Download Psychology Lecture 4

Psychology
Lecture 4 - Intelligence
Dr.Saman Anwar Faraj
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What is Intelligence?
Intelligence
capacity for goal-directed and adaptive behavior
involves certain abilities
profit from experience
solve problems
reason effectively
Intelligence - the ability to learn from one’s experiences, acquire knowledge, and
use resources effectively in adapting to new situations or solving problems.
Controversies in Intelligence
Nature/nurture – a shorthand term for the debate over whether mental
abilities are developed by the individual’s environment (nature) or inherited
(nurture)
Eugenics – a movement that argued that intelligence is genetic, so
governments should encourage reproduction of those with high intelligence
and not those with lower intelligence
Views of Intelligence
Entity view – the belief that intelligence is genetically determined and not
alterable
Incremental view – the belief that intelligence can be improved through effort
History of Intelligence
Galton (1869)
Interested in the study of individual differences and in eugenics which
was a political and scientific movement that argued for selective
reproduction of individuals and immigration laws based on
intelligence levels
Binet (1905)
Published (with Simon) the first set of intelligence scales to identify
low-achieving students who might need help
Binet (1916)
Intelligence is judgment and adapting to one’s circumstances
Stern with Terman (1920)
Devised the intelligent quotient (IQ)
IQ = mental age/chronological age x 100
Goddard (1920)
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Intelligence is an innate ability, or present at birth
Spearman (1923)
Factor analyzed a large number of measures of mental ability and
concluded that intelligence was one factor he called g (general) along
with a variety of specific factors
Thurstone (1957)
Proposed a model of intelligence with seven primary mental abilities
History of Intelligence
Thurstone’s Primary Mental Abilities
Verbal comprehension
Word fluency
Number facility
Spatial visualization
Associate memory
Perceptual speed
Reasoning
History of Intelligence
Cattell (1963)
Fluid intelligence – the ability to solve problems, figure out what to do
when one is not sure what to do, and acquire new skills
Crystallized intelligence – the use of acquired skills and knowledge
such as reading and language skills
More Recent Views of Intelligence
Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences
Sternberg’s (1985) triarchic theory of intelligence
Sternberg’s (1997) idea of successful intelligence
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences(MI)
Logical-mathematical
Linguistic
Spatial
Musical
Bodily-kinesthetic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Naturalistic
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Sternberg’s Theory of Intelligence
Triarchic theory holds that intelligence has three main facets each of which is
the top of a hierarchy
Analytical: ability to respond effectively to problems
Metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge
acquisition components
Creative: ability to generate new ideas
Novelty or insight and automaticity (ability to perform a task
without having to think much about it
Practical: ability to handle everyday problems and issues
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Sternberg’s “Successful” Intelligence
The ability to succeed in life, given one’s own goals, within one’s
environmental contexts.
Savant Syndrome
condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an
amazing specific skill
computation
Drawing
Social Intelligence
the know-how involved in comprehending social situations and
managing oneself successfully
Emotional Intelligence
ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions
critical part of social intelligence
Assessing Intelligence
Aptitude Test
a test designed to predict a person’s future performance
aptitude is the capacity to learn
Achievement Test
a test designed to assess what a person has learned
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Aptitude Tests: Although such tests may contain questions about what you already know,
their ultimate goal is to assess your potential to learn (Aiken, 1994). The SAT
(originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test) and the American College
Testing Assessment (ACT) are the aptitude tests most commonly used by
many colleges and universities in the United States to help guide decisions
about which applicants to admit.
Achievement Tests: Schools and employers also commonly administer achievement tests, which
measure what a person has accomplished or learned in a particular area. For
example, schoolchildren are tested on what they have learned about language,
mathematics, and reading (Rogers, 1995).
The achievement tests used by companies in search of new employees
typically focus on more specific abilities such as computer or clerical skills.
Development of IQ Tests
Standardization - the process of giving the test to a large group of people that
represents the kind of people for whom the test is designed.
Validity - the degree to which a test actually measures what it’s supposed to
measure.
Reliability - the tendency of a test to produce the same scores again and again
each time it is given to the same people.
Reliable But Invalid
Test can be RELIABLE but still be INVALID!
Test MUST be RELIABLE to be VALID!
Intelligence Quotient
IQ
Lewis Terman at Stanford University developed an English version known
as the Stanford-Binet (Terman, 1916).
Mental age was divided by chronological age, and the result or “quotient”
was multiplied by 100 and called the intelligence quotient, or IQ. Thus, a child
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whose mental age and chronological age were equal would have an IQ of 100,
which is considered “average” intelligence.
From this method of scoring came the term IQ test.
A Brief History of Intelligence Tests: New tests developed by David Wechsler (1939, 1949) were designed to correct
some of the weaknesses of their predecessors. Wechsler’s tests were made up
of several subtests, but they significantly improved on those earlier tests in
three key ways. First, both the verbal and nonverbal subsets were completed
by all test takers. Second, answers depended less on familiarity with a
particular culture. And Third, each subset in the Wechsler tests was scored
separately, producing a profile that described an individual’s performance in
terms of several mental abilities.
Assessing Intelligence
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
most widely used intelligence test
subtests
verbal
performance (nonverbal)
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)
similar to WAIS, but for school children
Assessing Intelligence- Sample Items from the WAIS
Development of IQ Tests
Deviation IQ scores - a type of intelligence measure that assumes that IQ is
normally distributed around a mean of 100 with a standard deviation of about
15.
Norms
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Extremes of Intelligence
Average IQ score is 100
Standard Deviation is 15
68% of people have scores that fall within one standard deviation of the
average
Extreme scores are those that fall outside of 2 standard deviations from the
mean (in positive and negative directions).
IQ is a score on a test and it is not something you have.
Extremes of Intelligence: Normal Distribution of Scores
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Intelligence Tests Today: IQ scores are no longer calculated by dividing mental age by chronological
age. If you take one of these tests today, the points you earn for each correct
answer are summed. Then the summed score is compared with the scores
earned by other people. The average score obtained by people at each age
level is assigned the IQ value of 100. Other scores are assigned IQ values that
reflect how far each score deviates from that average.
Most people’s scores fall in the middle of the range of possible scores, creating
a bell-shaped curve known as the normal distribution.
Your intelligence quotient, or IQ score, reflects your relative standing within
a population of your age.
How Valid Are IQ Tests? : It is impossible to determine whether IQ tests are valid measures of
intelligence. In short, we can assess their validity only for specific purpose.
IQ tests appear to be most valid for assessing aspects of intelligence that are
related to schoolwork, such as abstract reasoning and verbal comprehension.
So, by the standard measures for judging psychological tests, IQ tests have
good reliability and reasonably good predictive validity for certain criteria,
such as success in school.
Because IQ tests do not measure the full array of mental abilities, a particular
test score tells only part of the story, and even that part may be distorted.
How Fair Are IQ Tests? :
Early tests of intelligence were biased against people who were unfamiliar
with English or with the vocabulary and experience associated mainly with
middle-class culture at the time.
Test designers today try to avoid obviously biased questions (American
Psychological Association, 1985; Educational Testing Service, 1987).
Furthermore, because IQ tests now include more than one scale, areas that are
most influenced by culture, such as vocabulary, can be assessed separately
from dimensions that are less vulnerable to cultural bias.
Ethnic Differences: In short, there appear to be important nongenetic factors working to decrease
the mean score of African-American and Hispanic-American children. Indeed,
the recently narrowing gap between African-American and EuropeanAmerican children on tests of intelligence and mathematical aptitude may be
related to changing environmental conditions for many African-American
children.
Whatever heredity might contribute to children’s performance, it may be
possible for them to improve greatly, given the right conditions
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Conditions That Can Raise IQ Scores: In the United States, the best-known attempt to enrich children’s
environments is Project Head Start, a set of programs established by the
federal government in the 1960s to help preschoolers from lower-income
backgrounds. In some of these programs, teachers visit the home and work
with the child and parents on cognitive skills.
In others, the children attend classes in nursery schools. Some programs
emphasize health and nutrition and, in recent years, family mental health and
social skills as well (Murray, 1995).
Talent
Talent is the capacity to produce exceptional performance in a domain
There are three sources of desire to improve in a domain
Enjoyment of activity
Internalization of the value of improving one’s skill for its own
sake
External support
Creativity
Creativity- the process of solving problems by combining ideas or behavior in
new ways.
Convergent thinking - type of thinking in which a problem is seen as
having only one answer, and all lines of thinking will eventually lead to
that single answer, using previous knowledge and logic.
Divergent thinking – type of thinking in which a person starts from one
point and comes up with many different ideas or possibilities based on
that point (kind of creativity).
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) - the creation of a machine that can think like a
human.
True flexibility of human thought processes has yet to be developed in a
machine.
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