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What is intelligence according to the text?
concept and not a thing
mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, problem solve, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
what is an intelligence test?
a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.
When you think of someone who is intelligent, what qualities do you think of? Why might it be difficult to define intelligence?
intelligence has been operationally defined as whatever intelligence tests measure, which has tended to be school smarts.
But intelligence is not a quality like height or weight, which has the same meaning to everyone around the globe. People assign the term intelligence to the qualities that enable success in their own time and in their own culture
Explain Charles Spearman’s concept of general intelligence (g)?
a general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.
Believed the g factor underlies all intelligence.
Factor analysis: a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test;
used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score.
How does factor analysis relate to g?
a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test;
used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score.
Spearman found out that those who score high in one area, such as verbal intelligence, typically ___
score higher than average in other areas, such as spatial or reasoning ability.
Did L.L. Thurstone agree or disagree with Spearman? How did he set out to test (g)?
Opposed Spearman
Identified seven clusters of primary mental abilities
word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, and memory).
Did not rank people on a single scale of general aptitude.
Explain the concept of savant syndrome.
a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill such as computation or drawing
think “s”pecial
How does Howard Gardner view intelligence?
Views intelligence as multiple independent intelligences.
Naturalist, Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Musical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal
Have not been experimentally proven.
How does Robert Sternberg view intelligence?
Three Intelligences (Triarchic Theory)
He believes you can increase your intelligence in all of these categories. Abilities are not fixed but flexible.
PAC (he packed them together into only 3 intelligences)
Three Intelligences (Triarchic Theory): Analytical Intelligence
(academic problem-solving)
Assessed by traditional intelligence tests which present well-defined problems such as having a single right answer.
Three Intelligences (Triarchic Theory): Creative Intelligence
Reacting adaptively to novel situations and generating innovative ideas. (Ex: inventions).
Three Intelligences (Triarchic Theory): Practical Intelligence
Required for everyday tasks, one’s ability to successfully interact with the everyday world, behave in successful ways in your environment (street smarts).
What is emotional intelligence?
Daniel Goleman
The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
What are the four components of emotional intelligence?
Perceiving emotions: (to recognize them in faces, music, stories).
Understanding emotions: to predict them and how they change and blend.
Managing emotions: to know how to express them in varied situations.
Using emotions: to enable adaptive or creative thinking.
(don’t really need to know by heart)
Is there a correlation between brain size and intelligence?
Bigger is better.
but some geniuses have small brains
What does research reveal about the connection between neural processing speed and intelligence?
Brain scans reveal that smart people use less energy to solve problems
Across many studies, the correlation between intelligence score and the speed of taking in perceptual information tends to be about +.3 to +.5 (Deary & Der, 2005; Sheppard & Vernon, 2008).
spearman
spear headed (first one)
(g) factor
L. L. Thurstone
Thurstone = thirsty for success
disagreed with spearman
Thurstone = 9 letters
9 - 2 (two Ls) = 7
7 factors!
Howard Gardner
howard = 6 letters
gardner = 7 letters
8 independent intelligences!!
(musical, spatial, linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily- kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic)
Robert Sternberg
he’s stern so only 3
also call him rob (3 letters)
How did Francis Galton view intelligence?
had a fascination with measuring human traits.
father of eugenics
Galton’s quest for a simple intelligence measure failed
Who was Charles Darwin’s cousin?
Francis Galton
When his cousin Charles Darwin proposed that nature selects successful traits through the survival of the fittest, Galton wondered if it might be possible to measure “natural ability” and to encourage those of high ability to mate with one another
Explain Alfred Binet’s intelligence test. What was its purpose?
single practical purpose: to identify French schoolchildren needing special attention.
feared it would be used to label children
with his collaborator, Théodore Simon, began by assuming that all children follow the same course of intellectual development
goal became measuring each child’s mental age
mental age
a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8.
How did Lewis Terman revise Binet’s original tests for use with American children? In what other ways did Terman apply his tests?
Binet’s fears soon realized
Terman found that the Paris-developed questions and age norms worked poorly with California schoolchildren. Adapting some of Binet’s original items, adding others, and establishing new age norms, Terman extended the upper end of the test’s range from teenagers to “superior adults.”
Named it: the Stanford-Binet.
For Terman, intelligence tests revealed the intelligence with which a person was born.
What is William Stern’s formula for determining IQ? How has it changed since then?
ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100
IQ = ma/ca × 100
On contemporary intelligence tests: relative average performance of others at the same age (average performance = 100)
What is the difference between an achievement and an aptitude test?
achievement test a test designed to assess what a person has learned.
aptitude test a test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
How does the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) differ from the Stanford-Binet?
not only an overall intelligence score (Stanford-Binet), but also separate scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed.
David Wechsler
psychologist who created what is now the most widely used individual intelligence test, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
standardization
defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group (representative of the population).
Explain the Normal Curve concept regarding intelligence.
the symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes
On an intelligence test, we call the midpoint, the average score, 100. Moving out from the average toward either extreme, we find fewer and fewer people.
What is the Flynn Effect? What are some possible causes?
worldwide phenomenon that intelligence test performance was improving.
causes: test sophistication, better nutrition, more education, stimulating environment, less childhood disease, smaller families, more parental investment
Why is reliability important regarding testing? How can a researcher test for reliability?
the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting.
check reliability by retesting people: may use same test or split test in half (odd and even)
Explain validity regarding testing.
the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.
(content validity and predictive validity)
content validity
the extend to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
predictive validity
the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior
What have we learned about intelligence through cross-sectional studies and longitudinal studies?
cross-sectional: compare people of various ages in one time period.
found that older adults give fewer correct answers on intelligence tests than younger adults.
longitudinal: retested the same cohort—the same group of people—over years
Until late in life, intelligence remained stable. On some tests, it even increased.
How does crystallized and fluid intelligence change as we age?
crystallized intelligence our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
fluid intelligence our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.
What do Twin Studies reveal about intelligence?
Identical twins also exhibit substantial similarity in specific talents
Brain scans reveal that identical twins’ brains are built and function similarly. They have similar gray and white matter volume
Their brains (unlike those of fraternal twins) are virtually the same in areas associated with verbal and spatial intelligence
What do Adoption Studies reveal about intelligence?
gist: their brains are similar (nature)
What is heritability? How does it relate to intelligence?
the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environemtns studied. (range from 50 to 80 percent)
What do Adoption Studies reveal about intelligence?
During childhood, the intelligence test scores of adoptive siblings correlate modestly. Over time,adopted children accumulate experience in their differing adoptive families.
Mental similarities between adopted children and their adoptive families wane with age,
until the correlation approaches zero by adulthood. Genetic influences become more apparent as we accumulate
life experience.
How does epigenetics (from Bio, Mod 14) explain how genes and the environment influence intelligence?
Genes and experience together weave the intelligence fabric. (Recall from Module 14 that epigenetics is one field that studies this nature–nurture meeting place.) But what we ac- complish with our intelligence depends also on our own beliefs and motivation.
epigenetics: study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work
How does schooling influence the development of intelligence?
Later in childhood, schooling is one intervention that pays intelligence score dividends. Schooling and intelligence interact, and both enhance later income.
Generally, the aptitude benefits dissipate over time (reminding us that life experience after Head Start matters, too)
believe to be a long term benefit
Explain Carol Dweck’s fixed and growth mindsets.
reports that believing intelligence is biologically set and unchanging can lead to a “fixed mindset.” Believing intelligence is changeable, a “growth mindset” results in a focus on learning and growing.
What are some findings regarding intelligence between boys and girls?
Girls: better spellers, more verbally fluent, better at locating objects, better at detecting emotions, and more sensitive to touch, taste, and color
Boys: tests of spatial ability (much stronger) and complex math problems
math computation and overall math performance, boys and girls hardly differ
Males’ mental ability scores also vary more than females’.
Give an example of each of the two meanings of bias in a test.
1) popular sense. consider a test biased if it detects not only innate differences in intelligence but also performance differences caused by cultural experiences.
2) scientific meaning. It hinges on a test’s validity—on whether it predicts future behavior only for some groups of test-takers. For example, if the SAT® exam accurately predicted the college achievement of women but not that of men, then the test would be biased.
Explain how stereotype threat can affect performance on an assessment.
stereotype threat: a self- confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype
If, when taking an exam, you are worried that your type often doesn’t do well, your self-doubts and self-monitoring may hijack your working memory and impair your performance
What are some methods in which stereotype threat can be reduced?
Minority students in university programs that challenge them to believe in their potential, or to focus on the idea that intelligence is malleable and not fixed, have likewise produced markedly higher grades and had lower dropout rates