Intelligence Tests

•CultureFair Intelligence Test

•Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test
Non-Verbal Intelligence Test

CULTURE FAIR
INTELLIGENCE TEST
Purpose
 Measure individual intelligence in a
manner designed to reduce, as much
as possible, the influence of

 verbal fluency,
 cultural climate, and
 educational level.
Administration
 Individually
 Group

 Non-verbal
 Requires only that examinees be able to
perceive relationships in shapes and figures
The main aims in the design and construction of
the tests were:
 To create a psychometrically sound
instrument, upon a comprehensive theoretical
foundation, with maximum possible validity and
reliability;

 To minimize irrelevant influences of cultural

learning and social climate while preserving
the predictive utility of the tests across a
broad spectrum of concrete behaviors;

 To provide high administrative and scoring

convenience and maximum economy of testing
time.
 Perhaps because intelligence tests
have been available much longer
than comparably valid measures of
personality and interest, many
psychologists and educators had
begun to believe that intelligence
was of far greater importance than
we now know it to be.
 However, intelligence in only one
element of a larger set of individual
attributes that need to be
considered when we attempt to
understand and predict human
behavior comprehensively
 Industrial validation
◦ Prediction of skill acquisition, problem
solving, etc
 Educational research
◦ Important predictor of academic
performance

 Other findings indicate that the inclusion of

personality and motivational factors in test
battery substantially improves the level of
predictive accuracy
CFIT is a valuable instrument for all uses to which
an intelligence test is rationally applied, notably:

1. Discovering whether the

achievement of each individual is
what would be expected from is
intelligence, thus facilitations
identification of emotional or
learning problems where they
exist.
CFIT is a valuable instrument for all uses to which
an intelligence test is rationally applied, notably:

2. Assessing an applicant’s potential

to perform job-relevant tasks that
involve cognitive ability.
CFIT is a valuable instrument for all uses to which
an intelligence test is rationally applied, notably:

3. Making a more reliable and

informed decision whether a
particular child may require special
educational facilities or a program
of cultural enrichment.
CFIT is a valuable instrument for all uses to which
an intelligence test is rationally applied, notably:

4. Selecting students for accelerated

educational programs within an
age-group grade.
CFIT is a valuable instrument for all uses to which
an intelligence test is rationally applied, notably:

5. Advising students in regard to

probable success in college or the
chance of winning a scholarship.
CFIT is a valuable instrument for all uses to which
an intelligence test is rationally applied, notably:

6. Increasing the effectiveness of

vocational guidance decisions, both
for students and adults.
Verbal Intelligence Test

OTIS-LENNON
MENTAL ABILITY TEST
Purpose
 To provide comprehensive, carefully
articulated assessment of the
general mental ability, or scholastic
aptitude, of pupils in Americal
schools.
 Emphasis is placed upon measuring
the pupil’s facility in reasoning and
in dealing abstractly with verbal,
symbolic, and figural test content
sampling a broad range of cognitive
abilities.
 To yield dependable measurement of
the “g” for general intellective
ability factor.

 The single total score obtained at a given

level summarizes the pupil’s performance on
a wide variety of test materials selected for
their contribution to the assessment of this
general ability factor.
Importantly…

 OLMAT does not measure the

innate mental capacity
The assessment of “g” rests upon the basic
assumptions that:

1. All pupils have had substantially

equal opportunity to learn the
types of things included in the
test.

2. All pupils are equally motivated to

do their best in the test.
 Similar measures have been criticized
for their alleged “unfairness” to the
culturally disadvantaged pupil.

 The charge has been made that these

instruments place a premium upon
those verbal and academic abilities in
which the culturally impoverished child
is often deficient.
◦ It must be remembered that these are
designed primarily to assess the pupil’s
current readiness for school oriented
learning or to predict his likelihood for
future success in dealing with the types
of tasks encountered in his academic
work.
It must be emphasized

 This does not measure native

endowment, nor should the notion of
constancy, or fixity, of ability level
be associated with the test results.
It must be emphasized

 Such misinterpretations typically

result in the curtailment of
educational opportunities for the
culturally disadvantaged child.
It must be emphasized

 The biased or “unfair” aspect of

ability testing stems from such
misuse of test results and not from
the types of tasks included in the
measuring instrument.