intelligence

falls under thinking memory and language — big part of exam

test Thursday

4/29

intelligence: the global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment

intelligence test: a method of assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them to those of others using numerical scores

Sir Francis Galton: Known for the eugenic’s movement

  • he was under the assumption that intelligence was inherited

  • the eugenic’s movement is a plan for human betterment, based on his conclusion: why not measure human traits and then selectively breed superior people

  • According to him, the intellectual strengths were: reaction time, sensory acuity, muscular power, and body proportions

  • he was the first proponent of the idea: that we can quantitatively measure people's mental abilities

  • cousin of Charles Darwin

Alfred Binet: he decided to develop an objective test to identify French school children who were likely to have difficulty in the regular classroom

  • Binet along with Theodore Simon (a French psychiatrist) set out what came to be known as a child’s mental age

    • mental age: the chronological age that typically responds to a given level of performance

  • This test includes reasoning and problem-solving questions that might predict school achievement, it made no assumption why a particular child was below average, average, or above average

  • Their simple goal was to identify kids who had problems and get them the help they needed

  • he found his way to the US, and…↓

Lewis Terman: he revised Binet’s original test into the Stanford Binet

  • Stanford Binet: the most widely used American revision of Binet’s test

  • William Stern: suggested to Terman that the scores on the test be expressed in terms of a single number — this is what has come to be known as the IQ score or intelligence quotient

    • IQ: a global measure of intelligence derived from comparing an individual’s score with the scores of others in the same age group

    • The formula that is used to determine a person’s IQ score: IQ=mental age/chronological age x 100

David Wechsler: developed an intelligence test for children which is often abbreviated the WISC-R: the Wechsler intelligence scale for children — revision

  • he also developed a test for adults the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale — revision (WAIS-R)

  • two advantages of the Wechsler test: it was developed specifically for adults and not just children and the test provided scores on eleven sub-tests measuring different abilities those sub-test scores were grouped to provide an overall verbal score, performance score

    • verbal score: comes from the sub-test on vocabulary, comprehension, knowledge of general information, and other verbal tasks

    • performance score: comes from the non-verbal sub-tests including identifying the missing part in incomplete pictures, arranging pictures to tell a story, or arranging blocks to match a given pattern

the question arose: is intelligence one thing, is it many things, or a combination of specific abilities

a person who believed that intelligence was one thing was

  • Charles Spearman: known for the idea of general intelligence (sometimes called the G-factor)

    • general intelligence: the idea of the notion of a general intelligence factor that is responsible for a person’s overall performance on tests of mental abilities

      • you would do well on all of the parts, average on all the parts, below average on all parts

An opponent of Spearman LL Thurstone

  • LL Thurstone: identified seven clusters of independent primary mental abilities based on the idea that intelligence comes in different packages

    • different primary factors: word fluency, memory and reasoning, numerical ability, and perceptual speed

    • he was an advocate that intelligence can be many different things

Multiple Intelligences

  • Howard Gardner: he believes in the idea of multiple intelligences, he broke it down into 8 different areas*

    • Linguistic intelligence: your adept at the use of language

      • people who would have high intelligence in this area would: be writers, public speakers, native storytellers

    • Logical-mathematical intelligence: includes logical, mathematical, and scientific intelligence

      • scientists, mathematicians, navigators, or a surveyors

    • Musical intelligence:

      • a musician, composer, or singer

    • Spatial intelligence: they excel in the ability to mentally visualize the relationships of objects or movements

      • sculptors, painters, expert chess players, or architects

      • males seem to have better

    • Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: control of bodily motions and capacity to handle objects skillfully

      • athletes, dancers, and a craftsperson

    • Interpersonal intelligence: understanding other people’s emotions, motives, or intentions

      • politicians, salesperson, clinical psychologist

    • Intrapersonal intelligence: understanding one’s own emotions, motives, or intentions

      • essayist or philosopher

    • Naturalist: the ability to discern patterns in nature

      • ecologist, zoologist, botanist

People who disagree with the exact way of

  • Sternberg and Wagner: agree with Gardner's idea of multiple intelligences but disagree with the idea that they are independent of each other they focus on three

    • sometimes referred to as Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence: analytic or academic problem-solving skills, practical, creative

      • analytic intelligence: be a problem that has one specific correct answer

      • practical intelligence: the ability to adapt to the environment, required for everyday tasks and may have multiple solutions — street smarts

      • creative intelligence: demonstrated by reacting to novel situations by drawing on existing skills and knowledge

  • Cantor and Kihlstrom: focused on social intelligence

    • social intelligence: the know-how involved in comprehending social situations and managing one’s self

  • Salovey and Mayer: believed a critical part of social intelligence is emotional intelligence

    • emotional intelligence: the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions

Modern test of mental abilities

based on the idea that intelligence is whatever the test measures

two specific tests: achievement test and aptitude tests

  • achievement test: a test designed to measure a person’s level of knowledge skill or accomplishment in a particular area

    • ex. unit tests and AP tests

    • you can prepare for them

  • aptitude test: a test designed to assess a person's capacity to benefit from education or training

    • ex. SAT, ACT, MCAT, LSAT

    • measure different abilities that you should possess that give the universities some idea if you would be successful there

    • they don’t measure the person’s motivation or inner drive to work hard

principles of test construction

for a test to be widely accepted it must meet 3 criteria

  • standardization: the administration of a test to a large representative sample of people under uniform conditions to establish norms

    • used because it establishes a normal curve or a normal distribution: a bell-shaped distribution of individual differences in a normal population in which most scores cluster around that curve

    • most of the population has an IQ of 85 and 115

  • reliability: the ability of a test to produce consistent results when administered and on repeated occasions under similar conditions

  • validity: the ability of a test to measure what it is intended to measure

    • content validity: the extent 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, assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior

      • criterion: the behavior (such as college grades) that a test (such as the SAT) is designed to predict

Reification: a reasoning error when we refer to someone’s IQ as if it were a fixed and objectively real trait like height

  • when we are trying to measure intelligence we are trying to measure it as if it is concrete

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 one’s total score

intellectual disabilities: for someone to be classified in this way significant sub-average general intellectual functioning must be accompanied by significant limitations in adaptive functioning

  • adaptive functioning: how effectively individuals cope with common life demands and how well they meet the standards of personal independence expected of someone in their particular age group, sociocultural background, and community setting

  • influenced by: various factors including education, motivation, personality characteristics, social and vocational opportunities, and the mental disorders and general medical conditions that may coexist with intellectual disabilities

  • the onset must occur before 18

mild intellectual disability:

  • IQ range: 50-55 - 70

  • 85% of those who are intellectually disabled are in this category

  • educable they can benefit from education

  • development:

    • during the preschool years, they typically develop social and communication skills,

    • academically they will reach approximately a sixth-grade level

    • as adults, they usually achieve social and vocational skills adequate for minimum self-support also as adults they may need supervision, guidance, and assistance when under unusual social or economic stress most can live successfully in the community either independently or with help

moderate intellectual disability:

  • IQ range: 35-40 - 50-55

  • trainable they can train them in certain vocational skills that can allow them to do certain jobs

  • 10% of intellectually disabled

  • development:

    • during childhood, most can acquire communication skills, profit from vocational training, and with moderate supervision attend to their personal care, benefit from social and occupational skills, and may learn to travel independently in familiar places

    • academically may reach about a second-grade level

    • as adults they may be able to perform unskilled or semi-skilled work under supervision in sheltered workshops or in the general workforce, they adapt well to life in the community usually in supervised settings

severe intellectual disability:

  • IQ range: 20-25 - 35-40

  • 3-4% of intellectually disabled

  • development:

    • during childhood they require little or no communicative speech during the school-age period they may learn to talk

    • may learn elementary self-care skills they may profit from pre-academic subjects such as familiarity with the alphabet, simple counting, and learning sight reading of some survival words

    • as adults they may be able to perform simple tasks in closely supervised settings, most adapt well to life within the community in group homes or with their families

profound intellectual disability:

  • IQ range: below 20-25

  • 1-2% of intellectually disabled

  • characteristics:

    • most individuals have an identified neurological condition that accounts for their intellectual disability

    • during childhood they display considerable impairments in sensory-motor functioning, motor development, self-care, and communication skills may improve if appropriate training is provided and some can perform simple tasks in closely supervised and sheltered settings

predisposing factors:

  • heredity

    • 5% are due to heredity

    • Tay-Sachs disease, fragile X

  • early alterations of embryonic development

    • 33%

    • down syndrome

    • pre-natal damages due to chemicals —fetal alcohol syndrome

  • pregnancy and parental problems

    • fetal malnutrition

    • pre-maturity

    • hypoxia

    • viral and other infections

    • trauma

  • general medical conditions acquired in infancy in childhood included infections, traumas, and poisonings

  • environmental influences and other mental disorders

    • 15-20%

    • deprivation of nurturance — neglect not given physical, social, or emotional stimulation

    • deprivation of social, linguistic, and other stimulation, and severe mental disorders

gifted

  • IQ: 135+

  • 3-5% of population

  • many are tracked in schools meaning that they are segregated and given academic enrichment

  • creativity: the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable

    • 5 components that aid it

    • expertise: they have a pretty good well-developed base of knowledge, and they know a lot about a lot of different stuff

    • imaginative thinking skills

    • venturesome personality

    • intrinsic motivation

    • a creative environment.