week 3 discusion

McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter 9

Intelligence and Its Measurement

9-2

What is Intelligence?

• Intelligence: a multifaceted capacity that includes the abilities to:

– Acquire and apply knowledge

– Reason logically, plan effectively, and infer perceptively

– Grasp and visualize concepts

– Find the right words and thoughts with facility

– Cope with and adjust to novel situations

• However, intelligence is not limited to this description and this list should be considered a point for reflection on one’s own personal definition.

9-3

What is Intelligence?

Intelligence as defined by the lay public

• Sternberg and associates sought to shed light on

the lay public’s definition of intelligence, as well

as its definition by psychologists.

• Differences between laypeople’s definitions and

that of experts included motivation (with experts

tending to emphasize motivation) and the

interpersonal aspects of intelligence (as

emphasized in the lay public's definition).

9-4

What is Intelligence? • Intelligence as defined by the lay public

– Seigler and Richards (1980) asked developmental

psychology students to list behaviors associated with

intelligence in infancy, childhood, and adulthood.

• Different conceptions of intelligence as a result of development

were noted (e.g., coordination as a characteristic of intelligence in

infancy, and verbal facility as characterizing intelligence in

childhood).

– Yussen and Kane (1980) found that notions of intelligence

emerge as early as first grade.

• Younger children tended to emphasize interpersonal skills while

older children emphasized academic skills.

9-5

What is Intelligence? • Intelligence as defined by the experts

– Sir Francis Galton was the first person to publish on the

heritability of intelligence.

– Galton (1883) believed that the most

intelligent persons were equipped with

the best sensory abilities.

• By such logic, tests of visual acuity or hearing

ability are measurements of intelligence.

– Galton developed many sensorimotor and

perception-related tests by which he

attempted to measure his definition of

intelligence.

9-6

What is Intelligence? • Intelligence as defined by the experts

– Alfred Binet did not define intelligence explicitly but

instead described various components of intelligence,

including reasoning, judgment, memory, and abstraction.

– Binet and a colleague criticized Galton’s approach to intellectual assessment and

instead called for more complex

measurements of intellectual ability.

– While Galton argued that intelligence

consisted of distinct processes that could be

assessed only by individual tests, Binet

viewed intelligence as inseparable abilities

that required complex measurements to

determine.

9-7

What is Intelligence? • Intelligence as defined by the experts

– David Wechsler (1958) conceptualized intelligence as “the

aggregate…capacity of the individual to act purposefully,

to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his

environment. It [is] composed of elements or abilities

which…are qualitatively differentiable” (p. 7).

– Wechsler was of the opinion that the best way to measure

intelligence was by measuring several “qualitatively

differentiable” abilities, which were verbal- or

performance-based in nature.

– The Wechsler-Bellevue (W-B) Scale provided the

calculation of a Verbal IQ and a Performance IQ.

9-8

What is Intelligence? • Intelligence as defined by the experts

– Jean Piaget focused his research on the development of cognitive

abilities in children (i.e., how children think,

and how they understand themselves and the

world around them).

– Piaget defined intelligence as an evolving

biological adaptation to the outside world;

a consequence of interaction with the

environment, psychological structures

become reorganized.

9-9

What is Intelligence? • Intelligence as defined by the experts

– According to Piaget, as individual stages are progressed

through, the child has experiences within the environment

that requires some form of cognitive organization in a

schema.

– Schema: a mental structure that, when applied to the world,

leads to knowing or understanding.

– Learning was hypothesized to occur through two

operations:

• Assimilation: the active organization of new information into an

existing schema

• Accommodation: the adjustment of an existing schema to new

information.

9-10

What is Intelligence? • Intelligence as defined by the experts

– According to Piaget, there are four periods of cognitive

development, each representing a more complex form of

cognitive reorganization.

– These stages range from the sensorimotor period in infancy

to the formal operations period in adolescence.

• Interactionism: the mechanism by which heredity

and environment are presumed to interact and

influence the development of intelligence.

9-11

9-12

What is Intelligence?

• Factor-analytic theories of intelligence: focus squarely on

identifying the ability or groups of abilities deemed to constitute

intelligence.

– Factor analysis: a group of statistical techniques designed to

determine the existence of underlying relationships between

sets of variables

– Spearman (1927) postulated the existence of a general

intellectual ability factor (g) and specific factors of

intelligence (s).

• g was assumed to afford the best prediction of overall

intelligence, best measured through abstract-reasoning problems.

• Group factors: an intermediate class of factors common to a

group of activities but not all, neither as general as g nor as

specific as s

9-13

Two-Factor Theory of Intelligence

(Spearman, 1927)

g represents the portion of variance that all intelligence tests have in common and the remaining

portions of the variance being accounted for either by specific components (s) , or by error components

(e) of this general factor.

9-14

What is Intelligence? • Factor-analytic theories of intelligence

– Many multiple-factor models of intelligence have been proposed:

• Some (Guilford, Thurstone) have sought to explain mental activities by deemphasizing or eliminating any reference to g.

• Gardner developed a theory of seven intelligences: logical- mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.

– Horn and Cattell developed a theory of intelligence postulating the existence of two major types of cognitive abilities:

• Crystallized intelligence (Gc): includes acquired skills and knowledge that are dependent on exposure to a particular culture as well as on formal and informal education

• Fluid intelligence (Gf): nonverbal, relatively culture-free, and independent of specific instruction

9-15

Three-Stratum Theory of Cognitive

Abilities (Carroll, 1997)

The first stratum is g, followed by a level constituted of eight abilities and processes (e.g.,

Gf, Gc, general memory and learning (Y), and processing speed (T)), followed by a stratum

containing varying “level factors” and “speed factors.”

9-16

What is Intelligence? • Factor-analytic theories of intelligence

– The CHC Model integrates the Cattell-Horn and

Carroll models, featuring ten “broad-stratum”

abilities and over seventy “narrow-stratum”

abilities.

• Each broad-stratum ability subsumes two or

more narrow-stratum abilities.

9-17

What is Intelligence? • Information-processing theories: focus on

identifying the specific mental processes that

constitute intelligence.

– Simultaneous (parallel) processing: the

integration of information occurs all at once

– Successive (sequential) processing: information

is individually processed in a logical sequence

9-18

What is Intelligence? – Sternberg (1986) proposed a triarchic theory of intelligence

with three principle elements:

• Metacomponents: involved in planning actions, self-

monitoring, and self-evaluation

• Performance components: administer the instructions of

metacomponents

• Knowledge-acquisition components: involved in

“learning how to do something in the first place”

(Sternberg, 1994)

– Successful intelligence: the notion proposed by Sternberg

(1997) that is gauged by the extent to which one effectively

adapts, shares, shapes, and selects environments in a way that

conforms to both personal and societal standards of success

9-19

Measuring Intelligence • Measuring intelligence entails sampling an examinee’s

performance on different types of tests and tasks as a function of developmental level.

• In infancy, intellectual assessment consists of measuring sensorimotor development (e.g., nonverbal motor responses).

• In older children,

intellectual assessment

focuses on verbal and

performance abilities

(e.g., vocabulary or social

judgment).

9-20

Measuring Intelligence • Adult intelligence scales should tap abilities such as

general information retention, quantitative reasoning,

expressive language, and social judgment.

– Intelligence tests are rarely administered to adults for

purposes of educational placement, but rather to ascertain

clinically relevant information or learning potential.

• Mental age: an index that refers to the chronological

age equivalent of one’s performance on a test or

subtest

– Many intelligence tests were scored and interpreted with

reference to mental age.

9-21

Measuring Intelligence • Theory in intelligence test development and

interpretation

– How intelligence is measured largely depends on

how the examiner conceptualizes intelligence.

– Wechsler wrote extensively on intelligence and

usually emphasized it as multifaceted and

including personality factors in addition to

cognitive factors.

– Thorndike conceptualized intelligence in terms of

three clusters of ability: social intelligence,

concrete intelligence, and abstract intelligence.

9-22

Intelligence: Some Issues • Nature versus nurture

– Today, most behavioral scientists believe that measured intellectual

ability represents an interaction between innate ability

and environmental influences.

– Historically, however, this interactionist perspective

was not popular.

– Preformationism: a theory that holds that all living

organisms are preformed at birth; all of an organism’s

structures, including intelligences, are preformed at

birth and cannot be improved upon.

– Predeterminism: the doctrine that holds that one’s

abilities are predetermined by genetic inheritance and

that no amount of learning or other intervention can

enhance what has been genetically encoded to unfold

9-23

Intelligence: Some Issues • Nature versus nurture

– Gesell (1929) was a major proponent of predeterminism

and with twin studies, concluded that “training does not

transcend maturation.”

– Gesell believed that neural

mechanisms, rather than experience,

were most important in the

development of intelligence.

– He argued that behavior patterns are

determined by “innate processes of

growth” that he likened to maturation.

9-24

Intelligence: Some Issues • Nature versus nurture

– Verbal, Perceptual, and Image Rotation (VPR) model: a

hierarchical model with a g factor that contributes to verbal,

perceptual, and image rotation abilities as well as to eight

abilities of a more specialized nature (Johnson et al., 2007)

• Using twin data, Johnson et al. (2007) estimated that genetic

influences accounted for much of the variance in measured mental

abilities.

– Research literature began to support environmental

arguments of the heredity-environment debate.

• For example, identical twins, when reared apart, still share similar

intelligence test scores.

9-25

Intelligence: Some Issues • Nature versus nurture

– Proponents for the “nurture” side of the debate emphasize

the importance of factors such as prenatal and postnatal

environment, socioeconomic status, educational

opportunities, and parental modeling.

– Interactionist models suggest that people inherit a certain

intellectual potential, which then depends on the type of

environment in which it is nurtured.

9-26

Intelligence: Some Issues • The stability of intelligence

– Intelligence in adulthood appears to be relatively stable.

• Gold et al. (1995) compared archival intelligence test data from

World War II to intelligence test data acquired 40 years later from a

sample of 326 veterans and found stability in measured intelligence

over time.

– Young adult intelligence was found to be the most important

determinant of cognitive performance as an older adult.

• Ivnik et al. (1995) found that verbal intellectual skills

tended to be highly stable over time, but newly learned

information was much less stable.

• In later adulthood (beyond age 75 especially), a decline

in cognitive ability has been noted.

9-27

Intelligence: Some Issues • Construct validity of intelligence tests

– For intelligence tests, it is imperative to understand how the

test developer defined intelligence.

• If intelligence is defined as Spearman’s g, then factor

analysis should yield a single large common factor that

indicates the different questions or tasks largely

reflected the underlying characteristic (g).

• If intelligence is defined in accordance with Guilford’s

theory, then no one factor should be expected to

dominate, but instead many different factors reflecting a

diverse set of abilities.

9-28

Intelligence: Some Issues • Other issues

– Flynn effect: the progressive rise in intelligence test scores that is expected to occur on a normed intelligence test from the date when the test was first normed

– Personality

• Wechsler and Binet both believed that the study of intelligence was either synonymous with or highly involved in the study of personality.

• Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of children have explored the relationship between various personality characteristics and measured intelligence, including aggressiveness with peers, initiative, and high need for achievement.

• Temperament can affect an infant’s measured intellectual ability in that irritable children have a negative reciprocal influence on their parents and examiners.

9-29

Intelligence: Some Issues • Other issues

– Gender

• Research has examined the differences between males and females with regard to cognitive, motor, and other abilities related to intelligence.

• Some differences have been consistently found but significance is questionable.

• Males tend to outperform females on tasks requiring visual spatialization, while females tend to excel at language skill-related tasks.

– Family environment

• Children thrive in a loving home where their safety and welfare are of utmost concern and learning and growth are promoted.

• The presence of resources, parental use of language, parental expression of concern about achievement, and authoritative parenting may also effect measured intelligence.

9-30

Intelligence: Some Issues • Other issues

– Culture

• Culture provides specific models for thinking, acting, and feeling, enabling people to survive both physically and socially and to master the world around them.

• Values may differ radically between cultural groups, and thus individuals from these varying cultures may have radically differing views on what constitutes intelligence.

• Items on an intelligence test tend to reflect the culture of the society where the test is employed and thus many theorists have expressed a desire to develop a culture-free intelligence test.

• Culture-free intelligence tests are difficult if not impossible, and thus “culture-fair” intelligence tests began to be developed.

• Culture loading: the extent to which a test incorporates the vocabulary, concepts, traditions, knowledge, and feelings associated with a particular culture

9-31

A Perspective • A consensus on the definition of intelligence still has not

been reached.

• Many have called for a more liberal definition, allowing for behavior presumed to be indicative of intelligence in the real world.

• Another issue includes group differences in measured intelligence: humans vary on many fronts and it is reasonable to consider that is a physical basis for differences in intellectual ability as well.

• The relationship between intelligence and a wide range of social outcomes has been well-documented.

– Scores on intelligence tests, when used with other indicators, have value in predicting outcomes such as school performance, years of education, and social status.