What does it mean to be “smart”? Why are some people “smarter” than others?
Cognitive psychologists have shown that all humans share some fundamental similarities in the way we perceive our environment
learn and remember information, think, solve problems, and use language.
Yet there are differences among people in these cognitive processes:
some individuals seem to do these things better or more effectively than others.
We use the term “intelligence” to describe these individual differences in cognitive abilities.
Intelligence tests attempt to measure people’s mental aptitudes and compare them to others through numerical scores.
The result from an intelligence test is usually called an “IQ score”
because the original tests computed an “intelligence quotient” by dividing a person’s “mental age”
as calculated from the test score, by that person’s chronological age.
Even though that method is obsolete, we continue to use the term “IQ” as a synonym for intelligence.