Ch.

7-8 Lecture Notes

Intelligence Testing 101: In my practice, I administer multiple intelligence
tests (e.g., WISC-V, WAIS-IV, WASI-II, etc.) almost every single day.
Intelligence is a very complex variable that is not easily defined, and in my
opinion, we could spend an entire semester just talking about the various
issues associated with measuring intelligence. I also believe that intelligence
is an archaic term. Basically, intelligence is an outdated term for the
measurement of brain function. Neuropsychology, my clinical specialty, is
the measurement of cognitive abilities as it is associated with brain
functions. This is essentially the same thing as intelligence tests; however,
intelligence tests were never intentionally designed to measure brain
functions because their theory was based on general principles of mental
functions when these tests were developed. With that being said, intelligence
tests are still used as the foundational measurement of general cognitive
abilities across multiple settings. I am sure that many of you school
counselors will have already been exposed to some of the terminology we
will discuss in this chapter.
To simplify the definition of intelligence, let us start with the most commonly
used term. Specifically, intelligence can be defined as a broad measurement
of a wide range of cognitive functions including but not limited to verbal
reasoning abilities, nonverbal reasoning abilities, working memory abilities,
attention, and processing speed abilities. These are all cognitive functions
but you should also keep in mind that there are many theories that suggest
that intelligence is actually a much broader definition of behavioral abilities
across multiple contexts. For example many people believe that intelligence
should also include emotional intelligence. In my opinion, intelligence is
simply the ability to problem solve effectively in a wide range of contexts
and defined in many various ways.
There are many ways to objectively measure intelligence. In fact, there are
multiple objective tests one can administer to obtain a numerical value for
intelligence. The most commonly used tests include the Wechsler tests (e.g.,
WAIS-IV, WISC-5, WASI-II, etc.), the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive
Abilities, and the Stanford-Binet tests. These tests are used across a wide
range of contexts but perhaps most commonly used in educational settings
for the identification of intellectual developmental disorders and learning
disabilities, especially when combined with achievement testing. A thorough
review of these assessments can be found in your textbook.
Group intelligence testing, in my opinion, is not an ideal means for
measuring intelligence. The reason for this is that many of these tests have
not been normed on group administration and so cannot reliably measure

the various factors associated with group testing such as distractions and
test anxiety.
One of the greatest misconceptions is that intelligence always stays the
same across the lifespan. Indeed, there are many studies that have shown
that intelligence seems to be relatively stable for normal populations but that
it is primarily nonverbal reasoning abilities that are stable in early life,
whereas verbal reasoning abilities tends to improve with age based on
exposure to additional vocabulary words, education level, and wisdom. In
my experience, intelligence is highly variable with clinical populations
because anything that affects cognitive abilities (e.g., brain injury, additional
education, medication, medical illness, psychiatric dysfunction, etc.) often
directly affects my patients score on intelligence measures. I once had a
medical doctor who I administered an intelligence test on who scored a fullscale IQ score of 133 and who later suffered a stroke. After the stroke, I
administered another intelligence test and obtained a full scale IQ score of
85. That is nearly 50 points difference between the administrations! It is also
often very common for people to improve their verbal reasoning abilities with
additional education since ones vocabulary often expands with exposure to
new terminology.
Intelligence scores are often used to predict functional outcomes such as the
ability to live independently, ability to benefit from higher education, and
ability to engage in medical treatment, including psychotherapy. The
problem with using intelligence course to predict anything is that intelligence
scores do not always account for environmental factors that influence
outcome such as external support from family members, schools, and other
treatment. In my opinion, intelligence scores in the lower range of
functioning, let us say IQ scores below 85, are usually fairly predictive of
functional outcomes, whereas functional outcomes of individuals with IQ
scores above 85 is a lot more difficult to predict. In other words, lower IQ
scores tend to predict more negative functional outcomes better than higher
IQ scores predicting positive functional outcomes. For example, an individual
with an intellectual developmental disorder and an IQ of 69 can be reliably
predicted to be fairly dependent on external support for the foreseeable
future. However an individual with an IQ of 105 may or may not have the
cognitive or academic capacity to successfully complete the requisite
coursework associated with college.
Many people get caught up in the argument of whether or not intelligence is
hereditary or environmentally influenced. I typically do not get into this
argument because we simply do not know for any individual what extent of
their intelligence is explained by hereditary or environment unless we
happen to know all the various factors associated with their brain

development across time. This is the problem with empirical studies that
have attempted to examine this question because it simply cannot be
answered for any individual, although it may be answered for a
subpopulation within research studies. In fact, truly only genetic disorders
affecting cognitive abilities can be accurately predictive of intellectual
outcome.

Ch. 8 Notes Academic Achievement Testing

Achievement testing is most commonly found in school settings. The
definition of academic achievement testing is specifically the measurement
of academic skills such as reading, math, spelling, and writing. This is an
oversimplification of achievement testing; however, in general, these are the
main domains most frequently assessed with academic achievement testing.
As you can imagine, schools often want to know what level their students
have achieved academically so that programs can be designed to
intervene for students with learning disabilities. In the past, schools have
used the discrepancy model to identify learning disabilities. For example,
the school would administer an IQ test with an achievement test to see if the
IQ was significantly greater than academic achievement. IQ tests, in theory,
would be significantly greater than academic achievement if the student had
or has a learning disability. The problem with this model is that it does not
take into account the extra effort some students put forth to overcome the
learning disabilities and as such many students with legitimate learning
disabilities would not be identified as learning disabled because they would
not show the same discrepancy on achievement testing. I have evaluated
many students who legitimately had dyslexia but because they tried so
hard during their primary education and was provided so many additional
supports, their scores on academic achievement measures would often be
normal. This did not mean that they did not have dyslexia or that they were
no longer struggling academically, it just simply meant that they scored in
the normal range on an academic achievement test. In response to this
problem, many schools have implemented the Response To Intervention (RTI)
model of learning disability assessment. This model posits that the true
learning disabilities will not improve upon the application of intervention
and as such students who do not respond to intervention have true
learning disabilities. Although I appreciate this model because it factors in
the additional environmental issues associated with test scores, my main
concern is that it is very difficult to define what is a legitimate intervention
for a specific learning disability. This is because there are many things that
can cause dyslexia, math disorders, or writing disorders, or low academic
achievement. For example, dyslexia can be caused by 1) visual scanning

deficits, 2) language disorders, 3) auditory processing disorders, 4) working

memory difficulties, etc. In other words, one intervention may work for the
visual scanning deficits of dyslexia but not work for the auditory processing
subtype of dyslexia.