Career
Counselling
Aptitude, Interest,
Personality and Intelligence
What is the difference?
ABILITY APTITUDE
Person’s current Person’s potential
competence or to learn/develop
skill level a skill in future
INTELLIGENCE ACHIEVEMENT
General cognitive Person’s
functioning/ intellectual knowledge tested
capacity for reasoning, post-learning and
problem solving, abstract training
thinking, etc.
What is the difference?
Intelligence Tests: Measure an individual's ability in relatively
global areas such as verbal comprehension, perceptual
organization, or reasoning and thereby help determine potential
for scholastic work or certain occupations.
Aptitude Tests: Measure the capability for a relatively specific
task or type of skill; aptitude tests are, in effect, a narrow form of
ability testing.
Achievement Tests: Measure a person's degree of learning,
success, or accomplishment in a subject or task.
What is the difference?
Intelligence Tests: Measure an individual's ability in relatively
global areas such as verbal comprehension, perceptual
organization, or reasoning and thereby help determine potential
for scholastic work or certain occupations.
Aptitude Tests: Measure the capability for a relatively specific
task or type of skill; aptitude tests are, in effect, a narrow form of
ability testing.
Achievement Tests: Measure a person's degree of learning,
success, or accomplishment in a subject or task.
Development of Aptitude Tests
Intelligence tests had relatively homogeneous content
Individual’s performance on different parts of the test showed
marked variation
Intelligence tests were not designed for the purpose of differential
aptitude analysis. Often the subtests being compared contained too
few items to yield a stable or reliable estimate of a specific ability
Methods such as factor analysis marked the presence of a number of
relatively independent factors, which led to development of multiple
aptitude batteries
In place of a total score or IQ, a separate score is obtained for such
traits as verbal comprehension, numerical aptitude, spatial
visualization, arithmetic reasoning, and perceptual speed.
Difference between Aptitude
and Intelligence Tests
Aptitude Test Intelligence Test
has been traditionally customarily refers to more
employed to refer to tests heterogeneous tests
measuring relatively yielding a single global
homogeneous and clearly score such as an IQ
defined segments of ability
Theories of
Intelligence
(relevant to DBDA-R)
Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory
General factor (g) Specific factors (s)
Common, pervasive mental ability / Mental ability that is specific to a
cognitive capacity that contributes domain
to performance across different Numerous s factors that differ
kinds of cognitive tasks based on the intellectual test
E.g. Reasoning and problem- E.g. Knowledge about language
solving or machines
Example: Running shoes vs running ability
Tests heavily Tests less
loaded with g saturated with g
Unitary factor for
these correlations
was the g factor
Image taken from Gregory (2014)
Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory
Individual differences (variability) in g were most directly
reflected in the ability to use three principles of cognition:
1. Apprehension of experience (perceive and understand each
term based on past experience i.e. what are hammer, nail,
→
HAMMER NAIL
and screwdriver)
2. Eduction of relations (infer the relation between the first two
→
SCREWDRIVER ?
analogy terms i.e. HAMMER and NAIL)
3. Eduction of correlations (ability to apply the inferred
principle to the new domain to produce the correct response
i.e. SCREWDRIVER → SCREW)
Thurstone’s Theory of Primary
Mental Abilities
Several broad group factors (mainly seven prominent ones) termed as primary
mental abilities / different clusters of related abilities - group of related tasks
Verbal Comprehension: Vocabulary, reading comprehension, verbal analogies
Word Fluency: Anagrams, quickly naming words in a given category
Number: Speed and accuracy of simple arithmetic computation
Space: Ability to visualize how a three-dimensional object would appear if it was
rotated or partially disassembled
Associative Memory: Rote memory tasks such as learning to associate pairs of
unrelated items
Perceptual Speed: Clerical tasks such as checking for similarities and differences
in visual details
Inductive Reasoning: Finding a rule, as in a number series completion test
Two-Factor v/s PMA
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