The mirror test--are we smart enough to test animal intelligence

[LPC]

(02-16-2017, 03:20 PM)Catherine Wrote: We don't even know how to test human intelligence. The tests we use have cultural biases. You are only going to score well if you are from the same background as the test.

Indeed! In 1961 I sat the exam called "11+" which was used in the UK to choose the most able to go to selective academic state schools. I was in the A stream, but our primary school was honest and wouldn't "coach" children for the exam. Instead of school reports and traditional exams, they relied on intelligence tests. They were of the sort which went, "If Andy sits in the first seat and Harry sits in the eighth seat, where does Carol sit?" Maybe easy for us today as adults, but at eleven years old for a child who had never been taught such reasoning, it was a "dark forest". I failed the 11+, but so did almost everyone in our school, including very bright children in the A stream, because our school thought it dishonest (and it was) to teach such skills secretly. Other junior schools had fewer scruples and had many children pass the 11+. This is not a political post, neither a criticism of grammar schools, merely a remark about how intelligence cannot be assessed by some simplistic tests. (By the way, I eventually got into a grammar school at age 16 on the strength of my O Level exams - and was shocked to find quite a few pupils there who were resitting their O Levels, having failed some of them).