ABSTRACT
The intelligence test is an attempt to assess the general ability of any child to think, reason, judge, analyse and synthesize by presenting him with situations, both verbal and practical, which are within his range of competence and understanding. Penrose found that the correspondence was greatly improved if he assumed that many more pairs of genes were involved in the determination of intelligence, and refined his calculation of the fertility differential. By this means a smooth, continuous curve of intelligence distribution in the population could be produced, like the curve which is in fact produced by intelligence testing. It is more reasonable to ask how much heredity and environment each contributes to variations in intelligence, but the answer to this question would apply only to the particular time and place where the study was carried out. It is probably that the seeds of intelligent or less intelligent behaviour are sown in young children.
