Module 13
Intelligence
INTRODUCTION
• Psychometrics
– Subarea of psychology
– Concerned with developing psychological tests that
assess an individual’s abilities, skills, beliefs, and
personality traits in a wide range of settings
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DEFINING INTELLIGENCE
• Two-factor theory
– Developed by Charles Spearman
– Says that intelligence has two factors
• general mental ability factor “g”; represents
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• specific factors “s”; include specific mental abilities such
as __________________________________________
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DEFINING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Multiple-intelligence theory
– Developed by Howard Gardner
– Instead of one kind of general intelligence, there are at least
seven different kinds, including
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DEFINING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Triarchic theory
– Developed by Robert Sternberg
– Says that intelligence can be divided into three different
kinds of reasoning processes
• uses ____________________thinking skills measured by
traditional intelligence tests
• uses ___________________that require
_______________and the ability to learn from experience
• uses ____________________________that help a person
adjust to, and cope with, his or her sociocultural environment
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE
• Early attempts to measure intelligence
– Head size and intelligence
– Francis Galton
• noticed that intelligent people often had intelligent
relatives and concluded that intelligence was, to a large
extent, biological or inherited
• low correlation between head size and intelligence
• using head size as a measure of intelligence was
abandoned in favor of using skull or brain size
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Early attempts to measure intelligence
– Brain size and intelligence
• Paul Broca
• claimed there was a relationship between size of brain
and intelligence
• larger brains indicating more intelligence
• later reanalysis of Broca’s data indicated that measures
of brain size proved to be unreliable and poorly correlated
with intelligence
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Early attempts to measure intelligence
– Brain size and achievement
• enormous variation in brain size and achievement
– Brain size, sex differences, and intelligence
• female brains weigh about 10% less than male brains
• little or no difference in intelligence between men and
women
• larger size of men’s brains doesn’t result in higher IQs
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Binet’s breakthrough
– Alfred Binet
• Believed intelligence was a _______________________;
best way to assess it was to measure a person’s ability to
perform cognitive tasks
• Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale
– contained items arranged in order
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– measured vocabulary, memory, common knowledge,
and other cognitive abilities
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Binet’s breakthrough
– Binet and Simon revised their intelligence scale to solve
several problems in their original scale
– Mental age
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MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Formula for IQ
– Intelligence quotient
• computed by dividing a child’s mental age (MA), as
measured in an intelligence test, by the child’s
chronological age (CA) and multiplying the result
by 100
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Wechsler Intelligence Scale
– Most widely used IQ tests
– Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III), ages 16
and older
– Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III) for
children ages 3 to 16
– Both have items organized into various subtests
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MEASURING INTELLIGENCE (CONT’D)
• Two characteristics of tests
– Validity
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– Reliability
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DISTRIBUTION & USE OF IQ SCORES
• Normal distribution of IQ scores
– Normal distribution
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DISTRIBUTION & USE OF IQ SCORES
(CONT’D)
DISTRIBUTION & USE OF IQ SCORES
(CONT’D)
• Mental retardation: IQ scores
– Mental retardation
• substantial limitation in functioning characterized by
significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, along
with related limitations in 2 of 10 areas, including
communication, self-care, home living, social skills, and
safety
– borderline mentally retarded: _________________
– mildly/moderately mentally retarded:
________________________________
– severely/profound mentally retarded:
_______________________________________________
DISTRIBUTION & USE OF IQ SCORES
(CONT’D)
• Mental retardation: IQ scores
– Causes
• Organic retardation
– results from genetic problems or brain damage
• Cultural-familial retardation
– results from a greatly impoverished
environment
DISTRIBUTION & USE OF IQ SCORES
(CONT’D)
• Vast majority: IQ scores
– about 95%, have scores that fall between 70 and 130
• Gifted: IQ scores
• moderately gifted
– usually defined by an IQ score between 130
and 150
• profoundly gifted
– usually defined by an IQ score around 180 or
above
POTENTIAL PROBLEMS OF IQ TESTING
• Binet’s warnings
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POTENTIAL PROBLEMS OF IQ TESTING
(CONT’D)
• Cultural bias
– The wording of the questions and the experiences on
which the questions are used
• Nonintellectual factors
– Refer to noncognitive factors, such as attitude,
experience, and emotional functioning, that may help
or hinder performance on tests
NATURE-NURTURE QUESTION
• Definition
– Asks how nature (hereditary or genetic factors)
interacts with nurture (environmental factors) in the
development of a person’s intellectual, emotional,
personal, and social abilities
• Twin studies
– Fraternal twins
• siblings (brothers and sisters) who develop from
separate eggs and have 50% of their genes in
common
NATURE-NURTURE QUESTION (CONT’D)
• Twin studies
– Identical twins
• develop from a single egg and thus have identical
genes (have 100% of their genes in common)
– Interaction of nature and nurture
• when researchers report that genetic factors
influence intelligence (IQ scores), it means that
genetic factors influence cognitive abilities to
varying degrees, depending on the environment
NATURE-NURTURE QUESTION (CONT’D)
• Adoption studies
– Children with limited social-educational opportunities
and low IQs were adopted by parents who could
provide increased social-educational opportunities
– Studies show that children with poor educational
opportunities and low IQ scores can show an
increase in IQ scores when adopted into families that
provide increased educational opportunities
NATURE-NURTURE QUESTION (CONT’D)
• Interaction: nature and nurture
– Heritability
• number that indicates the amount or proportion of some
ability, characteristic, or trait that can be attributed to
genetic factors (nature)
– Reaction range
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NATURE-NURTURE QUESTION (CONT’D)