

It is important that intelligence tests be standardized on a regular basis, because the overall level of intelligence in a population may change over time. The standardization of a test involves giving it to a large number of people at different ages and computing the average score on the test at each age level. Thus understanding intelligence requires that we know the norms or standards in a given population of people at a given age. A 3-year-old who could accurately multiply 183 by 39 would certainly be intelligent, but a 25-year-old who could not do so would be seen as unintelligent. In fact, the ability to accurately assess intelligence is one of the most important contributions of psychology to everyday public life. Because intelligence is such an important individual difference dimension, psychologists have invested substantial effort in creating and improving measures of intelligence, and these tests are now considered the most accurate of all psychological tests. Good intelligence tests are reliable, meaning that they are consistent over time, and also demonstrate validity, meaning that they actually measure intelligence rather than something else. For example, if your chronological age is 10 and your IQ score is 120, the formula would read, 120=x/10 * 100, where “x” is your mental age.The goal of most intelligence tests is to measure “g”, the general intelligence factor. Write down your score in the following formula: IQ=MA/CA * 100, where “MA” is your mental age and “CA” is your chronological age. Online tests can be fun, but they lack expert analysis and come with warnings that they are for entertainment purposes only.
#Mental age divided by chronological age professional#
Take an IQ test administered by a qualified, professional proctor.

Still, doctor assessments demonstrated reliability equal to that of testing in a 1986 study published in the "Journal of Pediatric Psychology."

Standardized tests like the Stanford-Binet intelligence quotient have proven reliable, while doctor assessments in cases of severe disability are little more than educated guesses. Your chronological age, that is, the number of years since the day of your birth, does not always align with what psychologists term your “mental age.” Determining the difference between the two is useful in designing lesson plans for the especially intelligent and mentally disabled, though the methods by which psychologists calculate mental age are limited. New York: Macmillan, 1988.įancher, Raymond. A contemporary equivalent of mental age is the Standard Age Score of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, which was formulated in 1987.Īnastasi, Anne. Contemporary IQ tests use cumulative indexes to determine scores rather than the calculation of IQ scores based upon Terman's formula. Adult intelligence does not change from year to year so the concept of mental age is less meaningful when discussing adults. Terman's formula of mental age divided by chronological age multiplied by 100 became popularized as the formula for calculating a person's IQ. In 1916 Lewis Terman multiplied this intelligence quotient by 100 (to eliminate the decimal places) and called the result an IQ score. In 1912 William Stern used chronological age as a denominator to be divided into mental age, resulting in an intelligence quotient. The Binet-Simon Scale identified the academic skills typical of specific age groups. Mental age refers to an age-normed level of performance on an intelligence test, and it became a popular way of referring to "mental level" as measured by the Binet-Simon Scale of 1908.
