Chapter 2
Historical Considerations
• Psychometrics: measurement of psychology
• Anthropometry : measurement of human
• Before 20 century scientists believe that the
skull size and intelligence have a positive
association. Bigger head  more intelligent.
• "Determinists arguments for ranking people according to a single scale
of intelligence, no matter how numerically sophisticated, have
recorded little more than social prejudice." (Gould, 1981, pp. 27-28)
Gould’s book is controversial because some people said that he miscited certain studies.
Alfred Binet
• The purpose of IQ tests is to
identify the children who
need help and special
education, not to classify
normal people.
• He declined to define IQ as
fixed, inborn intelligence.
• He refused to accept IQ as an
absolute measure;
intelligence is too complex to
be captured by a single
number. The scale is a rough
guide only.
Henry H. Goddard • Invented the term
“moron”: a person with a
mental age in adulthood of
between 8 and 12 (IQ of
51-70) on the Binet scale.
• 1914 : testified in court
that people with belowaverage intelligence
should have limited
criminal responsibility.
Dispersion between and within
individuals
• Thurstone asserted that perceptions have
distributions between and within individual
s. i.e. Not only different people have
different perceptions. The same person may
see things differently at different time.
• The same principle applies well to other
types of measurement. i.e. By chances you
may get a "C" in the mid-term but an "A" in
the final.
G Factor
• All standardized tests of academic aptitude or
achievement measure this general factor to some
degree, but IQ test expressly designed for that purpose-measure it more accurately (Spearman, 1904)
• At the turn of the 20th century Charles Spearman
(1863-1945) used statistical methods such as
Correlation and Factor Analysis to define mental
abilities as factors.
• When two apparently different abilities are shown to be
highly correlated, Spearman took this as an evidence
for the existence of a general factor G.
Other views
• Thorndike: intelligence contains several unique
factors
• Thurstone: seven uncorrelated factors.
• Guilford: three factors.
• The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – fourth
edition (WAIS-IV): 4 dimensions
– verbal comprehension (VCI)
– perceptual reasoning (PRI)
– working memory (WMI)
– processing speed (PSI)
Multiple Intelligences
• Gardner asserted that there are eight dimensions of
intelligence and all eight intelligences are of equal
intrinsic value. It is the culture and social context that
determine the value and importance of the dimension.
• Scientists from the University of Sheffield, England,
provided evidence that numerical reasoning and
linguistic ability may be two independent entitles.
They examined several patients who suffered severe
damage to the language faculty of their brains, and
found that their mathematical ability is intact.
Linguistic
Logical-mathematical
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Artistic-spatial
Musical
Kinesthetic
Naturalist
Assignment
• Form a group of 3 to 4 people to discuss the following
issue: The current Wechsler IQ test covers four
aspects: Verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning,
working memory, and processing speed. Gardner
maintained that intelligence has eight dimensions.
However, some people argued that some dimensions
of Gardner’s model is “untestable” or too difficult to
measure, such as interpersonal, intrapersonal, and
naturalistic, and therefore we should adopt the
Wechsler’s model rather than the Gardner’s model in
standard assessments.
How do people
misuse/misinterpret tests?
• A human mind is compared to a physical
body, which is composed of different
faculties (muscles)
• In weight training the motion itself achieves
nothing but to make you like Arnold
Schwarznegger.
• Some learning materials may be irrelevant
and inapplicable, but taking difficult tests
like GRE can make you as smart as Albert
Einstein.
IQ Test and Bell Curve
• Herrnstein and Murray (1994)
found that in IQ tests Jews and
East Asians, on the average,
outperform European Americans,
and the mean score of White
Americans is higher than Blacks.
• The bell-curve (a spread of ability)
exists in spite of intervention (e.g.
education, affirmative action...etc)
IQ Test and Bell Curve
• Philosopher Clark Glymour (1998) gave a
philosophical argument against the bell
curve theory in "What went wrong?
Reflections on science by observation and
the bell curve", Philosophy of Science, 65,
1-32. The major argument is that an
observed statistical property is not qualified
to be a causal inference.
IQ Test and Bell Curve
• Reviewing the intelligence debate at its
meeting of November 1994, the Board of
Scientific Affairs of the American
Psychological Association established a
Task Force charged with preparing a report
(Neisser et al., (1996). "Intelligence: Knows
and unknowns". American Psychologist, 51,
77-101) to examine the claims made by
Herrnstein and Murray.
U.S.--East Asian ability differences
• Geary, D. C., Salthous, T. A., Chen, G. P., and Fan, L.
(1994). Numerical cognition: Are U.S.--East Asian ability
differences a recent phenomenon?
• Younger and older adults from the U.S. and China were tested.
• It indicated no consistent ability differences, except the
younger Chinese adults substantially outperformed the younger
Americans in arithmetic.
• The overall pattern suggests that the advantage of Chinese
adults over American adults in arithmetic is a recent
phenomenon.
SAT and Expenditures
• The data published in the Wall Street
Journal (June 22, 1995) shows the rank of
each state's average SAT score and average
expenditure on education. Unfortunately,
the data "show" the more a state spends, the
worse (on average) their SAT rank is. Does
this mean spending less on education will
improve SAT rank?
SAT and Expenditures
• Problems with this analysis:
– State level data may not be true within states.
– Cost of living (and therefore expenditures) varies across
the country.
– Not everyone takes the SAT. Ecological fallacy
• What happens when we look at data from the National
Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) that a) was
designed to measure achievement, and b) is taken by a
representative sample? On contrary to the data on the Wall
Street Journal, there is a positive relationship between
NAEP and expenditures.
SAT and Expenditures
• Moral of the story: We cannot afford to be
ignorant about how testing is used in our
society, even if we do not want to use such
tests in our classroom.
Flynn effect
• IQ test scores have been continuously
increasing since the earliest years of
testing.
• Why?
Grade decline
• SAT scores in reading, writing and math decline in 2011
compared to 2010, and have been gradually declining for years.
Critical reading scores are the lowest in 40 years.
• In 2006 the SAT added a writing section to the verbal and math
parts. Since then the average scores are down 6 points for
reading; 4 points for math and 8 points for writing.
• U.S. Department of Education reviewed student transcripts
from 3,000+ universities and found that student grades have
actually declined slightly over the last 20 years.
Assignment
• Form a group consisting of 3-4 people. One
or two must have a Web-enabled laptop.
• Access the APU library and the Internet
• Discussion: Is grade decline (e.g. SAT)
incompatible with the Flynn effect? How
would you explain this contradiction?
• Submit a 1-2-page report to Sakai and
present a verbal report in class