MYERS FOR AP, UNIT 11
Testing and Individual Differences
DO NOW:
Make two lists
• List 1 = Behaviors characteristic of intelligent people
• List 2 = Behaviors characteristic of unintelligent people
• In research studies, these behaviors typically fall into three
categories:
• Practical problem-solving skills
• Verbal skills
• Social competence
• Categorize your lists. Do you have any outliers?
• Share and discuss
ONE VS. MANY???
• Intelligence is a social construct that may mean different things in
different cultures
• Spearman – We have a common skill set – the g factor that underlies
all of our intelligent behavior (general, not specific, like a city rating
without details)
• Thurstone – 56 tests that identified 7 clusters, but there was a persistent
tendency for those who excelled in one cluster generally scored well
in others (an underlying g factor)
• Kanaazawa – g is important for solving novel problems, but doesn’t
correlate with skills for dealing with the common or familiar
• Savant video clip: Rain Man “islands of genius” (Clips: 41:30; 61:50; 83)
• Gardner – Multiple Intelligence theory
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
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•
•
•
Criticisms:
Based on case studies
No valid and reliable test
More philosophy than science
But… Success is not a one-ingredient
recipe.
• How many of you know someone
not considered highly intelligent
who is highly successful?
• The recipe for success combines
talent with grit!
ANOTHER IDEA
• Sternberg: Triarchic theory:
• Analytical intelligence – single right answers, predicts
grades well
• Creative intelligence—reacting adaptively to novel
problems, generating novel ideas (novel = new and
unexpected)
• Practical intelligence—every day tasks with multiple
solutions
WOW! THE MARSHMALLOW TEST
(AGAIN)
HTTP://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=QX_OY9614HQ
Those who resisted employed creative and practical skills, such as:
• Covering their eyes
• Singing to themselves
• Playing games with their hands and feet
• Sleeping
Findings 12 years later for those who resisted at age 4:
• More socially competent, personally effective and self-assertive
• Less likely to freeze under stress and pursued difficult challenges
• More self-reliant, confident, trustworthy and dependable
As high school grads
• Better students
• Scored on average 200 points higher on SAT tests
DO NOW: Review
the chart
• What overall
conclusions can
you draw from
these
intelligence
theories?
• What is your
personal
opinion about
intelligence,
based on these
theories?
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
“The best mechanic in a factory may fail as a foreman for
lack of social intelligence.” – Edward Thorndike.
• Rationally smart people sometimes have difficulty
processing and managing social information
• Mayer, Salovey & Caruso – Emotional intelligence test that
measures ability to:
• Perceive emotions
• Understand emotions
• Manage emotions
• Use emotions
BENEFITS OF HIGH EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENCE:
• Higher quality interactions with friends
• Less experience of overwhelming depression, anxiety and
anger
• Better ability to read others’ emotions
• Modestly better job performance
• Better at delaying gratification
• More successful in marriage, career and parenting
• But is emotional intelligence really “intelligence?”
QUICK REVIEW & BRAIN SIZE
• What is the range used to represent a negative correlation to a
positive correlation?
• What are the definitions of positive and negative correlations?
• What does a correlation of .33 tell you?
• MRI scans show a .33 correlation between brain size and intelligence
scores
• Einstein’s brain wasn’t larger than average, but his parietal lobe lower
region was
• We already know stimulating experiences create more dendrites and
neural connections
• G may be concentrated in gray matter
BRAIN FUNCTION
• The frontal lobe seems to be the “global workspace for
organizing and coordinating information.” –John Duncan
(2000)
• Verbal intelligence are related to retrieval speed
• Perceptual Speed
• Neurological speed
INTELLIGENCE TESTING: BINET
• Worked with Theodor Simon
• They came up with the concept of
mental age
• Purpose: Identification of students who
needed special attention
• Purpose: To determine mental age
• No assumptions about why a child was
slow, average or precocious
• Not a measure of intelligence
• Concerned about misuse – labeling
and limiting
Believed that intelligence = good
judgment: “A person may be a
moron or an imbecile if he is
lacking in judgment, but with good
judgment he can never be either”
ADAPTATIONS
• Lewis Terman: Adapted test
for America
• Stanford-Binet
• William Stern came up with
the formula
• Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
• Yikes– eugenics!
• Had an influence on
immigration laws
• Concerns about cultural
biases
• Terman’s Termites – a group
of gifted children to counter
the idea of maladjustment
in adulthood
• New versions of SAT that are
better at predicting college
success (now GPA and class
rank are better) -- Sternberg
MODERN TESTS
• Know the difference between achievement tests and aptitude tests
(reflective vs. predictive)
• SAT = thinly disguised IQ test with correlation of .82
• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and WISC
• Developed, in part, to remove English-language bias
• 11 subtests
• Helps identify specific areas of need for teachers/therapists
• To be valuable, tests must be:
• Standardized
• Reliable
• Valid
STANDARDIZATION
• Representative test
population provides
the basis by taking the
test before widely
administered.
• Also includes the WAY
the test is given
• Norming – graphing
results
• Normal Curve (applies
to AP Exam, too.)
• Periodic
restandardization
• Intelligence has
been rising fairly
steadily since the
early 1900s
• Why? Maybe…
• Greater test
sophistication?
• Nutrition?
• More education?
• More stimulating
environments?
• Less disease?
• More parental
involvement?
THE FLYNN EFFECT
RELIABILITY & VALIDITY
• Reliable: dependably consistent scores
• Test-retest
• Split-half
• Stanford-Binet, WAIS, WISC reliability of .9
• Valid: It predicts or tests what it’s supposed to
• Content validity: it measures a behavior or criterion
• Predictive validity: correlation between test scores and
predicted behavior
• Important: Intelligence tests do a better job with predictive
validity at younger ages. The correlation decreases over
time. What is one reason why?
STABILITY OR CHANGE: THE DEARY
STUDY: LONGITUDINAL
WEIRD IQ FACTS
• People with lower IQs have
less efficient nervous systems
• School attendance
correlates with IQ
• IQ is not influenced by birth
order
• IQ is related to breast
feeding
• IQ varies by birth date
• IQ is correlated with head
size
• IQ scores correlate with realworld earnings
• Intelligence depends on
context
• IQ is going up
• IQ may be influenced by
nutrition
• Must have low
score and difficulty
adapting
• Pendulum swing:
home, institution,
home
• In schools, leastrestrictive
environment
• Marijuana study
again
• Chart from DSM-IV
INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY
INTELLECTUAL GIFTEDNESS
• Myth: Kids with high IQs are socially maladjusted
• Controversy over tracking students
• DQ: Is it better to separate students into ability groups or
to have mainstreamed classes? Why?
• DQ: How can intelligence tests hold students back or
help them succeed?
NATURE VS. NURTURE (AGAIN)
• Intelligence is
genetically
correlated
• It is also polygenetic
(what does that
mean?)
• Adopted children’s
intelligence scores
become more like
their biological
parents over time.
(see chart on p.
546)
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES
Carefully review the description of heritability on p. 546.
Heritability is responsible for about 50 percent of intelligence factors
Remember heritability only applies to groups, not to individuals
Impoverished environments depress normal intellectual development
Enriched environments encourage it, but don’t turn babies into
geniuses
• Schooling and intellect interact and are correlated with later higher
income
• Intelligence is not completely fixed. Discipline, effort and practice
exercise your mental “muscles.”
• Dweck: it pays to have a “growth mindset” as opposed to a “fixed
mindset”
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•
•
•
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GENDER DIFFERENCES:
SCORES ARE VERY SIMILAR, BUT DIFFERENCES DO EXIST
Females
• Better spellers
• Better in verbal fluency
and remembering words
• Better in nonverbal
memory
• More sensitive to touch,
taste and odor
• Better emotion detectors
• Better at math
computation
Males
• Better at math problem
solving
• Better in spatial ability tests
• Greater variation in mental
ability scores
• Higher numbers at both
extremes
ETHNIC DIFFERENCES
Average score differences occur between:
• Blacks, Whites and Hispanics
• New Zealanders of European descent and native Maoris
• Hearing and Deaf people
• Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs
• CRITICAL: Average scores say nothing about individual
scores
BIAS
• Two main types
• When a test detects not only innate differences in
intelligence, but also performance differences caused by
cultural experiences
• When a test predicts behavior for one group, but not
others
Defenders say the tests are not biased because they show
that differences are as great on nonverbal items as on
verbal, and because they predict behavior in the same
way for all tested
• Stereotype threat – a self-confirming concern that one will
be evaluated based on a negative stereotype
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WISDOM
• Scenario 1, 2 & 3 Groups of 3 (p. 12 Bolt)
• Rest of Class scores
• Five aspects of wisdom
• Handouts for personal assessment from Bolt as time permits