psyc 102 - 2

Week 2 - Intelligence

What is intelligence

• Example: chess

  • Thinking of your next move and your opponent’s next move (playing chess well = intelligence)

  • Thought if you can develop a computer that can play chess you can understand more about intelligence

    • Not considered “intelligent” by psychologists

• Intelligence definition: the ability to-

1. solve novel problems

2. adapt to the environment

3. learn from experience

Types of intelligence

• Emotional intelligence:

• Triarchic Intelligence (Creative/Analytical/Practical)

  • practical (the ability to get along in different contexts)

  • creative (the ability to come up with new ideas)

  • analytical (the ability to evaluate information and solve problems)

Factors of Intelligence Theories:

• Definition for psychological factor: element (subsystem of mind) that predicts performance in one domain 

• Eg visual accuity - how well you can see, amount of storage on a disc

1. General intelligence factor (g): a hypothesized single factor of intelligence that can predict being good at things in all domains of knowledge

   1. People believe g exists because people overlap at being good at different things

   2. Just predicts correlations - relationships between tests

2. Specific factors (s): the hypothesized separate factors of intelligence that explain being good at things in specific domains (+ their knowledge from g)

   1. Eg going to music school when you are young 

• Independent factor theories: intelligence is many non-overlapping abilities

• Two-factor theory: a person’s performance on a test is due to a combination of general cognitive + special abilities for the test

Intelligence as a Hybrid

• Hybrid theories: intelligence as a group of related factors 

  • Fluid intelligence (Gf): the ability to learn new information and solve new problems

  • Crystalized intelligence (Gc): apply knowledge learned from experience

Measuring Intelligence

• Though a standardized test

  • Guided administration and highly controlled

  • Gives a score to show your performance (relative to the population) → intelligence quotient (IQ)

• Intelligence quotient (IQ): standard unit of intelligence

  • 100 is average score (15 is the standard deviation)

• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-V): the most popular test used today, based on a hybrid model of intelligence

  • Full scale - a measure of g

  • General ability index - a measure of crystalized

    • Measures intellectual abilities w/o time pressure

    • Verbal comprehension + perceptual reasoning tests

  • Cognitive proficiency test - a measure of fluid

    • Measure of intellectual speed and capacity for processing 

    • Working memory + processing speed tests

  • Raven’s progressive matrices: non-verbal intelligence test with pictures that demonstrate rules

• Problems with intelligence tests: 

  • Content overlaps with things taught in school

  • Better test taking ability is benificial

  • How well you expect them to do biases their performance

  • Diff cultures have diff ideas of intelligence

Genetics

Individual differences: sdjf

• Genetic variability: people differ in their genes

• Environmental variability: people have different lives, grow up with different family styles, go to different schools, etc.

• Their interaction: genetic effects change environments; environments change genetic expression.

Common misconceptions

• Genetic determinism: the belief that a person has a fixed phenotype from their genes (incorrect)

• Genes increase the probability of phenotypes but through the interaction of the environment and genes = your phenotype

  • Eg smoking ≠ lung cancer but INCREASES the chance

• 1 gene ≠ 1 trait

What is genetic prediction

1. Genetic range of phenotypes that COULD be expressed

2. Strength that the environment needs to be to change the range

   1. Eg brown eyes = low range, needs strong env effect to change

   2. Eg left/right handed = big range, needs weak env effect to change

How can we figure out if genes predict something? (experiment)

• Manipulate genes: identical (monozygotic) vs fraternal (dizygotic) twins

  • Dizygotic twins: 50% genes

  • Monozygotic twins: 100% genes

• Manipulate environment: identical twins separated at birth

• Quasi-experiments: where the independent variable occurs naturally but has NO random assignment

Twin Studies Findings

• Biological factors impact personality

  • Identical twins are more similar in personality (even if being displaced from each other)

  • Negative temperament is correlated with twins

Impact of Environment

• Education: years and quality of education (eg education for IQ = nutrition for height)

• Home education: higher household income, reading at home, stability/predictable schedule

• Birth weight: small positive correlation with higher birth weight

• Birth order: small positive correlation with first born children and higher IQ

• Stereotype threat: not wanting to conform to the stereotypes about a group

• Cognitive enhancers: drugs that improve psychological processes

• Age: relatively stable, after 50 fluid intelligence can decrease

• Gender: both have average 100 intelligence (men have higher/lower peaks)

  • Men are better at spatial awareness / women are better at emotional intelligence → diffferences are becoming smaller with recent testing

• Race: is not a valid category

  • Sociocultural differences in environment: nutrition, education, encouraging test taking, DOES have an impact on IQ

INTELLIGENCE AND EUGENICS

• Eugenics: advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations

• The Bell Curve (book): advocates for changes in public policy to protect “high IQ” individuals and less reproduction for “low IQ” individuals

  • Untrue Claims

  • Intelligence is stable - doesn’t change between people/age, only due to genetic makeup

  • Intelligence tests are valid/unbiased

  • Intelligence predicts your life outcome

Intelligence Claims

1. Claim 1:

2. Claim 2:

3. Claim 3:

Artificial Intelligence