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lectures > lectures autumn 2003

Intelligence is what IQ tests measure. Or is it?

Speaker: Professor Nicholas Mackintosh
1st November 2003

If we knew what 'intelligence' really is, we might be able to answer the question whether it is measured by IQ tests.

As it is, all we can say is that IQ tests measure a wide variety of abilities and skills (although probably not everything that could be included under the term); that they (modestly) predict other things about people; that scores on such tests are quite certainly influenced by genetic differences between people; but that we are a long way from producing super-intelligent "designer babies".

Nicholas Mackintosh gained undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oxford University.

He has held academic posts at Oxford University; Dalhousie University, Canada; Sussex University; and Cambridge University (since 1981). He retired as Professor of Experimental Psychology in 2002.

He has also held visiting academic posts at the Universities of Pennsylvania, California (Berkeley), Hawaii, Yale, New South Wales, Paris-Sud and Bryn Mawr College.