Intelligence:
 Intelligence is part of a much larger field of psychology that
studies individual differences
 As human beings we have many similarities but we also have
many differences in terms of behaviour – for example:
Abilities
Beliefs
Attitudes
Motivations
Emotional characteristics
Personality traits
Psychophysiologically i.e. chronobiological type: owl, lark, cat
Intelligence
 Naturally we are intrigued by our differences more so than by our
similarities
 Individual differences are the result of biological and
environmental factors and their complex interaction
Defining Intelligence:
 Abilities, skills and achievement
 Difficult to find an all encompassing definition of intelligence:
 Different cognitive attributes may be valued differently across
cultures
 Hunter gather societies for example may value abilities related to
cooperative behaviour and the development of successful hunting
skills
 Maritime societies (e.g. South Pacific) may place greater value
spatial abilities and intelligence underlying the development of
navigational skills
 An Early definition of intelligence: the capacity to understand
the world and the resourcefulness to cope with its challenges
Note: central to this definition is the concept of adaptability and
even creativity (divergent thinking)
 What constitutes resourcefulness and rationality can differ from
culture to culture e.g., North Americans’ emphasis on verbal
abilities and problem solving don't necessarily constitute good
coping strategies in other cultures
 Many early intelligence tests focused heavily on language and
verbal performance
History of Intelligence Tests:
 Intelligence tests have existed for over 100 years.
 First tests developed by Galton (1884), who noticed some families
were smarter and some were stronger than others. He believed
intelligence was inherited and fundamentally related to
sensory/perceptual proficiency (note relation to info processing
approach)
Modern intelligence tests
 Binet (1881) is seen as the originator of modern intelligence tests
 French academic living in Paris interested in individual
differences
 fascinated by differences in the behaviour of his 2 daughters
 1905 commissioned by French Government to develop
intelligence tests
 Government wanted to be able to stream children in public
school system
 Government decided slow learners (retarded) would no
longer be educated at home
 Binet's test had 30 questions focused on specific abilities:
reasoning, problem solving, memory, imagination
 His test did not include perceptual motor skill abilities
 In 1916 Lewis Terman, Stanford University modified Binet's test
for North America by testing thousands of children and
establishing societal norms for knowledge in various age
categories
 German psychologist, William Stern came up with the idea of
expressing intelligence as a quotient
IQ=MA/CA X 100
 Problems with US government using intelligence tests in the
1930’s to screen immigrants coming to North America
 Test validity
 Since the 1930's Weschler, Cattlell, Thurston and others viewed
intelligence as mode up of several components or dimensions
 Factor analysis has been used as a statistical method to identify
the various dimensions or types of intelligence
 Gardner identifies 8 types of intelligence: linguistic, biological,
logical - mathematical, spatial, musical, body kinetic,
intrapersonal (self), interpersonal (others), naturalist, (possibly
existential)
 Some research has suggested that there may be as many as 30
dimensions underlying intelligence
 Many psychologist also believe that in addition to there being
several dimensions to intelligence, there's also a single
intelligence factor - some have called this a G factor
 A G factor is advocated because many who score high on several
dimensions of intelligence usually score high on virtually all
dimensions – perhaps there really are ‘intelligent people’
 The extreme opposite occurs with Savant Syndrome
 Sternberg agrees with multiple intelligences but organizes them
around 3 main themes
 Analytic intelligence (academic problem solving)
 Creative intelligence (dealing with novel situations and
generating novel ideas and solutions
 Practical intelligence – street smarts
 Many argue that the components of Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
are not as independent as advocated
Information processing approach:
 Looks at specific fundamental processes e.g. encoding,
comparison, retrieval, motor response
 Attempts to determine if these processes correlate with
intelligence
 The fundamental importance of processing speed (r = +0.4 to
+0.5) with intelligence test scores
 Recent studies using PET scans indicate an efficiency model of
intelligence
Emotional Intelligence
 Generally, traditional intelligence tests are good predictors of
academic performance but not of later success in life
 Emotional intelligence scores, however, do predict life
success - Cantor & Kihlstrom (1987)
 Emotional intelligence is also called Social Intelligence
 Predicts well to success in life – friendships, family, work
satisfaction and performance
 Four dimensions - the ability to:
 perceive emotions (to recognize them in faces, music and
stories)
 to understand emotions (to predict them and how the
change and bled)
 to manage emotions (to know how to express them in
varied situations)
 to use emotions to enable adaptive and creative thinking
Genetics and Environment
 Genetics sets a foundation for the development of intelligence
 Estimates are that the genetic contribution to intelligence is
between 50 to 75% (identical twin studies)
 The real complexity, however, is that early life experiences are
critical for setting up the attributes that allow for the genetic
contributions to intelligence to unfold
 Hence, experience is a critical factor inherent to intelligence
 Research on culture and intelligence yields reliable differences but
the source of these differences is likely related to different
environmental experiences
 Research on sex differences in intelligence also yields reliable
differences but the variation within sexes is larger than between
sexes
 In many cases differences observed between sexes seem to have
the potential to disappear with changing environments – for
example, spatial abilities