How well do infant and toddler mental tests predict later intelligence? What are some alternatives to the traditional tests?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: Despite careful construction, most infant tests predict later intelligence poorly. Infants and toddlers easily become distracted, fatigued, or bored during testing, so their scores often do not reflect their true abilities. And infant perceptual and motor items differ from the tasks given to older children, which increasingly emphasize verbal, conceptual, and problem-solving skills. Infant tests are somewhat better at making long-term predictions for extremely low-scoring babies. Today, they are largely used for screening—helping to identify for further observation and intervention babies who are likely to have developmental problems.
As an alternative to infant tests, some researchers have turned to information-processing measures, such as habituation, to assess early mental progress. Their findings show that speed of habituation and recovery to novel visual stimuli is among the best available infant predictors of IQ from early childhood to early adulthood. Habituation and recovery seem to be an especially effective early index of intelligence because they assess memory as well as quickness and flexibility of thinking, which underlie intelligent behavior at all ages.