Intelligence Notes

What is Intelligence?

  • Intelligence involves reason, logic, clear communication, and social behavior.
  • It's more than just school performance; it includes knowing when you're wrong.

Defining Intelligence

  • Intelligence is an inferred process that explains adaptive success in behavior.
  • It includes mental abilities to adapt to, shape, or select one's environment.
  • Abilities include judging, comprehending, and reasoning.
  • Involves understanding and dealing with people, objects, and symbols.
  • The capacity to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment.

Intelligence Defined

  • Intelligence: the ability to learn from experience, acquire knowledge, and use resources effectively to adapt and solve problems.

Spearman’s Psychometric Approach: Intelligence as a Single Trait

  • Psychometric Approach: Measurement of individual differences in behaviors and abilities.
  • Charles Spearman's “g” factor: a single general ability underlies performance on mental ability tests.
  • “s” factor: Specific ability factor needed for performance on mental ability tests.

Spearman’s Theory

  • g factor: General intelligence - the ability to reason and solve problems.
  • s factor: Specific intelligence - ability to excel in certain areas.

Cattell’s View of Intelligence

  • Intelligence comprises a few basic abilities.
  • Fluid Intelligence:
    • The ability to think on the spot and solve novel problems.
    • The ability to perceive relationships.
    • The ability to gain new types of knowledge.
  • Crystallized Intelligence:
    • Factual knowledge about the world.
    • Skills already learned and practiced
    • Examples: Arithmetic facts, word meanings, state capitals.

Intelligence Tests and Basic Abilities

  • Fluid intelligence tests measure:
    • Ability to assemble novel puzzles.
    • Ability to determine the next entry in a series of numbers.
    • Ability to identify the object related to others.
  • Fluid intelligence is domain-general, reflecting a core ability to process information and reason logically.
  • Performance on fluid intelligence tests does not necessarily predict performance on crystallized intelligence tests.

Fluid and Crystallized Intellectual Development Across the Life Span

  • Fluid intelligence peaks in early adulthood and declines with age.
  • Crystallized intelligence continues to develop throughout life.

Broader Theory of Intelligence

  • Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences: Reason, logic, and knowledge are different aspects of intelligences, along with several other abilities.
  • Original list had seven different kinds of intelligence, but later added two more.
  • Howard Gardner proposed a theory of multiple intelligences, in which he identified 9 distinct types of intelligence.

Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences

  • The first three intelligences are included in psychometric theories of intelligence:
    • Linguistic intelligence
    • Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
    • Spatial Intelligence

What Do These Intelligences Examine?

  • Linguistics: Sensitivity to the meanings and sounds of words, mastery of syntax, appreciation of language use.
  • Logical-Mathematical: Understanding of objects, symbols, actions, relations, problem identification, and seeking explanations.
  • Spatial: Capacity to perceive the visual world accurately, perform transformations upon perceptions, and recreate visual experiences.

Gardener’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence

  • Gardener’s remaining 6 distinct intelligences are unique to Gardener’s theory:
    • Musical
    • Bodily-kinesthetic
    • Interpersonal
    • Intrapersonal
    • Naturalistic
    • Existential intelligence

What are these Intelligences?

  • Musical: Sensitivity to tones and phrases of music, understanding of musical rhythms and structures, awareness of emotional aspects of music.
  • Bodily-Kinesthetic: Use of one’s body in highly skilled ways for expressive or goal-directed purposes, capacity to handle objects skillfully.
  • Interpersonal: Ability to notice and make distinctions among moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions of others, with potential to act on this knowledge.
  • Intrapersonal: Access to one’s own feelings, ability to draw on emotions to guide and understand behavior, recognition of personal strengths and weaknesses.
  • Naturalistic: Sensitivity and understanding of plants, animals, and nature.
  • Existential: Sensitivity to issues related to the meaning of life, death, and the human condition.

Gardner’s Nine Intelligences

  • Verbal/linguistic: Ability to use language (Writers, speakers).
  • Musical: Ability to compose and/or perform music (Musicians).
  • Logical/mathematical: Ability to think logically and solve mathematical problems (Scientists, engineers).
  • Visual/spatial: Ability to understand how objects are oriented in space (Pilots, astronauts, artists, navigators).
  • Movement/Bodily-Kinesthetic: Ability to control one’s body motions (Dancers, athletes).
  • Interpersonal: Sensitivity to others and understanding the motivation of others (Psychologists, managers).
  • Intrapersonal: Understanding of one’s emotions and how they guide actions (Various people-oriented careers).
  • Naturalist: Ability to recognize the patterns found in nature (Farmers, landscapers, biologists, botanists).
  • Existentialist: Ability to see the “big picture” of the human world by asking questions about life, death, and the ultimate reality of human existence (Philosophical thinkers).

Measuring Intelligence

  • Intelligence Testing

What is IQ?

  • Lewis Terman revised Simon and Binet’s test, publishing the Stanford-Binet Test in 1916.
  • Performance was described as an intelligence quotient (IQ), the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100:
  • IQ=(MA/CA)∗100IQ = (MA / CA) * 100
    • Where MA is mental age and CA is chronological age.
  • Example: A child who is 10 years old scores a mental age of 15; IQ=(15/10)∗100=150IQ = (15 / 10) * 100 = 150

Stanford-Binet IQ Test

  • Measures skills necessary for school success.
  • Understanding and using language, memory, following instructions, and computational skills.
  • Binet’s test is a set of age-graded items.
  • Assumes children’s abilities increase with age.
  • Items measure “mental level” or “mental age.”
  • Adaptive Testing: Determine the age level of the most advanced items a child can consistently answer correctly.
  • Children whose mental age equals chronological age are of “regular” intelligence.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale

  • Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III): Used with children 6 to 16.
  • Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III): Used with people 17 and older.

WISC-III

  • Provides a profile of strengths and weaknesses.
  • Each test is made of 12 parts with increasing difficulty.
    • Performance Scale (6 parts): Spatial and perceptual abilities, measures fluid intelligence.
    • Verbal Scale (6 parts): General knowledge and language skill, measures crystallized intelligence.

Verbal IQ

  • Information: Measures factual knowledge (e.g., What day is Independence Day?).
  • Similarities: Measures ability to categorize (e.g., How are wool and cotton alike?).
  • Arithmetic: Measures computational math problem-solving (e.g., Change from 25 cents after buying 6 cents worth of candy).
  • Vocabulary: Measures ability to define words (e.g., What does “telephone” mean?).
  • Comprehension: Measures ability to answer common sense questions (e.g., Why buy fire insurance?).
  • Digit Span: Measures short-term auditory memory.

Performance IQ

  • Coding: Copying marks from a code; visual rote learning.
  • Picture Completion: Identifying missing parts in pictures (e.g., What’s missing from this car?).
  • Picture Arrangement: Arranging pictures to tell a story.
  • Block Design: Arranging multi-colored blocks to match a printed design.
  • Digit Symbol: Learning a symbol for each number and filling in blanks.
  • Object Assembly: Putting puzzles together, measures nonverbal fluid reasoning.

Factors that Influence Intelligence

  • Factors Influencing Intelligence

Factors Influencing Intelligence

  • The Child’s Influence:
    • Genetics
    • Genotype–Environment Interaction
  • The Immediate Environment’s Influence:
    • Family Environment
    • School Environment
  • The Society’s Influence:
    • Poverty
    • Race/Ethnicity

Schooling

  • Attending school makes children smarter and is important for intellectual growth.

Poverty

  • More years in poverty correlate with lower IQs.
  • Children from lower- and working-class homes average 10-15 points below middle-class peers on IQ tests.
  • Wealthier countries have children that score better on IQ tests than children from poorer homes.
  • Chronic inadequate diet can disrupt brain development and impair intellectual functioning.
  • Reduced access to health services, poor parenting, and insufficient stimulation can impair intellectual growth.

Extremes of Intelligence

  • Intelligence tests can identify individuals at both extremes: those with mental retardation (IQ {leq\{leq 70) and those with high intelligence (IQ ≥\geq 135).

High Intelligence

  • People with high intelligence test scores tend to be healthy, well-adjusted, and academically successful.

Mental Retardation

  • Individuals with mental retardation can now care for themselves with supportive environments and special education.