1. What Makes Us Intelligent Or Not So Intelligent
Intelligence
What Makes Us Intelligent Or
Not So Intelligent

2. Intelligence What is intelligence? Intelligence is NOT achievement
We usually measure intelligence with TESTS!
There are two basic types of tests:
Achievement tests
Aptitude tests

3. Intelligence
Aptitude tests measure what an individual is able to do later – it measures ability.
Achievement tests measure knowledge and skills gained from experience and practice.
Although intelligence is not achievement, it can provide the basis to make achievement easier.
Aptitude tests are more accurate measurements of intelligence.

4. Aptitude vs. Achievement Tests
A test designed to predict a person’s future performance.
The ability for that person to learn.
Achievement
A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

5. Intelligence
The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, think rationally, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations (deal effectively with the environment).
Is socially constructed thus…
Can be culturally specific.
According to this definition, are both Einstein and Ruth intelligent?

6. Intelligence: Its Nature and Measurement
Individual differences
Even though psychological theories make generalizations about behavior and mental processes, each human being is different (yet we are similar).
Nineteenth century industrialization in the Western world, in part, lead to the need for society to describe people’s individual differences (because jobs were becoming specialized).
Also contributing to an increasing interest in measurement and understanding of individual differences (including intelligence) was the fact that compulsory elementary education was becoming the norm in industrialized nations.

7. Brief History of Intelligence (continued)
The focus on individual differences also grew from a new and revolutionary theory: evolution.
Because of this new theory and industrialization, Western societies needed a way to measure individual abilities to place them in educational and occupational niches.
From this need to measure individual differences and intelligence, grew a variety of mental (intelligence) tests.
Remember: Intelligence is measured by aptitude tests.

8. Is intelligence one thing or several different abilities?
To find out scientists use FACTOR ANALYSIS:
A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test.
Charles Spearman used FA to discovery his g or (general intelligence).
Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory:
He saw using FA that doing well in one area of a test of mental ability predicted that you will do well in another.

9. Thurstone’s Theory of Primary Mental Abilities
Unlike Spearman, Thurstone did not believe in one “g” factor of intelligence.
Instead, he concluded that intelligence was a set of seven primary mental abilities (each measurable).
Verbal Comprehension
Numerical Ability
Memory
Inductive Reasoning
Perceptual Speed
Verbal Fluency
Spatial Relations

10. Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Howard Gardner disagreed with Spearman’s g and instead came up with the concept of multiple intelligences.
He came up with the idea by studying savants (a condition where a person has limited mental ability but is exceptional in one area).

11. Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences
Gardner believed that there exists at least 7 different types of intelligences.
Linguistic
Logical-mathematical
Spatial
Musical
Body-kinesthetic
Intrapersonal
Interpersonal
Naturalist

12. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory (Three Aspects of Intelligence).
Robert Sternberg emphasized how three different aspects of intelligence meet to help us face the demands of daily life.
Gardner Simplified
Analytical intelligence is the traditional intelligence measured by aptitude tests
Creative intelligence is the ability to invent or problem solve creatively.
Practical intelligence is the ability to apply what you know to common everyday things (sense of street smarts).

13. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
First called Social intelligence.
The ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.
Some studies show EQ to be a greater predictor for future success than IQ

14. How do we Assess Intelligence?
Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon set out to figure out a concept called a mental age (what a person of a particular age should know).
They discovered that by discovering someone’s mental age they can predict future performance.
Hoped they could use test to help children, not label them.

15. Measurement of Intelligence
By the turn of the 20th century, compulsory elementary education was the norm among many Western industrialized nations.
In France in 1904, psychologist, Alfred Binet, was given the task by the French government of developing a test to identify “special” children (for placement in schools).
Binet and his associates developed an objective diagnostic test (instrument) to measure a child’s intelligence.
Binet developed the IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test (and coined the term).

16. Binet’s IQ Test IQ = MA/CA x 100
Binet gave his test to a special standardized group of French Parisian children with different ages.
The results showed a gradual increase in mental ability with increasing age.
Each set of subtests were successfully passed by the average child of a given age.
Thus, he determined the Mental Age of a child in relationship to their Chronological Age – this is essentially IQ.
IQ = MA/CA x 100

17. IQ = MA/CA x 100 Mental Age is the level of cognitive capacity.
To determine whether a child was “bright” or “dull,” one has to compare his MA with his CA
If MA exceeds CA, then the child is considered bright/advanced.
If MA is below CA, then the child is considered slow/retarded.

18. Problems with the IQ Formula
It does not really work well on adults, why?
If a 60 year old man
does as well as an average 35 year old
then his IQ would be 50!!!!!!
That makes no sense!!!!!

19. After Binet
Alfred Binet died in 1911; Stanford University professor Lewis Terman attempted to use Binet’s IQ test in California, but found that the French developed age norms did not work well with white California schoolchildren.
Terman adapted Binet’s test – added/changed items, established new age norms, and extended the upper end of the test’s range to include adults.
Terman named his revised test: the Stanford-Binet IQ Test.

20. Terman’s IQ Legacy
Before and during World War I, the U.S. government used Terman’s test to evaluate arriving immigrants (primarily Ellis Island in New York) and army recruits.
The results, in general, showed the “inferiority” of people not sharing the Anglo-Saxon heritage (i.e., white protestant).
These “inferiority” findings led to the 1924 Immigration Law – which significantly reduced immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as compared to Northern and Northwestern Europe.

21. Brain Size and Intelligence Is there a link?
Small +.15 correlation between head size and intelligence scores (relative to body size).
Using an MRI we found +.44 correlation with brain size (volume) and IQ score.

22. Neurology, Culture and Intelligence
Neurology and Intelligence
If the intelligence is correlated with brain size, then the contributing factors could include genes, nutrition, environmental stimulation, and/or some combination thereof.
Culture and Intelligence
Intelligence is a socially constructed concept.
Cultures deem intelligent whatever attributes enable success in that specific culture.

23. Brain Function and Intelligence
Highly intelligent people tend to have more brain synapses, take in information more quickly, and show faster brain-wave responses to simple stimuli such as a flash of light.
Faster cognitive processing may allow more information to be acquired.

24. Modern Tests of Mental Abilities
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) the most widely used intelligence test; consists of 11 subtests (verbal and nonverbal) which cues us in to strengths by using Factor Analysis

25. Assessing Intelligence: Sample Items from the WAIS
From Thorndike and Hagen, 1977
VERBAL
General Information
Similarities
Arithmetic Reasoning
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Digit Span
PERFORMANCE
Picture Completion
Picture Arrangement
Block Design
Object Assembly
Digit-Symbol Substitution

26. Measuring Intelligence
How are tests constructed to accurately
measure aptitude?
How many questions you answer right on a test of IQ tell us virtually nothing about your intellectual abilities.
Test results must be compared with others’ performance on the same test.
For the comparison to be scientifically meaningful, test-makers (psychologists) first give the test to a representative sample of individuals.
This process of defining scores relative to pretested group is called Standardization.

27. How do we construct an Intelligence Test?
Standardized: the questions have been piloted on similar populations and the scores fall on a normal distribution.
Reliable: Test-Retest, Split-halves Methods.
Validity: Content, Predictive or Construct.

28. Measuring Intelligence (continued)
Standardized test results usually form a normal distribution – a bell-shaped curve that is also called the normal curve.
All test results fall within this curve.
2.14%
13.59%
34.13%
0.13%
95.44%
68.26%
Wechsler IQ score
Number of score

29. The Normal Curve

30. Flynn Effect

31. Test Reliability Measuring Intelligence (continued)
Comparing test scores with those of a standardized group still won’t tell us much about your intelligence unless the test has reliability.
Reliability is the degree to which a test produces/yields dependable, consistent scores time after time.
Researchers re-test individuals and look to find similar scores time and again – this is reliability of a test.

32. Test Validity Measuring Intelligence (continued)
High reliability does not ensure that the test is valid, (i.e., that the test actually “tests” what it claims to.)  this is called validity.
Validity is the extent to which the test actually measures what it is supposed to measure.

33. There are 3 types of validity:
Content validity = tests the pertinent behavior of interest/concept
Example – A driving test that samples driving tasks
Criterion validity = how well does the test agree with some independent criteria or measure
Predictive validity = how well does a test predict future achievement

34. Does Intelligence Change Over Time?
By age 3-4, a child’s IQ can predict adolescent IQ scores and adult scores.
Depends on the type of intelligence, crystallized or fluid.

35. Extremes of Intelligence

36. Group Differences in Intelligence Test Scores
The Bell curve is different for Whites versus Black.
Math scores are different across genders and the highest scores are for Asian males.
Why?
Nature or Nurture

37. Test Bias? Tests do discriminate.
But some argue that their sole purpose is to discriminate.
We have to look at the type of discrimination.