INTELLIGENCE:
MEASURING MENTAL
PERFORMANCE
Factor Affecting Intelligence
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Heredity
Culture
Socioeconomic Status
Characteristics of Home Environment
Schooling
Testing Instrument and Reaction to it
What is Intelligence?
• According to Piaget, intelligence is adaptive
thinking or action.
• Quantitative vs. Qualitative
• Unidimensional vs. Multidimensional
Psychometric Approach
• A theoretical perspective that portrays
intelligence as a train (or set of traits) on
which individuals differ; psychometric
theorists are responsible for the
development of standardized intelligence
tests.
Alfred Binet
• Binet and Theodore Simon are often considered pioneers of
intelligence testing
• The French government initially commissioned Binet to develop
testing procedures to identify students who were slow learners.
Once identified, these students would be placed in remedial learning
settings.
• These theorists identified a large battery of traits deemed essential
for learning and intelligence: Attention, perception, memory,
numerical reasoning, verbal comprehension, etc. Items that
successfully discriminated normal children from those
described by teachers as dull or slow were kept in the final test.
• Binet also testing to distinguish cognitive capabilities between ages
3 and 13. Method led to development of mental age.
Critics of the Unidimensional Approach
• Many theorists believe that it is impossible to reduce
intelligence to one evaluative numerical score.
Intellectual performance is based on several traits:
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Defining words or concepts
Extracting meanings from written passages
Reducing geometric designs with blocks
Solving arithmetic puzzles
• These particular subsets of cognitive abilities cannot be
reduced to one particular definition of intelligence.
• Factor Analysis Approach
Charles Spearman
• Noted that when children were subjected to several
different cognitive test, there were moderate correlations
in their performance. Spearman speculated that there
must be a general mental factor that explained the
consistent performance (g).
• Spearman also noted that there are certain
inconsistencies regarding performance in certain areas.
He speculated that there were specialized traits that
denoted this occurrence (s).
Louis Thurstone
• Expanded Spearman’s theory.
• Analyzed 50 mental tests administered to eight-graders and college
students. As a result, he came up with seven factors called Primary
mental abilities which made up Spearman’s g:
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Spatial ability
Perceptual speed (quick processing of visual information)
Numerical reasoning
Verbal meaning
Word fluency (speed at recognizing words)
Memory
Inductive reasoning (forming a rule that describes a set of
observations)
• These theorists believed that there must be a relatively small
number of factors that made up intelligence.
J. P. Guilford
• Disagreed with Spearman and Thurstone, Guilford purported that
intelligence may be a function of 180 basic mental abilities.
– Guilford initially classified cognitive tasks along the dimensions of
Context—What must the person think about
– Operations—What kind of thinking is the person asked to perform
– Products—What kind of answer is required
• Guilford argued that there are 5 kinds of intellectual contents, 6
kinds of mental operations, and 6 kinds of intellectual products.
Based on this structure-of-intelligence model, there were 180
primary mental abilities.
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Today, more than 100 of the 180 mental abilities in Guilford’s model
have been devised
Raymond Cattell and John Horn
• Proposed Spearmans g and Thurstone’s primary mental abilities can
be reduced to two major dimensions of intellect: Fluid and
Crystallized
• Fluid intelligence. The ability to perceive relationships and solve
relational problems of the type that are not taught and are relatively
free of cultural influences.
• Crystallized intelligence. The ability to understand relations or
solve problems that depend on knowledge acquired from schooling
and other cultural influences
Hierarchial Models of Intelligence
• Model of the structure of intelligence in
which a broad, general ability factor is at
the top of the hierarchy, with a number of
specialized ability factors nested
underneath.
Information Processing Viewpoint
• Argue that the psychometric focuses only on what the
individual knows (intellectual content) rather that the
processes by which this knowledge is acquired, retained,
and used to solve problems.
• In addition, traditional intelligence researchers do not
measure other attributes we commonly think of as
intelligence (common sense, social and interpersonal
skills, and talents that underlie creative accomplishments
in music, drama, and athletics).
Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
• Identifies 3 components of Intellectual behavior:
• Contextual Component. Intellectual people are those who can
successfully adapt to their environment or can shape that
environment to suit them better.
• Experimental Component. Continued exposure to certain
challenges increases our awareness and ability to execute in a
cognitive manner. Therefore, intelligence is a function of adaptation
on truly novel tasks.
• Componential Component. Intellectual people apply analytical skills
to size up a particular problem, formulate strategies to solve them,
and then monitor our cognitive activities until the goal is
accomplished. Like Piaget, the focus is less on right or wrong
answers but the process of reasoning.
Howard Gardner
• Argues that there are at least 9 forms of
intelligence that are distinct and linked to specific
areas of the brain.
• Notes that individuals can be truly exceptional in
one area and deficient in another.
– Savant Syndrome—mentally retarded people with an
extraordinary talent.
– Ex. Leslie Lemke who is blind, mentally retarded, and
had cerebral palsy. Could not talk until adulthood, yet
he can hear a musical piece once and recite it
flawlessly on the piano.
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test
• Lewis Terman of Stanford University revised the Binet Intelligence test
for use in US.
• Intelligence then became based on Verbal reasoning, quantitative
reasoning, spatial reasoning, and short-term memory
• Lewis used a method developed by Stern (1912) known as the IQ
method (Mental age/Chronological age X 100). A score of 100 denotes
an average IQ.
• WECHSLER SCALES
– David Wechsler developed intelligence test because he believed that
Binet’s test were overloaded with verbal reasoning. He believed that Binets
tests were biased against children who have language handicaps (English
as a second language, reading and hearing difficulties).
Newer Approaches to Intelligence Testing
• Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children was designed to evaluate
how well children actually learn new material when an examiner
provides them with competent instruction. Learning through novel
situations. Kaufman’s method is known as Dynamic Assessment
Method.
– Argument for this method. The traditional psychometric approach may be
biased against children from culturally diverse or economically
disadvantaged backgrounds who lack opportunities to learn what the tests
measure.
Stability of IQ tests
• When looking at infants, we find that DQs do not predict later IQ
development.
• In fact, IQ done not stabilize until around the age of 4 years
when looking at large group samples of children. However,
when looking at individual differences, IQ does vary with age
and effort.
• Students who have high IQ generally come from families who
promote learning, middle-class families, authoritative parenting
• Among poverty-stricken families, there seems to be a decline in
intelligence.
– Impoverished environments dampen intellectual growth and these
inhibiting effects accumulate over time. The longer children remain
in impoverished environments, the worse they perform on IQ tests.
This is called Cumulative-deficit hypothesis.