Intelligence and Its Relationship to Achievement

Abstract

This comprehensive literature review examines the link between intelligence and achievement. It also
provides a brief summary of selected psychometric theories of intelligence. In attempt to gather all relevant scholarly
literature, several procedures were used. A search of the key terms in the ERIC, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar
databases was performed. The literature evidences that verbal abilities have stronger correlation with academic
achievement than nonverbal abilities. Furthermore, verbal abilities are related to readiness to learn while nonverbal
abilities are related to potential to learn. If intelligence scores are used to predict any kind of future academic
performance, both verbal (readiness) and nonverbal (potential) abilities should be evaluated. Besides, in order to
identify gifted and talented students, assessment of verbal abilities should accompany with the assessment of
nonverbal abilities so that they will be able to survive in advanced academic programs