INTELLIGENCE, EDUCATION, & MOTIVATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Development of Self-Understanding
Self-concept refers to beliefs about general personal identity (Seiffert, 2011).
These beliefs include personal attributes, such as one’s age, physical characteristics,
behaviors, and competencies. Children in middle and late childhood have a more
realistic sense of self than do those in early childhood, and they better understand
their strengths and weaknesses. This can be attributed to greater experience in
comparing their own performance with that of others, and to greater cognitive flexibility.
Children in middle and late childhood are also able to include other peoples’ appraisals
of them into their self-concept, including parents, teachers, peers, culture, and media.
Internalizing others’ appraisals and creating social comparison affect children’s self-
esteem, which is defined as an evaluation of one’s identity. Children can have
individual assessments of how well they perform a variety of activities and also
develop an overall global self-assessment. If there is a discrepancy between how
children view themselves and what they consider to be their ideal selves, their self-
esteem can be negatively affected.
Another important development in self-understanding is self- efficacy, which is
the belief that you are capable of carrying out a specific task or of reaching a specific
goal (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Large discrepancies between self-efficacy and
ability can create motivational problems for the individual (Seifert, 2011). If a student
believes that he or she can solve mathematical problems, then the student is more
likely to attempt the mathematics homework that the teacher assigns. Unfortunately,
the converse is also true. If a student believes that he or she is incapable of math, then
the student is less likely to attempt the math homework regardless of the student’s
actual ability in math. Since self-efficacy is self-constructed, it is possible for students
to miscalculate or misperceive their true skill, and these misperceptions can have
complex effects on students’ motivations. It is possible to have either too much or too
little self-efficacy, and according to Bandura (1997) the optimum level seems to be
either at, or slightly above, one’s true ability.
Theories of Intelligence
Psychologists have long debated how to best conceptualize and measure
intelligence (Sternberg, 2003). These questions include: How many types of
intelligence there are, the role of nature versus nurture in intelligence, how intelligence
is represented in the brain, and the meaning of group differences in intelligence.
General (g) versus Specific (s) Intelligences. From 1904-1905 the French psychologist
Alfred Binet (1857–1914) and his colleague Théodore Simon (1872–1961) began
working on behalf of the French government to develop a measure that would identify
children who would not be successful with the regular school curriculum. The goal was
to help teachers better educate these students (Aiken, 1994). Binet and Simon
developed what most psychologists today regard as the first intelligence test, which
consisted of a wide variety of questions that included the ability to name objects, define
words, draw pictures, complete sentences, compare items, and construct sentences.
Binet and Simon (Binet, Simon, & Town, 1915; Siegler, 1992) believed that the
questions they asked the children all assessed the basic abilities to understand,
reason, and make judgments. It turned out that the correlations among these different
types of measures were in fact all positive; that is, students who got one item correct
were more likely to also get other items correct, even though the questions themselves
were very different.
On the basis of these results, the psychologist Charles Spearman (1863–1945)
hypothesized that there must be a single underlying construct that all of these items
measure. He called the construct that the different abilities and skills measured on
intelligence tests have in common the General Intelligence Factor (g). Virtually all
psychologists now believe that there is a generalized intelligence factor, “g”, that
relates to abstract thinking and that includes the abilities to acquire knowledge, to
reason abstractly, to adapt to novel situations, and to benefit from instruction and
experience (Gottfredson, 1997; Sternberg, 2003). People with higher general
intelligence learn faster.
Soon after Binet and Simon introduced their test, the American psychologist
Lewis Terman at Stanford University (1877–1956) developed an American version of
Binet’s test that became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. The Stanford-
Binet is a measure of general intelligence made up of a wide variety of tasks, including
vocabulary, memory for pictures, naming of familiar objects, repeating sentences, and
following commands. Although there is general agreement among psychologists that
“g” exists, there is also evidence for specific intelligence or“s”, a measure of specific
skills in narrow domains. One empirical result in support of the idea of “s” comes from
intelligence tests themselves. Although the different types of questions do correlate
with each other, some items correlate more highly with each other than do other items;
they form clusters or clumps of intelligences.
Triarchic Theory. One advocate of the idea of multiple intelligences is the
psychologist Robert Sternberg. Sternberg has proposed a triarchic (three-part) theory
of intelligence which holds that people may display more or less analytical intelligence,
creative intelligence, and practical intelligence. Sternberg (1985, 2003) argued that
traditional intelligence tests assess analytical intelligence, academic problem solving
and performing calculations, but that they do not typically assess creative intelligence,
the ability to adapt to new situations and create new ideas, and/or practical
intelligence, the ability to demonstrate common sense and street-smarts.
As Sternberg proposed, research has found that creativity is not highly correlated with
analytical intelligence (Furnham & Bachtiar, 2008) and exceptionally creative
scientists, artists, mathematicians, and engineers do not score higher on intelligence
than do their less, creative peers (Simonton, 2000). Furthermore, the brain areas that
are associated with convergent thinking, thinking that is directed toward finding the
correct answer to a given problem, are different from those associated with divergent
thinking, the ability to generate many different ideas or solutions to a single problem
(Tarasova, Volf, & Razoumnikova, 2010). On the other hand, being creative often takes
some of the basic abilities measured by “g”, including the abilities to learn from
experience, to remember information, and to think abstractly (Bink & Marsh, 2000),
The last aspect of the triarchic model, practical intelligence, refers primarily to
intelligence that cannot be gained from books or formal learning. Practical intelligence
represents a type of “street smarts” or “common sense” that is learned from life
experiences. Although a number of tests have been devised to measure practical
intelligence (Sternberg, Wagner, & Okagaki, 1993; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985),
research has not found much evidence that practical intelligence is distinct from “g” or
that it is predictive of success at particular tasks (Gottfredson, 2003). Practical
intelligence may include, at least in part, certain abilities that help people perform well
at specific jobs, and these abilities may not always be highly correlated with general
intelligence (Sternberg et al., 1993).
Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Another champion of the idea of specific types of
intelligences rather than one overall intelligence is the psychologist Howard Gardner
(1983, 1999). Gardner argued that it would be evolutionarily functional for different
people to have different talents and skills, and proposed that there are eight
intelligences that can be differentiated from each other. Table 7.2 lists Gardner’s eight
specific intelligences. Gardner identified these 8 intelligences using multiple sources
of evidence. He conducted psychometric analyses of tests designed to capture
different kinds of intelligence. He also examined evidence from studies of children who
were talented in one or more areas, and from studies of adults who suffered brain
damage from strokes that compromised capacities in some areas, but not in others.
Gardner also noted that some evidence for multiple intelligences comes from the
abilities of autistic savants, people who score low on intelligence tests overall, but who
nevertheless may have exceptional skills in a given domain, such as math, music, art,
or in being able to recite statistics in a given sport (Treffert & Wallace, 2004). A potential
ninth intelligence; that is, existential intelligence, still needs empirical support.
The idea of multiple intelligences has been influential in the field of education, and
teachers have used these ideas to try to teach differently to different students. For
instance, to teach math problems to students who have particularly good kinesthetic
intelligence, a teacher might encourage the students to move their bodies or hands
according to the numbers. On the other hand, some have argued that these
“intelligences” sometimes seem more like “abilities” or “talents” rather than real
intelligence. There is no clear conclusion about how many intelligences there are. Are
sense of humor, artistic skills, dramatic skills, and so forth also separate intelligences?
Furthermore, and again demonstrating the underlying power of a single intelligence,
the many different intelligences are, in fact, correlated and thus represent, in part, “g”
(Brody, 2003).
Measuring Intelligence: Standardization and the Intelligence Quotient
The goal of most intelligence tests is to measure “g”, the general intelligence
factor. Good intelligence tests are reliable, meaning that they are consistent over time,
and also demonstrate validity, meaning that they actually measure intelligence rather
than something else. Because intelligence is such an important individual difference
dimension, psychologists have invested substantial effort in creating and improving
measures of intelligence, and these tests are now considered the most accurate of all
psychological tests. In fact, the ability to accurately assess intelligence is one of the
most important contributions of psychology to everyday public life. Intelligence
changes with age. A 3-year-old who could accurately multiply 183 by 39 would
certainly be intelligent, but a 25-year-old who could not do so would be seen as
unintelligent. Thus, understanding intelligence requires that we know the norms or
standards in a given population of people at a given age. The standardization of a test
involves giving it to a large number of people at different ages and computing the
average score on the test at each age level.
It is important that intelligence tests be standardized on a regular basis,
because the overall level of intelligence in a population may change over time. The
Flynn effect refers to the observation that scores on intelligence tests worldwide have
increased substantially over the past decades (Flynn, 1999). Although the increase
varies somewhat from country to country, the average increase is about 3 IQ points
every 10 years. There are many explanations for the Flynn effect, including better
nutrition, increased access to information, and more familiarity with multiple-choice
tests (Neisser, 1998). Whether people are actually getting smarter, however, is
debatable (Neisser, 1997). Most of the increase in IQ occurred during the second half
of the 20th century. Recent research has found a reversal of the Flynn effect in several
nations around the world, although some nations still show an increase in IQ scores
(Dutton, van der Linden, & Lynn, 2016).
Once the standardization has been accomplished, we have a picture of the
average abilities of people at different ages and can calculate a person’s mental age,
which is the age at which a person is performing intellectually. If we compare the
mental age of a person to the person’s chronological age, the result is the Intelligence
Quotient (IQ), a measure of intelligence that is adjusted for age. A simple way to
calculate IQ is by using the following formula:
IQ = mental age ÷ chronological age × 100.
Thus a 10-year-old child who does as well as the average 10-year-old child has
an IQ of 100 (10 ÷ 10 × 100), whereas an 8-year-old child who does as well as the
average 10-year-old child would have an IQ of 125 (10 ÷ 8 × 100). Most modern
intelligence tests are based on the relative position of a person’s score among people
of the same age, rather than on the basis of this formula, but the idea of an intelligence
“ratio” or “quotient” provides a good description of the score’s meaning.
Wechsler Scales. A number of scales are based on the IQ. The Wechsler Adult
lntelligence Scale (WAIS) is the most widely used intelligence test for adults (Watkins,
Campbell, Nieberding, & Hallmark, 1995). The current version of the WAIS, the WAIS-
IV, was standardized on 2,200 people ranging from 16 to 90 years of age. It consists
of 15 different tasks, each designed to assess intelligence, including working memory,
arithmetic ability, spatial ability, and general knowledge about the world. The WAIS-IV
yields scores on four domains: verbal, perceptual, working memory, and processing
speed. The reliability of the test is high (more than 0.95), and it shows substantial
construct validity. The WAIS-IV is correlated highly with other IQ tests such as the
Stanford-Binet, as well as with criteria of academic and life success, including college
grades, measures of work performance, and occupational level. It also shows
significant correlations with measures of everyday functioning among people with
intellectual disabilities.
The Wechsler scale has also been adapted for preschool children in the form
of the Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence-Fourth Edition (WPPSI-
IV) and for older children and adolescents in the form of the Wechsler Intelligence
Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V). Bias in Tests of Intelligence. Intelligence
tests and psychological definitions of intelligence have been heavily criticized since
the 1970s for being biased in favor of Anglo-American, middle-class respondents and
for being inadequate tools for measuring non-academic types of intelligence or talent.
Intelligence changes with experience, and intelligence quotients or scores do not
reflect that ability to change. What is considered smart varies culturally as well, and
most intelligence tests do not take this variation into account. For example, in the West,
being smart is associated with being quick. A person who answers a question the
fastest is seen as the smartest, but in some cultures being smart is associated with
considering an idea thoroughly before giving an answer. A well-thought out,
contemplative answer is the best answer.
• This required video explores the history of intelligence tests, including their
initial creation, their use to justify eugenics practices, and their inherent flaws.
