Psychology- Intelligence Notes

What is Intelligence?
- Intelligence is a concept and not a "thing" Ex: intelligence is not a quality like height or weight.
- Lecture Definition: Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience , solve problems, and
adapt to new situations.
- An Intelligence test assesses people's mental abilities and compares them with other, using
numerical scores.
History of Intelligence:
1) - 1860s
- Galton, cousin of Darvin
- Idea of hereditary genius
- Tried (and failed) to link intelligence to sensory/motor processes
- Originator of eugenics

2) - 1900s
- Alfred Binet, developed first test of "mental age" to identify kids with special needs.
- Items tested reasoning ability and did predict academic success

3) 1916
- Terman
- Made the Stanford-Binet IQ Test
- IQ = mental age / chronological age x 100
- Better for kids than adults

4) 1939
- Weschler
- WAIS = Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale
- Verbal and performance IQ
- Normal Distribution
- Most widely used today

How Many Intelligences?

- 1) Spearman's g: General Intelligence - it underlies specific mental abilities that stand out.
- He also helped develop factor analysis, a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of
related items.

- Spearman found that those who score high in one area, such as verbal intelligence, typically
score higher than average in other areas, such as reasoning ability.
-Spearman believed a common skill set, the g factor, underlies all intelligent behavior, from
navigating the sea to excelling in school.
- Good things come package together.

2) 1990s
- Sternberg's 3 Intelligences: 1) "Analytical" (academic problem-solving)
- Comparing, analyzing, and evaluating
- Correlates best with IQ
2) "Creative"
- Designing solutions to new problems
- Transfer skills to new problems
3) "Practical"
- Applying the things you in everyday life

3) 1990s
- Gardner's 9 multiple intelligences: - Gardner views intelligence as multiple abilities that come
in different packages.
- The ninth one is "Existential intelligence, which is the ability to ponder big questions.

4) Salovey's Emotional Intelligence - the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use
emotions.

- The recipe for success combines talent with grit
- Although Gardner and Sternberg differ on specific points, they agree that multiple abilities can
contribute to life success.
- Creativity- the ability to produce ideas that are both new and valuable.
- A score above 120 on a standard intelligence test- supports creativity
- Intelligence tests require convergent thinking.
- Creativity require divergent thinking.
-No CQ like IQ
The five components of creativity:
1) Expertise
2) Imaginative thinking skills
3) A venturesome personality
4) Intrinsic motivation - being driven more by interest, satisfaction, and challenge than external
pressures.
5) A creative environment - supports, sparks, and refines creative ideas.

- Across dozens of studies in many countries, those scoring high in emotional intelligence
exhibit somewhat better job performance.
- There is a correlation of +0.33 between brain size and intelligence score. Bigger is better.
- Ample white matter plus + ample grey matter Efficient Communication
- Functioning well means functioning efficiently. Ex: Smart people use less energy to solve
problems.
- Achievement test is a test designed to assess what a person has learned.
- Aptitude test is a test designed to predict a person's future performance.
- Standardization is defining scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.
- Reliability is the extent to which a test yields consistent results.
- The higher the correlation, the more reliable it is.
- Validity is the extent to which the test actually measures or predicts what it promises.
- Intelligence tests should predict the future performance.
- There is a decline of mental ability by aging.
- Cohort - is the same group of people from a given time period.
- With longitudinal studies, until late in life, intelligence remained stable.
- Older people have a slower neural processing.
- Crystallized intelligence are our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase
with age.
- Fluid intelligence are our ability to reason quickly and abstractly; tends to decrease during late
adulthood.
- Intellectual disability is a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score
of 70 or below.

- They have a limitation in conceptual, practical, and social skills.
- Down syndrome is a condition of mild to severe intellectual disability caused by an extra copy
of chromosome 21.

- People with the same genes have the same mental ability.

- A bad environment may retard normal brain development, but a good environment doesn't
mean the child can become a genius.

- Education boosts social and cognitive skills.

- Intelligence is a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset.

- Environment has an effect in group differences in heredity too.

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