Intelligence and Emotion in Ageing 175 



disturbed in homes and hospitals. Hence, a major difficulty in 

 appraising the ageing population depends on the biases in the 

 samples selected and co-operating in the enterprise, as well as 

 the inevitable bias that death and accident bring. 



Finally, the major issue rests upon the method used for 

 appraisal of the trait or the ability or the emotional adjust- 

 ment of the individual chosen for the sample. As a psycho- 

 logist, I am all too aware of the fact that it is not possible to 

 suggest a useful means for evaluating the emotional adjust- 

 ment or personality of individuals, especially over the wide 

 range of adult ages. 



Whenever social adjustment is measured in terms of good- 

 ness or adequacy, it will correlate positively with measures of 

 intelligence. It may be surmised, however, that the social 

 adjustment or the social competence of adults will show 

 diminished relationship with test intelligence with increasing 

 age. Brody (1942) concluded that social adjustment or 

 competence, as age increases, depends "more and more on the 

 products of (test intelligence) and less and less on (test intelli- 

 gence) itself." As a matter of fact, the amount of relationship 

 will be a function of the overlap in the meanings of intelligence 

 and social adjustment or competence. It is, however, the 

 variation among these meanings that constitutes one of the 

 major problems in the interpretation of the results in intelli- 

 gence and in adjustment. The long controversy over the 

 relative influence of nature and nurture in the development of 

 intellectual performances of children and youths basically 

 rests on the semantic confusion among the meanings of 

 intelligence and among the methods for appraising intellectual 

 ability. 



Intellectual behaviour may be conceived as the capacity 

 to make good, adequate and acceptable responses. Such 

 intellectual behaviour is the resultant of the interaction among 

 heredity viewed as the potentialities of the individual, environ- 

 ment viewed as the opportunities afforded the individual, and 

 maturation viewed as the development and perhaps subse- 

 quent decline of function in the living organism. 



