Intelligence

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Intelligence
 • Although we all wish to think intelligently, intelligence is
hard to define. Some theorists believe that a general ability
(g factor) underlies the many specific abilities tapped by
intelligence tests, whereas others do not.
 • The traditional approach to intelligence, the
psychometric approach, focuses on how well people
perform on standardized aptitude tests. The intelligence
quotient, or IQ, represents how a person has done on an
intelligence test, compared to other people.
Expected Distribution of IQ scores
History
 Alfred Binet designed the first widely used
intelligence test for the purpose of identifying
children who could benefit from remedial
work. But in the United States, people
assumed that intelligence tests revealed
"natural ability," and they used the tests to
categorize people in school and in the armed
services.
Culture & IQ
•IQ tests have been criticized for being biased in
favor of white, middle-class people. However,
efforts to construct culture-free and culture-fair
tests have been disappointing.
•Culture affects nearly everything to do with taking
a test, from attitudes to problem-solving strategies.
• Negative stereotypes about a person’s ethnicity,
gender, or age may cause the person to suffer
stereotype threat, a burden of doubt about his or
her own abilities, which can lead to anxiety or
"disidentification" with the test.
•Many social scientists consider IQ tests
useful for predicting school performance
and diagnosing learning difficulties, as long
as test scores are combined with other
information and used "intelligently."
But ...
critics would like to dispense with the
tests because they are so often
misused or misinterpreted.
Dissecting Intelligence: The Cognitive
Approach

•In contrast to the psychometric

approach, cognitive approaches to
intelligence emphasize several kinds
of intelligence and the strategies
people use to solve problems, not
merely whether they get the right
answers.
Sternberg’s triarchic theory of
intelligence
Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence
proposes three aspects of intelligence:
•componential (including metacognition),
• experiential
•contextual.
•Contextual intelligence allows you to acquire
tacit knowledge, practical strategies that are
important for success in your personal life, at
school, and on the job. The theory also
emphasizes the importance of tacit knowledge,
which is important in an individual’s personal
and occupational success.
Gardner: Multiple
Intelligences
• Intelligence in one domain does not necessarily
imply intelligence in another. Howard Gardner
proposes that there are actually several
"intelligences" besides those usually considered,
including musical and kinesthetic intelligence, and
the capacity to understand the natural world,
yourself, or others. The latter two overlap with what
some psychologists call emotional intelligence,
which is associated with personal, academic, and
occupational success.
Multiple Intelligences
(MI)
 H. Gardner (1983 to present)

 All people are born with eight intelligences:

1. Verbal-Linguistic 5. Musical
 Enables students to leverage their strengths and purposefully target and develop their
2. Visual-Spatial
weaknesses 6. Naturalist
3. Logical-Mathematical 7. Interpersonal
4. Kinesthetic 8. Intrapersonal
 MI in the Classroom
 Delivery of instruction via
multiple mediums

 Student-centered classroom
 Authentic Assessment
 Self-directed learning
Must Know Terms:
 crystallized intelligence Cognitive skills and
specific knowledge of information acquired over
a lifetime; it is heavily dependent on education
and tends to remain stable over the lifetime.
 emotional intelligence The ability to identify
your own and other people's emotions
accurately, express your emotions clearly, and
regulate emotions in yourself and others.
Terms continued...
 fluid intelligence The capacity for deductive
reasoning and the ability to use new information
to solve problems; it is relatively independent of
education and tends to decline in old age.
 g factor A general intellectual ability assumed
by many theorists to underlie specific mental
abilities and talents.
Terms continued...
 heritability A statistical estimate of the proportion of the
total variance in some trait that is attributable to genetic
differences among individuals within a group. IQ is 40-
60% heritable.
 intelligence An inferred characteristic of an individual,
usually defined as the ability to profit from experience,
acquire knowledge, think abstractly, act purposefully, or
adapt to changes in the environment
Terms continued...
 intelligence quotient (IQ) A measure of intelligence
originally computed by dividing a person's mental
age by his or her chronological age and multiplying
the result by 100; it is now derived from norms
provided for standardized intelligence tests.
 mental age (MA) A measure of mental development
expressed in terms of the average mental ability at a
given age.
Terms continued...
 triarchic theory of intelligence A theory of
intelligence that emphasizes information-processing
strategies, the ability to creatively transfer skills to new
situations, and the practical application of intelligence.
 Anderson’s theory of intelligence The theory that
differences in intelligence result from differences in the
“basic processing mechanism” that implements
thinking, which in turn yields knowledge. Individuals
vary in the speed at which basic processing occurs.
Terms continued...
 Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale Stanford
revision of the Binet test which measures the
kinds of changes in intelligence ordinarily
associated with growing older.
 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale A verbal
scale and a performance scale that yield
separate scores as well as a full-scale IQ.
Terms continued...

 reliability Yielding reproducible and

consistent results.

 validity Measuring what is intended to

be measured.
Tests of Intelligence
Tests of Intelligence:
 The Stanford Binet: Fourth Edition.
 The Wechsler Tests.
 Other Tests of Intelligence.
 Measures of Creativity.
 The Stanford Binet:
Fourth Edition
 Alfred Binet collaborated with Theodore
Simon to create the world’s first formal
test of intelligence in 1905:
- the Binet-Simon Scale.
 The purpose of the Binet-Simon test was
to screen developmentally disabled
children in Paris schools.
The Stanford Binet
Continued
 The work of Lewis Madison Terman at
Stanford University culminated in what
has become the most-used and most-
researched later version of the Binet-
Simon Scale:
the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.
The Stanford-Binet
Intelligence Scale
 The Stanford-Binet was the first
published intelligence test to provide
organized and detailed administration
and scoring instruction.
 The Stanford-Binet was the first
American test to employ the concept of
“IQ.”
 Stanford-Binet
 The Stanford-Binet contains 15 separate
subtests yielding scores in four areas of
cognitive ability:
 Verbal Reasoning.
 Abstract/Visual Reasoning.
 Quantitative Reasoning.
 Short-Term Memory.
 Stanford-Binet
 The Stanford-Binet has a hierarchical
model of intelligence, with general
intelligence (g) at the top of the
hierarchy:
 First Level (of 3 levels):
 Information-processing abilities.
 Planning and organizing abilities.
 Reasoning and adaptation skills.
 Stanford-Binet
 Second Level:
 Crystallized abilities (also referred to as
scholastic or academic abilities).
 Fluid-analytic abilities (that is, non-language
abilities that relate to variable such as spatial
skills and originality in problem-solving).
 Short-term memory.
 Stanford-Binet
 Third Level:
 Verbal reasoning.
 Abstract/visual reasoning.
 Quantitative reasoning.
 These three areas, along with short-term
memory at the second level of the hierarchy,
make up what are called the “area scores” of
the Stanford-Binet.
The Wechsler Tests
 David Wechsler designed a series of
individually administered intelligence
tests to assess the intellectual abilities of
people, preschool through adulthood.
 There are three Wechsler Intelligence Tests:
 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised.
 Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--
Third Edition.
 Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of

Intelligence--Revised.
The Wechsler Tests:
 Each of the Wechsler Tests was
designed to assess an individual’s
“overall capacity to understand and
cope with the world around him.
 Each test contains a Verbal Scale and a
Performance Scale, each of which is
comprised of subtests.
 Some subtests are common to all three
Wechsler tests.
The Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale--
Revised (WAIS--R)
 In the early 1930’s Wechsler’s employer
(Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan) needed
an instrument suitable for evaluating the
intellectual capacities of multilingual,
multinational, and multicultural clients.
 The result was the Wechsler-Bellevue I
(W-BI), published in 1939.
Wechsler-Bellevue I
(W-B I):
 The Wechsler-Bellevue I was a point
scale rather than an age scale--the items
were classified by subtests rather than by
age.
 The Wechsler-Bellevue I was organized
into six verbal subtests and five
performance subtests.
 Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale
 A revised edition was published sixteen years after
the publication of Form I of Wechsler-Bellevue.
 The WAIS contains 257 items, 147 of which were
retained from the Wechsler-Bellevue.
 The WAIS was organized into six subtests
designated as “Verbal” and five subtests
designated as “Performance.”
 The WAIS scoring yielded a Verbal IQ score,
Performance IQ score, and a Full Scale IQ score.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence
Scale--Revised (WAIS-R)
 Primarily because of the need for a
more contemporary norm group, the
WAIS was revised and published as the
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--
Revised (WAIS-R).
 The WAIS-R is the standard against
which other tests of adult intelligence
are compared and by which they are
commonly judged.
Other Tests of
Intelligence
 Slosson Intelligence Test--Revised (SIT--
R):
 Also referred to as the “Short Intelligence
Test.”
 Designed to be a quick, easily administered,
yet valid measure of intelligence.
 The 1991 revision of the Slosson contains
items similar to those found on the Wechsler
scales.
Slosson Intelligence Test--
Revised (SIT--R):
 SIT-R taps skills in the following domains:
 vocabulary.
 general information.
 similarities and differences.
 Comprehension.
 auditory memory.
 quantitative ability.
Group Intelligence
Tests
 Administered to a large number of people.
 Can be reliably machine- or computer-scored.
 More economical compared to individual tests.
 Used for screening.
 Examiners are unable to observe individual
subjects for confusion, anxiety, lack of interest.
Group intelligence
tests:
 Although the standardization samples for
group intelligence tests are often large,
they are rarely as representative as they
may appear (or should be).
Group Intelligence
Tests in Schools
 Group intelligence tests provide school
personnel with information of value for
instruction-related activities and
increased understanding of the
individual pupil.
 Group intelligence tests alert educators
to students who require possible
placement in a special class or
program.
Group Intelligence
Tests in the Military
 Group intelligence tests are administered
to prospective recruits:
 For routine screening purposes.
 To aid in assigning soldiers to training
programs and jobs.
Measures of Creativity
 A criticism of traditional intelligence tests
is that the evaluation of test
performance is too heavily focused on
whether the test is correct--as opposed
to giving more weight to the examinee’s
thought process in arriving at the
answer.
 Creative thinking is a deductive
reasoning process that emphasizes one
solution to a problem.
 Divergent thinking involves a reasoning
process in which thought is permitted the
freedom to move in many different
directions, making several solutions
possible.
Other Measures:
 Critical thinking.
 Music listening skills.
 Art judgment.
 Aesthetic perception.
Uses of Intelligence
testing
 Help to separate the slower learner from the gifted
learner. Special methods of teaching can then be used.
 Used in selection for admission into different courses of
study.
 Used fro selection of candidates for different jobs.
 IQ tests should be use as a guide.
 IQ scores are relatively good at predicting academic
performance but less successful at predicting job
performance. (personality, motivation, etc.)
IQ Test does not
measure
 Person’s morals, character, emotions,
ability to work with others.
 These factors are important for
successful living. (besides intelligence.)
Individual Differences
 Individuals differ in their genetic make up and
also in the environment in which they are
brought up.
 Intelligence and sex differences : No significant
difference between male and female.
 No difference in IQ between races.
 Influence of environment contributes to
difference in I.Q.
Factors affecting
Intelligence
 Heredity / genetics
 Emotional deprivation due to parental rejection,
traumatic experiences like death of beloved
ones and separation from parents can affect the
mental functioning of individuals.
 Malnutrition has adverse effects on mental
functioning
 Children from lower social class generally
perform less well on intelligence test.
 Stimulating environment contribute to higher
intelligence.
Causes of mental
Retardation
 Mostly unknown.
 About 25% due to physical disorders :
 Birth injuries – lack of oxygen
 Drugs taken by mother or
infection.
 Genetic abnormalities – Down’s
syndrome, Cerebral Palsy.
The End