ABSTRACT
Intelligence has been defined in many ways, and intelligence assessment has a long history. The assessment of intelligence is considered one of the key successes in psychology. The most prominent contemporary theory of intelligence is the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model, which is a three-stratum hierarchical model that includes narrow abilities (stratum 1), broad abilities (stratum 2), and general abilities (stratum 3). However, there are alternative conceptualizations of intelligence. One alternative conceptualization of intelligence is the bifactor model. In a bifactor model, “g” is modeled in a non-hierarchical fashion where it is extracted first, and the primary factors are extracted separately from the remaining common variance among the tests.
Assessments of intelligence have utility for various purposes, including predicting future academic achievement, characterizing functional impairment, and identifying change in functioning over time. However, there are many things that intelligence does not predict well, such as how successfully one will perform in their job, the quality of their interpersonal relationships, or their happiness. Moreover, there are potential weaknesses of intelligence tests, including content validity because they do not assess creativity or emotional aspects of intelligence such as empathy.
