Intelligence/Cognitive Ability

            While researching intelligence and cognitive ability many things came to mind.  The idea of intelligence is the fact that what one learns can only be determined upon the idea of what one can learn based on his overall IQ (intelligence quotient) and that no matter how long someone works to improve their IQ it is not always possible.  This is meaning that there is a chance that someone can never learn certain things or have the ability if they have a lower level IQ.  The idea behind cognitive ability is the idea that one has the ability to learn as much as they can.  The idea is that there is a way to train the brain to learn new things and the idea that any person is capable of learning any infinite number of things if they work hard enough at training their brain to respond (Latham).

            My personal opinion is that more should lie within the cognitive ability of the student than within the overall IQ of a student.  This is based on the fact that I have had personal experience knowing some students who have really high IQs and really high test scores but lower cognitive ability.  These students excel in overall and general education types of tests but they do not do as well in areas where they must express their true cognitive ability or their ability to learn new things through studying or traditional classroom teaching principles.  These students did not excel in the areas of grades and simply got through school with mid line grades as their IQ was not challenged.  However the students that I know that have lower IQs and have higher cognitive abilities are good students who work hard at trying to improve themselves in order to be able to better manage their school work.  These are the students who typically do not do well in standardized testing but are at the top of their class with high grades and higher abilities in learning with traditional teaching methods and through training their brain to learn new things.  The idea of standardized assessments when both the cognitive abilities and the IQ are concerned the idea of standardized assessments is not fair to the hardworking student who has high cognitive abilities as these students do not typically test well.  The assessment would not be able to accurately measure these students’ ability to do well in school or in other areas of life.  The assessment also does little to differentiate between IQ and the idea that some people with high IQs do not have high cognitive abilities.

            Cognitive abilities and intelligence is not the same thing although they are connected and intertwined.  If a student were to have both a high IQ and the determination to have higher cognitive abilities then the student has the best of both of the worlds.  The idea of cognitive abilities is the overall idea that the brain can be trained and that any person has the ability to learn anything.  This is the idea that the brain is able to learn more things and grow based on how it has been trained and how the training is applied to the functions.  The idea of IQ is the idea that there is a certain intelligence factor or quotient that one is born with.  The overall difference between the two of these is that the IQ is the ability that one has to have natural intelligence or the overall natural ability to do well and prosper whereas the cognitive abilities are the overall ability to be able to train the brain and learn new things (Latham).

            When standardized testing is concerned the overall ability is more important than the ability to learn as the ability to learn new things is not tested.  The process of standardized tests needs to be changed to include tests that would test the student’s overall capabilities to learn things rather than just testing on general knowledge that is already learned.  The standardized tests only test for skills that are associated with the overall intelligence of a person which can not typically change however they do not test the overall ability to learn or the cognitive abilities of the students (Latham).

            It has been argued that the deeper thinking students are punished when it comes to standardized testing as the deeper knowledge intelligence is not always appreciated or encouraged but rather it is encouraged that there be just one critical way of thinking about things.   This can be that the student is punished as they are not able to derive points or value for their ability to think of things in deep ways and their overall ability to conceptualize issues.  The idea behind standardized testing is to ensure that all students are learning equal amounts of education and that there is a standard to the educational system in which the students are in.  However the testing falls short for those who are not the typical students who just sit and learn through a textbook.  If a student is a hand on learner then these tests do not associate the student’s ability to learn things on that level (Powers).

Also the tests do not take into perspective students who have different personality types as certain personality types do much better on the tests than others and the ones that do better are the more straightforward and more conscious students who are willing to look into certain things and who are overall willing to do a good job through basic intelligence.  This leaves out the students whose strong points are not book smarts and looks at the students who have more creativity and more overall creative personality types who end up slipping through the cracks when it comes to standardized testing.   These students are made to feel as though they are not smart enough or good enough and even though they carry with them the ability to learn just as much as the students who have general book smarts, they are made to feel as though the intelligence that they do have is not good enough (Powers).

Latham, Carolyn (21, December 2006).  Are Cognitive Abilities the Same as Intelligence?

Sharp Brains from http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/12/21/are-cognitive-abilities-the-same-thing-as-intelligence/

Powers, Donald E and James C Kaufman (2004).   Do Standardized tests penalize deep

thinking, creative or conscientious students?  Some personality correlates of

Graduate Record Examination Test scores.  Science Direct from

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