A inteligência para a psicometria

Abstract

This article tries to describe the concept of intelligence in psychometry. Psychometry or psychometric treatment, according to Ancona-Lopes (J 987), began at the end of the XIX century with Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer. At present, psychology needs quantitative measures reflecting a scientific positivist posture. "The need for quantitative measures was a consequence of influence of the scientific posture in relation to the inanimate world and to physics, whose basic supposition was that any thing that exists, exists in a certain amount and it can be measured" (ANCONALOPES, 1987). In this way, it tried to apply, in psychology, the same method used in the natural sciences. Starting from this presupposition, psychological characteristics could be described and mensured with scientific rigour with the aid of statistics. Psychometry made an important contribution in evaluating intelligence through the psychometrics tests of intelligence.