单选题 Early intelligence tests were not without their critics. Many enduring concerns were first raised by the influential journalist Walter Lippman, in a series of published debates with Lewis Terman, of Stanford University, the father of IQ testing in America. Lippman pointed out the superficiality of the questions, their possible cultural biases, and the risks of trying to determine a person's intellectual potential with a brief oral or paper-and-pencil measure.
Perhaps surprisingly, the conceptualization of intelligence did not advance much in the decades following Terman's pioneering contributions. Intelligence tests came to be seen, rightly or wrongly, as primarily a tool for selecting people to fill academic or vocational niches. In one of the most famous -- if irritating -- remarks about intelligence testing, the influential Harvard psychologist E. G. Boring declared, "intelligence is what the tests test." So long as these tests did what they were supposed to do(that is, give some indication of school success), it did not seem necessary or prudent to probe too deeply into their meaning or to explore alternative views of the human intellect.
Psychologists who study intelligence have argued chiefly about two questions. The first: Is intelligence singular, or does it consist of various more or less independent intellectual faculties? The purists -- ranging from {{U}}the turn-of-the-century{{/U}} English psychologist Charles Spearman to his latter-day disciples Richard J. Herrntein and Charles Murray -- defend the notion of a single overarching "g", or general intelligence. The pluralists -- ranging from L. L. Thurstone, of the University of Chicago, who posited seven vectors of the mind, to J. P. Guilford, of the University of Southern California, who discerned 150 factors of the intellect-construe intelligence as composed of some or even many dissociable components.
The public is more interested in the second question: Is intelligence (or are intelligences) largely inherited.'? This is by and large a Western question. In the Confucian societies of East Asia individual differences in endowment are assumed to be modest, and differences in achievement are thought to be due largely to effort. In the West, however, many students of the subject sympathize with the view -- defended within psychology by Lewis Terman, among others -- that intelligence is inborn and one can do little to alter one's intellectual birthright.
Studies of identical twins reared apart provide surprisingly strong support for the "heritability" of psychometric intelligence. That is, if one wants to predict someone's score on an intelligence test, the scores of the biological parents (even if the child has not had appreciable contact with them) are more likely to prove relevant than the scores of the adoptive parents. By the same token, the IQs of identical twins are more similar than the IQs of fraternal twins. And, contrary to common sense, the IQs of biologically related people grow closer in the later years of life.
单选题 Paragraph 1 of this passage suggests that ______.
  • A. intelligence tests are criticized by many people
  • B. Walter Lippman is an influential journalist
  • C. Lewis Terman of Stanford University is the father of IQ testing in America
  • D. Walter Lippman suspects the authenticity of IQ testing
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 从第一段最后一句可知:Walter Lippman怀疑智商测试的可信度。因此选D。
单选题 According to E. G. Boring, "intelligence is what the tests test." This remark suggests that ______.
  • A. intelligence tests have come to be seen rightly or wrongly
  • B. intelligence tests have become primarily a tool for selecting people
  • C. intelligence tests have become an irritating test
  • D. intelligence tests can hardly justify one's intellect
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 智商测试很难对一个人的智力做出公正评价;根据原文intelligence is what the tests test(智力是检测所测出的结果)不难得出这一推论。
单选题 According to the context, "the turn-of-the-century" in Paragraph 3 refers to ______.
  • A. 19th century
  • B. 20th century
  • C. around 20th century
  • D. 21st century
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 原文的the turn-of-the-century指的是19世纪末20世纪初,这不难从后面的his latter-day disciples Richard(他后来的门徒)判断出来。
单选题 According to ______, intelligence is something inborn, not something attained through effort.
  • A. the Confucian societies of East Asia
  • B. people in the West
  • C. many students in the West
  • D. Lewis Terman
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 第四段最后一句指出,西方的很多学者认为智力是天生的。因此选C。
单选题 Which of the following statements is TRUE?
  • A. There does exist the "heritability" of psychometric intelligence.
  • B. It's difficult to predict someone's score on an intelligence test.
  • C. The IQs of identical twins are the same as the IQs of fraternal twins.
  • D. The IQs of biologically related people live closer in the later years of life.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 原文末段最后一句指出:世上确实存在心理测试智力的“遗传可能性”。这与A选项意思相符。