Chapter 10-Intelligence
December-21-11
11:18 PM
Intelligence-theability to acquire knowledge, to think and reason
effectively,and to deal adaptively to the environment
-what constitutes intelligence may be culture specific
Sir Francis Galton: Quantifying Mental Ability
• Research found that people had "inherited mental constitutionsthat
made them more fit for thinking than their less successful
counterparts
○ Dismissed the fact that more successful people came from
privileged environments
• Research on biological basis for eminence
○ People who were more socially and occupationally successful
would also perform better on a variety of laboratorytasks
thought to measure of the "efficiency of the nervous system"
Measures of reaction time, speed and hand strength , and
sensory acuity
Believed that size of people's skulls relates to brain
volumeand therefore reflects intelligence
• Mental skills not in favour because it is not relevant to mental ability
(academic and occupational success)
• Mental ability is inherited
Alfred Binet's Mental Tests
• Inspired with certain children being unable to benefit from public
school teachings and wanted to know why and how to help
• Made 2 assumptions:
○ Mental abilities develop with age
○ Rate at which people gain mental competenceis a characteristic
of the person and is fairly constant over time
• Used answers from experienced teachers to make a standardized
interview to give to children about certain problems that are
appropriate for certain ages to solve
○ Result of testing was a score called the mental age
8 year old child could solve problems that a 10 year old
can do-mentalage:10
• German PsychologistWilliam Stern mental age expanded to Stern's
intelligencequotient : IQ=(mental age/chronologicalage)x100
○ Therefore if a kid who was performing at exactly his or her age
would have an IQ of 100
• Today's test no long consists of mental age
○ Works well with children
• Today, intelligence tests provide an IQ score that is based on one's
performancerelative to the score of other people the same age
• Developedthe first intelligencetest to assess the mentalskills of
French school children
Binet's Legacy: An Intelligence Testing Industry Emerges
• Stanford-Binet test introduce in 1916
○ Used to measure intelligence of the men in WW1
Nature of Intelligence Nature of Intelligence
• 2 major approaches
○ Psychometricapproach
Attempts to map the structure of intellect and to discover
the kinds of mental competenciesthat under lie test
performance
Statistical study of psychologicaltests
Researchers administer diverse measure of mental
abilities and then correlate them with one another
If tests cluster with one another mathematicallythen
performanceon these tests underlies mental skills
Factor analysis-statisticaltechnique that reduces a large
number of measures to a smaller number of clusters or
factors, with each cluster containing variables that
correlate highly with one another but less highly with
variables in other clusters
The g factor: intelligence as a general mental capacity
□ Spearman concluded that intellectual performance
is determined partly by a g factor (general
intelligence) and partly by whateverspecial abilities
might be required to perform that particular task
G factor constitutesthe core of intelligence
◊ Therefore spearman argues that your
performancein mathematicswould
depend mainly on your general
intelligence, but also your specific ability
to learn math
□ Frank Schmidt and John Hunter concluded that
measures of the g factor predict job success even
better than do measures of specific abilities tailored
to individual jobs
□ David Lubinski concluded that 'g' is the most
important to date
Intelligence as Specific mental ablities
□ Thurstone concluded that human mental
performancedepends not on a general factor, but
rather on 7 distinct abilities which are called
primary mental abilities
S-space Reasoning about visual
scenes
V-verbal Understanding verbal
comprehension statements
W-word fluency Producing verbal
statements
N-number facility Dealing with numbers
P-perceptual Recognizing visual
speed patterns
M-rote memory memorizing
R -reasoning Dealing with novel
problems
Therefore,focus on two clusters and attach
special significance to high correlations within
each cluster
Crystalized and fluid Intelligence:
□ Two distinct but related subtypes of g (correlation □ Two distinct but related subtypes of g (correlation
of 0.50)
Crystalized intelligence-ability to apply
previously acquired knowledge to current
problems
◊ Improvesduring adulthood and remains
well into late adulthood
Fluid intelligence-ability to deal with novel
problem-solvingsituations for which personal
experience does not provide a solution
◊ Begins to decline as people enter into
late adulthood
Carroll`s Three-Stratum Model: A Modern Synthesis
□ Three-Stratum of cognitive abilities
General (stratum III)-thought to underlie most
mental ability : g factor
Broad (stratum II)-8 broad intellectual factors
arranged from left to right in terms of the
extent to which they are influenced by g
Narrow (stratum I)-70 highly specific cognitive
abilities that feed into the broad stratum
○ Cognitive process approach
Study of specific thought processes that underlie those
mental competencies CognitiveProcess Theories
Triarchictheory of intelligence-addressesboth the
psychological processesinvolved in intelligent behavior
and the diverse forms that intelligence can take. There are
3 specific components
□ Metacomponents
Higher order processes used to plan and
regulate task performance
◊ Finding problems,formulating
hypothesis and strategies
Fundamental sources of individual difference
in fluid intelligence
◊ More intelligent people spend more
time developing strategies
□ Performancecomponents
Actual mental processesused to perform the
task
◊ Perceptual processing, retrieving
appropriate memoriesand schemas
from long term memory
□ Knowledge acquisition components
Allows us to learn from experience,store
information in memoryand combine new
insights from previously acquired info
◊ From crystalized intelligence
3 different classes of adaptive problem solving and that
people differ in the intellectual strengths in these areas:
□ Analytical intelligence-academicoriented problem
solving skills measured by traditional tests
□ Practical intelligence-skills needed to cope with
everydaydemands
Read people, practical applications
□ Creative intelligence-mentalskills needed to deal
with novel problems with novel problems
Triarchic theories includes these 3 types of intelligence
Broader conceptionsof Intelligence: Beyond Mental Competencies
• Gardener`s Multiple Intelligences
○ Howard Gardeners defines 8 distinct varieties of adaptive
abilities
Linguistic abilities -use language well
Logical mathematicintelligence-reason mathematically
and logically
Visuospatial intelligence-solve spatial problems like
architecture
Musical intelligence-perceive pitch and rhythm and
produce music
Bodily kinesthetic intelligence-performmovementslike
athletes dancers
Interpersonal intelligence-understand and relate to others
Intrapersonal intelligence-understanding oneself
Naturalistic intelligence-understand phenomena such as
zoologists
○ There is a 9th possible intelligence called existential intelligence
which is to question about existence and life and death
○ First 3 intelligence is measured by existing intelligence tests
• EmotionalIntelligence
○ Ability to read others` emotionsaccurately, to respond to them
appropriately, to motivateoneself, to be aware of one`s own
emotionsand to regulate own emotionalresponses
○ 4 components:
Branch 1-perceiving emotions-accuracyto judge
emotionalexpressions in photographs
Branch 2-using emotionsto facilitate thought-asking ppl
to identify emotionthat would best enhance certain
thinking
Branch 3-understanding emotions-changeof intensity
type under certain conditions, understanding blended
emotions
Branch 4-managing emotions-askinghow they can change
emotions
○ Emotionallyintelligent ppl form stronger bonds, greater success
in career& marriage
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