Intelligence

Abstract

So far as the authors’ knowledge goes, it was Max Valentine, commissioned by the British Government as Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Shiraz from 1956 to 1958, who first attempted systematically to apply intelligence tests on a wide scale in Fars and perhaps in all Iran [195]. He was set the task of making a selection among the very numerous candidates for admission to the various collegiate and academic institutions there. For this purpose he used the Raven Matrices. Young men from the villages had applied for a one to two year course at the agricultural school; their number unfortunately is not stated. According to British norms the test results were very low; almost a third would have fallen into the group of the “feeble minded”. Valentine refers this to anxiety and to basic unfamiliarity with such tasks and remarks justly that it would be ridiculous to interpret the results uncritically according to Western norms. A further group was formed of 120 from 340 candidates for the Faculty of Medicine after 210 applicants had been eliminated by previous academic tests.The distribution of the results was roughly normal, but the performance was merely average by Western norms although the group had passed through several processes of selection. For such a select group, it comprised an extraordinary number of poor performances. This “tail” was smaller in the third group of candidates for the Agricultural Faculty of the same university and the number of above-average performances was greater, as one would expect from a selected group. An entirely satisfactory explanation for this could not be given.