village voice > arts > Education Supplement Fall 2006 by Rachel Aviv

Although IQ tests fail to really define what intelligence is in the first place (often knowledge gets blurred with ability), most psychologists can agree that they measure something valuable— whatever that is. In the 1920s and '30s, Leta Hollingsworth, a professor at Columbia's Teachers College, followed a group of gifted students and found that they had trouble effectively communicating with those more than 30 IQ points below them. Since then, similar studies with adults have reaffirmed her conclusions. "It can be very lonely," says Linda Gottfredson, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies intelligence. "If you think about the fact that the average is 100, and mentally retarded is about 70, someone at 160 is as far away from the average as someone at 130 is from mentally retarded. You can't say the scale works like this, but it gives you a sense."