The Relation of Intelligence and Physical

Article Review: The Relation of Intelligence and Physical

Maturity to Social Status of Children

The article, Relation of Intelligence and Physical Maturity to Social Status of Children, is a presentation and explanation of a study done by Rick F. Heber of Michigan State University on the relationship between a child’s social status to his/hers IQ and physical maturity. The author chose three classes of children, one from each third, fourth, and fifth grades at a suburban school. He chose forty-nine boys and forty-eight girls. He then administered a Kuhlman-Anderson IQ test along with the gathering of each child’s physical maturity, which in this case was their height. The Cunningham Social Distance Scale was used to collect each child’s social status also. After the entire data was collected from the tests the author then took the information and put it into the form of tables that cross-examines it. The outcome of the tests gave no significant results even though there did seem to be a positive correlation between the data.

Mr. Heber concluded that:

1.) Physical maturity as measured by height shows no relation to social status in pre-adolescent children.

2.) Children who show considerable deviation in IQ from the group also deviate in social status in the same direction as the IQ deviation. (p. 162)

I felt that the information contained in this article was pretty clear cut and organized well. Mr. Heber could’ve gave some information on himself so one would be able to figure out how credible he actual is. He seemed to take the right steps in collecting data and organizing it for people to be able to understand it, but as far as his conclusions go, no one knows how much weight can be put on them to whether they truly do show a significant relation or not because we don’t know his credentials. The graphs were a big plus to article for me because they helped me understand just what actually he was looking for and gave me chance to form my own opinions on how significant the relationships truly seemed to be. There is some data in the graphs though that I wasn’t able to figure out what its purpose was exactly, but it didn’t stop me from truly understanding the results of the experiment. One thing that Mr. Heber could’ve done was have taken more experiments with older children and showed those results compared