How is intellect measured?
Picture arrangement test
In 1939, David Wechsler realized the limitation of the Stanford-Binet and designed an intellect by tapping a diverse sample of capabilities. In earlier methods of assessment, Weschler devised the format that we currently known as the Wechsler scales, consisting of a collection of subsets. He believed in the unitary nature of intelligence but subscribed to the idea that intellect can be best measured through interdependent, qualitatively different abilities. Historical, the picture arrangement subsets of the Wechsler scales have been characterized repeatedly as being nonverbal and verbal measure of social competence. For this reason, clinicians interpret performance on the picture arrangement subsets as measures of social ability.
Although picture arrangement (PA) has been viewed as predictive of social intelligence, there has been considerable difficulty defining social intelligence, social functioning and/or social competence. Wechsler believed that general intelligence could be applied to all situations. Thus, “social” intelligence might best be conceptualized as one aspect of general intelligence.
Intelligence
""Intelligence"" derives from the Latin nouns "intelligentia" or "intellēctus", which in turn stem from the verb "intelligere", to comprehend or perceive. In the Middle Ages, "intellectus" became the scholarly technical term for understanding, and a translation for the Greek philosophical term "nous". This term, however, was strongly linked to the metaphysical and cosmological theories of teleological scholasticism, including theories of the immortality of the soul, and the concept of the Active Intellect (also known as the Active Intelligence). This entire approach to the study of nature was strongly rejected by the early modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume, all of whom preferred the word "understanding" (in place of ""intellectus"" or "intelligence") in their English philosophical works. Hobbes for example, in his Latin "De Corpore", used ""intellectus intelligit"", translated in the English version as "the understanding understandeth", as a typical example of a logical absurdity. The term "intelligence" has therefore become less common in English language philosophy, but it has later been taken up (with the scholastic theories which it now implies) in more contemporary psychology.