Thinking and Intelligence

A four-and-a-half-year-old boy sits at the kitchen table with his father, who is reading a new story aloud to him. He turns the page to continue reading, but before he can begin, the boy says, “Wait, Daddy!” He points to the words on the new page and reads aloud, “Go, Pig! Go!” The father stops and looks at his son. “Can you read that?” he asks. “Yes, Daddy!” And he points to the words and reads again, “Go, Pig! Go!”

This father was not actively teaching his son to read, even though the child constantly asked questions about letters, words, and symbols that they saw everywhere: in the car, in the store, on the television. The dad wondered about what else his son might understand and decided to try an experiment. Grabbing a sheet of blank paper, he wrote several simple words in a list: mom, dad, dog, bird, bed, truck, car, tree. He put the list down in front of the boy and asked him to read the words. “Mom, dad, dog, bird, bed, truck, car, tree,” he read, slowing down to carefully pronounce bird and truck. Then, “Did I do it, Daddy?” “You sure did! That is very good.” The father gave his little boy a warm hug and continued reading the story about the pig, all the while wondering if his son’s abilities were an indication of exceptional intelligence or simply a normal pattern of linguistic development. Like the father in this example, psychologists have wondered what constitutes intelligence and how it can be measured.