1. INTELLIGENCE Unit 8

2. What is intelligence ◦ Intelligence: ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations ◦ Concept, not thing….hmmmmm how do we measure concepts? ◦ When we consider someone’s intelligence as an object that we are committing reification ◦ She has an IQ of 120 versus Her score on the intelligence test was 120.

3. Aptitude versus Ability ◦ Aptitude: ability to acquire knowledge; capacity to learn ◦ Aptitude is an ability: the ability to learn ◦ Ability: capability ◦ Natural gift ◦ Intelligence ◦ Competence ◦ Is intelligence an aptitude or an ability???

4. Cultural Variations in Intelligence ◦ Socially constructed concept ◦ Intelligence=whatever characteristics that enable success in said culture

5. Intelligent Controversies on Intelligence ◦ Is intelligence a single overall ability or several specific abilities? ◦ Can we locate and measure intelligence?

6. THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE Is intelligence a single overall ability or several specific abilities?

7. General Intelligence ◦ Factor analysis: measure clusters of items to see if traits run together or certain abilities predict other abilities ◦ General Intelligence=g factor (Spearman) ◦ People who score high in one factor often score high in other factors ◦ General intelligence is correlated with abilities to solve novel problems

8. Multiple Intelligences ◦ Different abilities help us solve different problems ◦ Savant Syndrome: someone with limited mental ability exhibits an exceptional specific skill ◦ Correlated with being male and having autism ◦ Examples: Rain Man, A Beautiful Mind https://www.youtu be.com/watch?v= 1wkFGXqJxas

9. Gardner Multiple (Independent) Intelligences 1.Linguistic 2.Logical-mathematical 3.Musical 4.Spatial 5.Bodily-kinesthetic 6.Intrapersonal 7.Interpersonal 8.Naturalist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wkFGXqJxas

10. Triarchic Theory (Sternberg) ◦ Analytical (academic problem-solving) Intelligence ◦ Measured by intelligence tests ◦ Creative Intelligence ◦ Demonstrated by reacting to novel situations or creating novel ideas ◦ Practical Intelligence ◦ Required for everyday tasks (poorly defined, many solutions) ◦ Do these share a general intelligence?

13. TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE Emotional, Creative

14. Social Intelligence (Cantor, Kihlstrom) ◦ Social intelligence: understanding social situations and managing oneself effectively ◦ Emotional intelligence is a subset of social intelligence ◦ Helps to explain why high-aptitude people are not always more successful ◦ Emotional intelligence: ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJhfKYzKc0s&feature=player_embedded

16. Measuring Emotional Intelligence ◦ Perceive Emotion: recognize emotions in faces, music, stories ◦ Understand Emotion: predict emotions and how they change/blend ◦ Manage Emotion: know how to express emotions in various situations ◦ High scorers have better relationships, less stress, and tend to be slightly more successful than low scorers

17. Brain and Emotional Intelligence ◦ Brain damaged patients case study ◦ Elliot: normal intellect and memory ◦ Brain tumor was removed and he lost his emotions ◦ Lost his job, went bankrupt, 2x divorced, couldn’t live alone… ◦ This might suggest that emotional intelligence is completely distinct from other intelligences

18. Validity of Emotional Intelligence ◦ High emotional intelligence show modestly better ◦ Job performance ◦ Ability to set long term goals ◦ Successful interpersonal relationships ◦ Gardner argues emotion is important but separate (same with creativity and motivation)

19. Creativity ◦ Fermat’s Last Theorem ◦ Wiles struck with insight and creativity! ◦ Solved the $2 mil. problem ◦ Creativity: ability to produce novel and valuable ideas ◦ Correlation between intelligence and creativity ◦ There is a correlation: high scoring IQ people also tend to score high on creativity tests. ◦ Limit: IQ score of 120

20. Types of Thinking ◦ Convergent Thinking ◦ Thinking which requires a single correct answer ◦ Focus on a problem and use resources to answer it ◦ Measured by most intelligence tests ◦ Divergent Thinking ◦ Thinking which has potentially many solutions ◦ Focus on different solutions to a problem

21. Components of Creativity 1.Expertise 2.Imaginative Thinking Skills 3.Venturesome Personality 4.Intrinsic Motivation 5.Creative Environment

22. Expertise ◦ Expertise: well developed base of knowledge ◦ More tools/facts/info we have the more combinations we can make ◦ 2 types of bread, 2 types of meat, 2 types of vegetables=fewer sandwich combinations than 5 types of each.

23. Imaginative Thinking ◦ New perspective ◦ Recognize patterns ◦ Make connections ◦ Ex. Copernicus: paradigm shifting!

24. Venturesome Personality ◦ Almost like adventurous ◦ These individuals tolerate personality and risk ◦ Overcome obstacles ◦ Seek new experiences ◦ Ex. Tough Mudder, Thomas Edison

25. Intrinsic Motivation ◦ Creativity is usually a product of internal not external motivation ◦ People assigned to do a task which requires out of the box thinking tend to preform worse if there are external motivators ◦ Insight often comes with lots of thinking (maybe even obsession)

26. Environment ◦ Social environment must support creativity ◦ Individuals should feel mentored, challenged, and supported ◦ Fear of judgment limits creativity ◦ Do we think brainstorming encourages creativity?

27. BIOLOGY OF INTELLIGENCE

28. Brain Anatomy: Size ◦ There is a positive correlation between brain size and intelligence ◦ Controlling for animal size ◦ Fun fact: as you age IQ drops and brain size decreases ◦ Rats raised in a stimulating environment have thicker and heavier cortexes.

29. Anatomy: Neurons ◦ People who are highly educated have about 17% more synapses ◦ Which comes first? Education or synapses? ◦ Intelligence correlates with neural plasticity (ability to adapt and grow new neural connections ◦ Intelligence correlates with gray matter (cell bodies, versus white matter=axon/dendrites) in areas involved with memory, attention, and language

30. Brain Function: Speed ◦ Modest positive correlation between intelligence score and processing speed of perceptual info ◦ Perceived with greater complexity as well ◦ We don’t know why the correlation exists ◦ Ideas? Perhaps faster processing  greater accumulation

31. ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE

32. Alfred Binet ◦ Sought a way to differentiate between students ◦ Assumed intelligence correlated with age (older=more intelligent, younger=less intelligent) ◦ Mental Age ◦ Suggested mental orthopedics to improve mental age

33. Lewis Terman ◦ Stanford Prof ◦ Found that Parisian norms did not apply to California norms ◦ Revised the test to work for US students, established new age norms, and extended the upper end of the test ◦ Stanford-Binet Test ◦ Originally hoped IQ tests would aid eugenics ◦ Only upper spectrum would reproduce

34. Intelligence Quotient ◦ Devised by William Stern ◦ IQ=(Mental Age/Chronological age)*100 ◦ (10/10)*100=100 (aha! Average!) ◦ How does this work with adults? ◦ (20/50)*100=50… uhhh what?! ◦ IQ today does not really equal quotient…just carried over terminology

35. Modern IQ Tests ◦ Aptitude Tests: capabilities ◦ Achievement Tests: learned skills ◦ Separating aptitude and achievement is very difficult ◦ Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (followed by WISC and WPPSI) ◦ Overall score and component score

36. Principles of Test Construction 1.Standardization 2.Reliability 3.Validity 4.Bias

37. Standardization ◦ The process of defining meaningful scores by comparing the performance of a pretested standardization group