INTELLIGENCE
ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING
• Origins are with French
Psychologist Alfred
Binet
• Began assessing
intellectual abilities
• Developed test that
assessed mental age
• Predicted a child’s future
progress
IQ TEST
• Lewis Terman believed
intelligence was inherited
• William Stern derived the
Intelligence Quotient test:
IQ test
• Person’s mental age
divided by chronological
age x’s 100
• Many of these test in
early 20th used to show
“inferiority” of certain
groups and races
NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE
• People have specific
abilities
• Verbal and math
aptitudes
• Debate
• Whether General
Intelligence (g) factor
runs through
• Factor Analysis
• Identified several clusters of
mental abilities
• There are instances of people
who excel in multiple clusters
DIFFERENT INTELLIGENCES
• There is academic
intelligence (math,
science, etc.) and
there is emotional
intelligence
• Ability to perceive,
express, understand, and
regulate emotions
• Often succeed in careers,
marriages, and parenting
CREATIVITY AND INTELLIGENCE
• People with high
intelligence scores do
well on creativity tests
• Beyond a score of 120
the correlation
disappears
• Five Components of
Creativity
•
•
•
•
•
Expertise
Imaginative thinking skills
Venturesome personality
Intrinsic motivation
Creative environment
APTITUDE VS. ACHIEVEMENT TEST
• Aptitude refers to ability to
learn
• Aptitude test measures
person’s future performance
• Achievement test measures
what a person has learned
• Wechler Adult Intelligence
test Revised (WAIS)
• Most widely used intelligence
test
• Scored on verbal and non
verbal
• Provides clues to cognitive
strengths
STANDARDIZATION
• Test scores form a
normal distribution
• Bell shaped that forms
normal curve
• Creation of that curve
• Pretest subjects create
the standards
• Must represent those who will
be test in the future
• Thus the controversy because
do they really represent the
whole based on the few?
RELIABILITY VS. VALIDITY
• Reliability refers to extent
in which a test yields
consistent scores
• Validity refers to the
extent to which a test
measures or predicts
what it is supposed to
• Content validity whether a
test truly samples behavior
that is of interest
• Predictive validity is the
correlation between test
scores and criterion
• What the test aims to assess
STABILITY OF TESTING
• Stability of intelligence
test scores increase
with age
• Predicatability at 4yrs
• Stability at 7 yrs
• Normal distribution is 70
• Mental retardation
means a child must have
both low test scores and
difficulty adapting to
normal demands of living
INDEPENDENTLY
GIFTED
• Gifted children are NOT
maladjusted
• Nor should they be
segregated into
“Gifted” classes
• They do need to be
challenged and
educators are responsible
to meet the demands of
both standard, below
standard, and above
standard children
GENETICS AND INTELLIGENCE
• Studies show a
remarkable
inheritability of
intelligence
• Adopted children scores
more resemble those of
biological than adoptive
parents
• Life experiences also
determine intelligence
scores
• Neglect and enrichment
are reflected
GROUP DIFFERENCES
• African Americans on
average score 10 pts
below whites on
intelligence tests and
Asian out score North
Americans on math
tests
• What facts can cause
this?
INTELLIGENCE TESTING AND
CULTURAL BIAS
• They are biased
because of sensitivity to
cultural experiences
• The stereotype threat
does exist, but the aim
and results are not
factors that go into
intelligence tests