Intelligence Chapter 7

Intelligence  The global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment.  Not necessarily, “…book smarts”  “To judge well, to comprehend well, to reason well, these are the essential activities of intelligence.”

Alfred Binet  Needed to identify students who would require special help  Theodore Simon assisted with developing a test to measure different mental abilities  Focused on elementary mental abilities like memory, attention, ability to understand similarities and differences

Binet (continued)  Developed the idea of a mental age  Did not believe he was measuring an inborn level of intelligence; believed the score could vary over time and be affected by external factors like motivation

Lewis Terman  Translated and adapted Binet’s test  Developed the intelligence quotient; divide the individual’s mental age by the chronological age and multiply by 100  Demonstrated in a longitudinal study including 1500 California children with genius-level intelligence that high IQ is not necessarily associated with social and/or physical ineptness

World War I  Army Alpha and Army Beta test used to screen 2 million army recruits  Wide use after the war by civilians  Used among immigrants; testing experts tried to influence Congress to limit certain nationalities deemed “unfit”

David Wechsler  Most commonly administered test  11 subtests measuring different abilities  Verbal score which is representative of scores on vocabulary, comprehension, knowledge of general information, and other verbal tasks  Performance Score reflective of scores of tests requiring identifying the missing part in incomplete pictures, arranging pictures, or arranging blocks to follow a pattern.

Wechsler (continued)  Added features… –Profile of a person’s strengths and weaknesses –Potential to screen for learning disorders –Culture may play a role in performance on the verbal subtest –Scores were calculated using the scores of others in the same general age group as a comparison; average score is statistically fixed at 100 with a standard deviation of +/- 15.

What are the characteristics of a good test of intelligence?

Test Construction  Standardization -Norms are established based on a representative sample and scores are compared to these norms  Reliability – must consistently produce similar scores on different occasions  Validity – it measures what it is supposed to measure

Theories of Intelligence  “g factor” – a single measure of cognitive ability; Charles Spearman  “primary mental abilities” – (numerical ability, reasoning, perceptual speed, etc); Louis Thurstone; more concerned with the pattern of different abilities versus a single quotient

Theories of Intelligence (continued)  “multiple intelligences” – developed idea based on the observation that some abilities are lost while others are maintained following brain damage; intelligence is reflective of “…the ability to solve problems, or to create products, that are valued within one or more cultural settings.”; Howard Gardner (see page 312)

Theories of Intelligence (continued)  “successful intelligence” – three types of mental abilities –Analytic – picking a problem solving strategy and applying it –Creative – drawing on existing skills and knowledge to cope with new situations –Practical intelligence – “street smarts”  Robert Sternberg