizes. In an empirical study with seven measurement occasions, we found that a substantial reduction in interference upon the second test session was associated with the largest retest effect in a figural matrices test, which served as a proxy measure for general intelligence. However, smaller retest effects occurred up to the fourth test administration, whereas evidence for anxiety-induced measurement bias was only produced for the first two test sessions. Anxiety and ability were not negatively correlated at any time when the interference effects were controlled for. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed. Full article