Intelligence Overview

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IntelligenceOverview
Overall question to consider does each of us
have an inborn level of talent, a general mental
capacity or set of abilities, and can that level
be measured and represented by a score on a test?

• Definitions of intelligence
• One ability or many?
• The role of creativity and emotional intelligence
• How to construct tests to try to assess
  intelligence
• Intelligence stability, change, and extremes
• Genetic vs. environmental influences
• Group differences in ability
• Racial difference or cultural test bias?

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Intelligence An Introduction

• Topics What do we mean by intelligence?
• Defining intelligence
• Types and components of intelligence
• Spearmans g,
• Gardners 8,
• Sternbergs 3
• Intelligence and creativity
• Emotional Intelligence

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Definition of Intelligence

• Intelligence tests are a series of questions and
  other exercises which attempt to assess peoples
  mental abilities in a way that generates a
  numerical score, so that one person can be
  compared to another.
• Intelligence can be defined as whatever
  intelligence tests measure.
• Your college entrance test measures how good you
  are at scoring well on that test.

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Definition of Intelligence Beyond the Test?
The text defines intelligence, whether its math
ability or a rainforest dwellers understanding
of plants, as the ability to learn from
experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to
adapt to new situations.
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General Intelligence, also known as g

• Charles Spearman (1863-1945) performed a factor
  analysis of different skills and found that
  people who did well in one area also did well in
  another. Spearman speculated that these people
  had a high g (general intelligence).
• Factor analysis refers to a statistical
  technique that determines how different variables
  relate to each other for example whether they
  form clusters that tend to vary together.

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Multiple Intelligences

• The savant syndrome refers to having isolated
  islands of high ability amidst a sea of
  below-average cognitive and social functioning.
  This suggest that there can be isolated pieces of
  intelligence.

• Howard Gardners Multiple Intelligences
• Howard Gardner (b. 1943) noted that different
  people have intelligence/abilities in different
  areas.
• He felt that levels of these intelligences
  could vary independent of each other.
• Factor analysis suggests, though, that for most
  people there may be a correlation among these
  intelligences.
  

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Howard Gardner
Gardner proposes eight types of intelligences and
speculates about a ninth one existential
intelligence. Existential intelligence is the
ability to think about the question of life,
death and existence.
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Sternbergs Intelligence Triarchy
Robert Sternberg (b. 1949) proposed that
success in life is related to three types of
ability.
Analytical intelligence solving a well-defined
problem with a single answer
Creative intelligence generating new ideas to
help adapt to novel situations
Practical intelligence expertise and talent that
help to complete the tasks and manage the complex
challenges of everyday life
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Theories Comparison
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Critique of Multiple Intelligence theories

• The different intelligence factors tend to
  correlate with each other, and with a general
  level of intelligence.
• Success, financial and otherwise, correlates with
  overall intelligence ?
• Success also correlates with hard work,
  connections, and the development of expertise
  (The 10 year Rule regarding intensive daily
  practice).

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Social and Emotional Intelligence
Social intelligence refers to the ability to
understand and navigate social situations.
Emotional intelligence involves processing and
managing the emotional component of those social
situations, including ones own emotions.
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Emotional Intelligence Components
Component Description
Perceive emotion Recognize emotions in faces, music and stories
Understand emotion Predict emotions, how they change and blend
Manage emotion Express emotions in different situations
Use emotion Utilize emotions to adapt or be creative
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Daniel Golemans Theory of Emotional Intelligence
The ability to feel, deal with, and recognize
emotions makes up its own kind of intelligence.
Aspects of this theory include

• Emotional self-awareness knowing what we are
  feeling and why
• Managing and harnessing emotions knowing how
  to control and respond to feelings appropriately
• Empathy knowing what another person is feeling

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Emotional Intelligence Criticism
Gardner and others criticize the idea of
emotional intelligence and question whether we
stretch this idea of intelligence too far when we
apply it to our emotions.
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Emotional Intelligence Components
Benefits of Emotional Intelligence People with
high emotional intelligence often have other
beneficial traits, such as the ability to delay
gratification while pursuing long-term
goals. The level of emotional intelligence,
including the skill of reading the emotions of
others, correlates with success in career and
other social situations.
Perceiving emotions

• Recognizing emotions in facial expressions,
  stories, and even in music

Understanding emotions

• Being able to see blended emotions, and to
  predict emotional states and changes in self and
  others

• Modulating and expressing emotions in various
  situations

Managing emotions
Using emotions

• Using emotions as fuel and motivation for
  creative, adaptive thinking

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Alfred Binets intelligence testing to predict
school achievement

• In the late 1800s, a new law in France required
  universal education.
• Alfred Binet knew that some new students would
  need help to succeed.
• Binet develop tests to predict a childs level of
  success in regular education.
• Goal to determine which students would need
  support.

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Intelligence a place on the path of development?

• Alfred Binet assumed that all children follow the
  same course of development, some going more
  quickly, and others more slowly.
• Binets tests attempted to measure mental
  age--how far the child had come along on the
  normal developmental pathway.
• The implication was that children with lower
  ability were delayed (with a mental age below
  their chronological age), and not disabled with
  help, they could improve.
• Others saw intelligence as innate and fixed,
  including Lewis Terman, who turned Binets test
  into the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test.

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Binet ? Terman ? Stanford-Binet ? IQ
William Stern added a way of scoring of the
Stanford-Binet test known as the Intelligence
Quotient.

• Lewis Terman, of Stanford University, adapted
  Alfred Binets test, adding new test items and
  extending the age range into adulthood.
• Terman also tested many California residents to
  develop new norms, that is, new information about
  how people typically performed on the test.
• The result was the Stanford-Binet intelligence
  test.

Binet reported scores as simply ones mental age
a 10 year old with below average intelligence
might have a mental age of 8.

• Stern described Intelligence as a Quotient, a
  ratio comparing mental age to chronological age.

Q What IQ score do we get for
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Mental Age
Binet used the term mental age to describe the
level of intellectual functioning. The average
five-year-old should pass most items on a test
designed for that age.
Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) is a measure that
compares mental age with physical age. A
seven-year-old child with a mental age of eight
will have an IQ of 114.
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Flynn Effect
In the past 60 years, intelligence scores have
risen steadily by an average of 27 points. This
phenomenon is known as the Flynn effect.
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What do scores mean?
What to do if you score low on an IQ test?

• Lewis Terman, of Stanford University, began with
  a different assumption than Binet Terman felt
  that intelligence was unchanging and innate
  (genetic).
• Later, Terman saw how scores can be affected by
  peoples level of education and their familiarity
  with the language and culture used in the test.

Study, and develop self-discipline and attention
span.
Remove your genes from the population
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Aptitude vs. Achievement

• Achievement tests measure what you already have
  learned. Examples include a literacy test, a
  drivers license exam, and a final exam in a
  psychology course.
• Aptitude tests attempt to predict your ability to
  learn new skills.
• The SAT, ACT, and GRE are supposed to predict
  your ability to do well in future academic work.

If the SAT is an aptitude test, should it
correlate with IQ?
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Wechslers Tests Intelligence PLUS

• The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and
  the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
  (WISC) measure g/IQ. Challenges include

• Describing similarities and differences
• Timed math problems
• Vocabulary knowledge
• Re-sequencing and recall of letters and numbers
• Arranging blocks to produce designs

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Principles of Test Construction
In order for intelligence or other psychological
tests to generate results that are considered
useful, the tests (and their scores) must be
standardized.
reliable.
valid.
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Standardization How we know whether your IQ
score is average.

• Many intelligence tests generate a raw score
  based on the number of answers correct. Can we
  turn this into a number that tells us how
  smart/capable a person is compared to the general
  population? Yes by Standardizing.

Standardization defining the meaning of scores
based on a comparison with the performance of
others who have taken the test before.
The current method for generating an IQ score is
to determine where your raw score falls on a
distribution of scores by people of your
chronological age. (Next slide).
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Standardization How Normal is Your Score?

• If we stacked a bunch of intelligence tests in
  piles ordered by raw score (of test items
  correct), there would be a few very high scores
  and a few low scores, and a big pile in the
  middle this bell-shaped set of scores is called
  the normal curve.
• Standardization Calling the average raw score
  IQ 100.

If your score is higher than 98 percent of the
population, your IQ is around what number?
Comparing your score to this standard set of
scores if you score higher than 50 percent of
people, you your IQ is 100.
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A test or other measuring tool is reliable when
it generates consistent results.
Reliability and Validity of Measures
A test or measure has validity if it accurately
measures what it is supposed to measure.

• Content validity the test correlates well with
  the actual trait being measured
• Predictive validity the test accurately
  predicts future performance .

• Split-half reliability two halves of the test
  yield the same results.
• Test-retest reliability the test gives the same
  result if administered again.

Example If your height was measured with a
yardstick on which the inches varied in size.
Example If your height was measured with a
ruler made of stretchy dough.
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Stability of Intelligence during Aging

• Based on this chart, at what age might you do
  best at completing a crossword puzzle completely?
  Quickly?

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Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

• Fluid intelligence the ability to think quickly
  and abstractly.
• This type of intelligence tends to be strongest
  in youth.

Crystallized intelligence accumulated wisdom,
knowledge, expertise, and vocabulary. These stay
strong into old age.
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Extremes of Intelligence

• The Wechsler Intelligence Scale is set so that
  about 2 percent of the population is above 130
  and about 2 percent of the population is below
  70.

Very High Intelligence, Gifted
Intellectual Disability
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Extremes of Intelligence

• Intellectual disability refers to people who
• have an IQ around 70 or below.
• have difficulty with adaptive skills, such as
• conceptual skills (literacy and calculation).
• social skills, including making safe social
  choices.
• practical daily living skills such as hygiene,
  occupational skills, and using transportation.

• Although some people with high intelligence test
  scores can seem socially delayed or withdrawn,
  most are successful.
• Gifted children, like any children, learn best
  with an appropriate level of challenge.
• Segregated, tracked programs, however, often
  unfairly widen achievement gaps.

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Influences on Intelligence Genes and
Environment

• What we are born with, what we can change
• Heritability
• Results from Twin and Adoption Studies
• Environmental Influences Early Childhood and
  School
• Group Differences in Intelligence Scores Due to
  Genes or Environment?
• Gender Similarities and Differences in IQ scores
• Racial/Ethnic Similarities and Differences in IQ
  scores
• The Effect of Stereotype threat on IQ scores
• Two Meanings of Bias in test design group harm
  vs. predictive effectiveness

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Genetic and Environmental Influences on
Intelligence(Nature and Nurture)

• Even if we agree for arguments sake that
  success in life is caused in part by some kind
  of intelligence, there is still a debate over the
  origin of that intelligence.
• Are people successful because of inborn
  talents?
• Or are they successful because of their unequal
  access to better nurture?
• Information to tease out the answers can be found
  in some twin and adoption studies.

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Genetic and Environmental Influences on
IntelligenceStudies of Twins Raised Apart
What explains this difference?
What explains this difference?

• Findings from these studies indicate that both
  nature and nurture affect intelligence test
  scores.

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• Clarifying Heritability
• If three people had exactly the same education,
  nutrition, and experiences, some psychologists
  speculate that genes might be responsible for
  perhaps 40 percent of their intelligence nurture
  certainly made a big impact.
• However, such identical nurturing (which is
  actually impossible) could not create differences
  in intelligence.
• With identical nurture, the heritability of
  intelligence would be virtually 100 percent.

Heritability

• When you see variation in intelligence between
  two or more people, the heritability of that
  trait is the amount of variation that is
  apparently explained by genetic factors.
• This does NOT tell us the proportion that genes
  contribute to the trait for any one person.

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Genetic Influences on Intelligence

• Identical twins seem to show similarity in
  specific talents such as music, math and sports.
• The brains of twins show similar structure and
  functioning.
• There are specific genes which may have a small
  influence on ability.

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Adoption Studies

• With age, the intelligence test scores of
  adoptees looks more and more like that of their
  ____________ parents.

(adoptive? birth/biological?)
In another study, heritability of intelligence
test scores continued to increase beyond age 16.
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Schooling and Intelligence

• Preschool and elementary school clearly have at
  least a temporary impact on intelligence test
  scores.
• College can have a positive impact on
  intelligence test scores if students have
• motivation and incentives.
• belief that people can improve.
• study skills, especially the willingness to
  practice.

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Understanding Group Differencesin Test Scores

• Now, lets look at
• gender differences.
• racial differences.
• understanding the impact of environment.
• within-group differences and between-group
  differences.
• the impact of test bias and stereotype threat on
  performance.

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Male-Female Ability Differences

• Male/female difference related to overall
  intelligence test score.

Boys are more likely than girls to be at the high
or low end of the intelligence test score
spectrum.
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Male-Female Ability Differences

• Girls tend to be better at spelling, locating
  objects, and detecting emotions.
• Girls tend to be more verbally fluent, and more
  sensitive to touch, taste, and color.
• Boys tend to be better at handling spatial
  reasoning and complex math problems.
• It is a myth that boys generally do better in
  math than girls. Girls do at least as well as
  boys in overall math performance and especially
  in math computation.

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Ethnic/Racial Differences in Intelligence Test
Scores
White Americans, on average, have in past decades
scored higher on intelligence tests than other
groups. Still, as we can see below, it is
incorrect to use race as a basis to prejudge the
intelligence of an individual.

• If Blacks scored at IQ 100 on average and members
  of the Green race scored 85 on average, there are
  still lots of Greens with higher IQ than the
  average Black.
• There are issues test bias and other factors
  affecting scores for people who are part of
  minority ethnic and racial groups.

But first
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Understanding Group Differences Within-group vs.
Between-group

• Group differences, including intelligence test
  score differences between racial groups, can be
  caused by environmental factors.

Below the difference between groups is caused by
poor soil (environment).
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The Racial Intelligence Test Score Gap

• Racial categories are not distinct genetically
  and are unscientific.
• Both whites and blacks have higher
  intelligence test scores than whites of the
  1930s.
• Whites may have more access to fertile soil
  for developing their potential, such as
• schools and educational opportunities.
• wealth, nutrition, support, and educated mentors.
  
• relative freedom from discrimination.

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Are Tests Biased? Lets use the two
definitions Bias 1 In the popular sense of the
word, intelligence tests are often biased. Often,
tests have questions which rely on knowledge of
mainstream culture, which not everyone will be
equally familiar with. Bias 2 Aptitude tests
seem to predict future achievement equally well
for various ethnic groups, and for men and women.
Two Problems Called Bias
Test makers must prevent bias in the popular
sense of the word making it easier for one group
than another to score high on a test. Test
makers also strive to prevent the scientific form
of bias making it easier for one group than for
another to have their abilities accurately
assessed, and their future performance predicted.
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The Effect of Stereotype Threat
Study result Blacks/African-Americans scored
higher when tested by Blacks rather than being
tested by Whites. Why?
Study result Blacks/African-Americans did worse
on intelligence tests when reminded of their
racial/ethnic identification right before the
test. Why?

• Study result Women did worse on math tests than
  men, except when they are told first that women
  usually do as well as men on the test. Why?

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The Power of Expectations

• Stereotype threat a feeling that one will be
  evaluated based on a negative stereotype.
• Stereotype threat may interfere with performance
  by making people use their working memory for
  worrying instead of thinking.
• This worry, then, is self-confirming/fulfilling
  worrying about a negative evaluation leads to a
  negative evaluation.

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Issues Related to Intelligence Tests

• Is discriminating among college or job applicants
  based on test scores better than discriminating
  based on appearance?
• Can test scores be used as Alfred Binet
  suggested to identify those who would benefit
  from educational interventions?
• Can a persons worth and potential be summed up
  in one intelligence test score?