Unit 4: Testing & Individual Differences

Intelligence → the ability to gather and use information in productive ways

What is Intelligence? →

• “Intelligence war” (Myers, 2011)

  • 2 camps

    • “generalists”

    • “multiples”

Generalists →

• Charles Spearman → general intelligence

  • Factor Analysis (g)

    • Specific Intelligence (f)

  • if you were intelligent you would have a high g-factor

Howard Gardner

• Multiples

  

• Interpersonal → sensing people’s feelings and motives

• Bodily-kinesthetic → coordinating your mind with your body

• Linguistic → finding the right words to express what you mean

• Intra-personal → understanding yourself, what you feel, and what you want

• Spatial → visualizing the world in 3D

• Naturalistic → understanding living things and reading nature

• Musical → discerning sounds, their pitch, tone, rhythm, and timbre

• Logical-mathematical → quantifying things, making hypotheses and proving them

• Existential → tackling the questions of why we live, and why we die

Robert Sternberg

• Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

  • 1) Analytic → mental steps or “components” used to solve problems

  • 2) Practical → ability to read and adapt to the contexts of everyday life

  • 3) Creative → use of experience in ways that foster insight

Daniel Goleman

• Book called Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ

  • EQ→ emotional intelligence

  • Closlet related to intrapersonal and interpersonal from Gardner

  • IQ doesn’t = success

  • 5 elements of emotianal intelligence

    • self-awarness

    • self-regulation

    • motivation

      • intrinsic motivation → something within you is motivating you

      • extrinsic motivation → external things are motivatinf you

    • empathy

    • social skills

Nature v Nuture

• Is intelligence genetic or enviornmental

• experience does change your brain

  

What contributions did Alfred Binet make to intelligence research and/or testing?

• contracted by the french government to test children

  • school is not organized or required

• created the first intelligence test → Binet-Simon Scale

• Binet was a harsh critic of the peopl who thought it was ok to categorize children based off of a single measure

• Binet stressed the limitations of the est because he beleived that it was too broad of a concept to quantify with a single number

• starts the modern intelligence-testing movement

What contributions did Lewis Terman make to intelligence research and/or testing?

• inspired by Binet to create the Stanford-Binet test

  • named this because he worked at Stanford and based his work off of Binet

• (Mental Age/ Actual Age) x 100 = IQ

  • IQ = Intelligence Quotient

What are the characteristics of how Psychologists measure intelligence?

• Most widely used test(“gold standard”)

  • Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

    • 17 and older

  • Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)

    • age 6-16

  • Weschler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI)

    • age 4-5

• Tests Verbal Domain, Perceptual Domain, Working Memory Domain, and Processing Speed Domain

Reliability & Validity

• measurements need to be consistent all the time

• the ability for the test to measure what it is supposed to measure

Fluid Intelligence

• abstract thinking

• creativity

• problem-solving

• decreases with age

Crystallized Intelligence

• knowledge

• facts

• wisdom

• increases with age

Flynn Effect →

• phenomenon over the last 100 years

  • IQ scores

  • measures of fluid intelligence

  • measures of crystal intelligence

• tests show that over these 100 years, test scores have been on a steady rise

Aptitude Test

• measure ability or potential

  • intelligence tests are intended to be aptitude tests

Achievement Test

• measures what one has learned or accomplished

  • almost all of the exams that you take in shcool are achievment tests

Speed Test

• consist of a large number of questions asked in a short amount of time

  • see how quickly a person can solve problems

Power Test

• designed to gauge the difficulty level of problems and individual can solve

Reliability →

• Test Reliability → for us to have any faith in the meaning of a test score, we must beleive that the test is both reliable and valid

  • repeateability or consistency of the test

• Split-half reliability

  • randomly dividing a test into two different sections and then correlating performance on the two halves

    • correlation coefficient

• Equivalent-Form Reliability

  • many tests are available in multipe equivalent forms

    • the correlatoin between the forms is measured

• Test-Retest Reliability

  • Correlation between a person’s score on one administration of the test with subsequent attempts of the test

Validity → a test is valid when it measures what it is supposed to measure

• “accuracy” of the test

• Content Validity

  • how well a measure reflects the entire range of material

• Criterion-Related Validity

  • concurrent validity measures the now

  • predictive validity measures future preformance

• Construct Validity

  • most meaningful

    • a measurment of the measurment