The Writing Process in Psychology: IQ and Writing Ability

The Writing Process in Psychology: IQ and Writing Ability

Thesis Statement

“IQ and the writing ability are closely related. A person having a high score on IQ is most likely to be free from any learning disability (More specifically writing disability)”.

Introduction

Intelligence tests are most often administered as part of a comprehensive individualized assessment, not as stand-alone instruments. Most frequently, the special education disabilities in question are mental retardation (MR) and specific learning disabilities (SLD), but many states have required their administration when considering children's need for services due to other suspected disabilities. When MR is the suspected disability, cognitive assessment is part of the ruling-in of the disability; that is, if a child falls below a certain level, and meets other low-scoring criteria in achievement and adaptive-behavior assessments, the results of the MFE may be judged by a team to have met the eligibility criteria. For other suspected disabilities, the intelligence test results often serve to help rule out MR as the disability. Intelligence or cognitive ability still must be considered hypothetical constructs, since there are several conceptualizations of these terms in the literature. No single cognitive test or global ability score can completely account for the wide range of the many dimensions of intelligence. We still need to do a better job of explaining the relationships among academic achievement skills, levels of child development, and broad sub abilities (Bloom, 1964).

Practitioners often analyze a student's profile of strengths and weaknesses among pairs of part scores within a cognitive test; for example, the difference between Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Reasoning scores. One of the problems posed by this practice surfaces when comparing the use of within-test differences among parts of a student's test performance as determined by statistical-significance or normal-curve tables versus using tables that show the frequencies of such differences (the base rate) obtained by the standardization population on which the test was normed. It is troublesome to discover that the amount of difference between two parts of a student's test record often occurred much more frequently in the standardization population than indicated by tables showing the statistical significance of such differences. To make statements about the meaningfulness of such differences on the basis of statistical significance invites the problem known as the Barnum effect; that is, interpreting as significant differences those that are not that unusual (Binet, 1980).

Discussion

Fallacious Arguments

Views of intelligence are dependent on the metaphors and assumptions of a culture. The Western concept of a generalized measure of intelligence can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE), who compared different peoples based on their intelligence level. The view of multiple intelligences can be traced back to the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) portrayal of intelligence as a multifaceted structure. More recently, the emergence of psychology as an academic field has driven Western concepts of intelligence and the emergence of IQ testing.

IQ testing has two main branches of development, with one branch following the assumption of a general intelligence ...