Intelligence:
What is intelligence?
Somewhat dependent on the culture
- learn from experience, solve problems and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
- are there different areas of intelligence - smart in one and weak in another OR could
you rate intelligence on one scale?
Charles Spearman 1863-1945 - one general intelligence g. He did agree that people have
special abilities but that a common skill set, the g factor, underlies all of our intelligent
behavior. Use factor analysis - a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related
items.
Controversial
Louis L. Thurstone - 1887-1955 opponent of Spearman
Gave 56 test to people and mathematically identified 7 clusters of primary mental
abilities
Word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability,
inductive reasoning and memory
Like general athletic ability - similar underlying skills even though different sports
G is an average of the cluster of scores
(assistant to Thomas Edison - electrical engineering)
Howard Gardner - Multiple Intelligences
Brain damage - some are spared, others lost
Cannot be reflected in one measure - eight distinct, independent intelligences
Everyone has a different pattern of strengths and weaknesses
Linguistic intelligence (school smarts)
Logical-mathematical intelligence (school smarts)
Musical intelligence
Spatial intelligence
Bodily kinesthetic intelligence
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Naturalist intelligence
Some more crucial in certain cultures than others
Robert Sternberg
Gardner is talking about special talents rather than intelligences - some you need to
function others not.
Triarchic theory of intelligence - both universal aspects of intelligent behavior and
importance of adapting to particular social and cultural environment
Successful intelligence -
Analytic - can you pick a solution and apply it (more school-smarts)
creative, practical - ability to deal with novel situations by drawing on existing skills and
knowledge
Practical intelligence - ability to adapt to the environment “street smarts”
Trying to develop tests to tap into these concepts College Board
Ex. Creativity - caption for an untitled cartoon
Practical - how to move a large bed upstairs
When and why were intelligence tests created?
In the 1880’s Francis Galton - precocious child, reciting Shakespeare when 6, how genius
runs in families, studied family trees - wanted to find out, discovered that success ran in
families
(cousin of Darwin) - survival of the fittest - nature
Favored eugenics - control reproduction to control and improve the hereditary
characteristics in a population
How do you measure? Need an objective measure - he assumed that the mind was make
of sensations - very bright, heightened sensory acuity.’
Coined “nature v. nuture”, “correlation”
1904 Alfred Binet was commissioned by the commission on education in France to
devise a test to identify mentally subnormal children, wanted a subjective measure
Admirable goals - best meet their needs, objective measure
Alfred Binet, Theodore Simon assumed that children follow the same course of
intellectual development but some develop more quickly, some more slowly. They
published a creative test of general mental ability
Expressed a child’s score as mental level or mental age Mental age - displayed mental ability typical of a chld with that chronological (actual)
age
Lewis Terman and collegues at Stanford University expanded and revised the test
1916 Standard-Binet Intelligence Scale with new scoring scheme
IQ - intelligence quotient child’s mental age divided by CA x 100
Able to compare children of different ages
12-9 3 year lag
9-6 3 year lag 9/6 x 100
Most widely used intelligence test of the time. Used for “vocational fitness”
Terman’s help - newly arrived immigrants and WW I army recruits
Achievement tests - reflect what you have learned
Aptitude - predict yhour ability to learn a new skill
Sometimes the two are intertwined - achieved vocabulary influences performance on
aptitude test
Practically speaking - achievement tests assess current performance
Aptitude tests predict performance
David Wechsler created what it now the most widely used WAIS - Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale, children WISC - Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and for preschool children WPPSI
11 subtests divided into verbal and performance areas SB - overall score
WAIS - verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, processing
speed
See the profile for the person - high scores, low scores - be a detective
Three criteria for a psychological tests 1. Standardization - number of questions answered correctly doesn’t mean anything if
you don’t have a basis of comparison - to compare comparing scores to a pretested group to ensure meaningful comparisons
Normal curve - bell curve - people’s scores tend to form this roughly symmetrical shape
Midpoint - average score
SB, WAIS - periodically restandardized - to a current sample not the original sample
2. Reliability - dependably consistent scores
Test-retest from test to test
Split half - split the test in half - even and odd are consistent
High .9
3. Validity - does the test measure what it is supposed to measure?
Inaccurate ruler - low validity, high reliability
Content validity - test taps pertinent behavior or criterion - driver’s test tests driver’s
skills
Predictive validity - the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed
predict. Also called criterion related validity - IQ test