9.1 perspectives on intelligence Flashcards
psychologist were improperly marketing intelligence tests as capable of determining ____
a persons innate intellectual ability, encouraging gov leaders across north america to use scores on intelligence tests to make decisions about citizens and sometimes to forces citizens to undergo irreversible surgical procedures
the aim of sterilization programs
to prevent individuals who are identified as having low intelligence from producing children, these were eugenics programs meant to engineer genetically superior population
sir francis galton
- responsible for the earliest attempts to measure intelligence
- had idea that high intelligence emerged from possessing unusually keen sensory abilities
anthropometrics
procedures for measuring variations in human physical and mental abilities
james mckeen cattell
further explored the link between sensory abilities and achievement
- he had to reject galtons idea that intelligence is a consequence of keen sensory abilities
- there really isn’t much correlation bw the diff sensory abilities of individuals
- ex. having great visual abilities doesn’t mean that a person will also have great hearing abilities
alfred binet and theodore simon
figured intelligence was not really a matter of sensory ability, instead they proposed that an intelligence should be thought of as reflecting differences of more complex mental ability, such as memory, attention and language comprehension
intelligence
an ability to think, understand, reason, and adapt to or overcome obstacles
binet-simon developed a test of intelligence
- 30 tasks that cover a range of difficulty
- gave test to each age to determine each average test score
mental age
if a child’s chronological age is 10, but their score most closely matches the average score of 8 year olds, their mental age would be 8
lewis terman
modified the binet-simon test and called it the stanford-binet test
terman created the standford-binet intelligence test
providing a measure of children’s innate and stable level of intelligence
-provides permanent intellectual ability
intelligence quotient (IQ)
mental age/chronological age*100=
Deviation IQ
relating the score a person receives on an intelligence test to the average score obtained from a very large group of ppl that are the same age
- used for adults
- the area under the normal curve represents the % of individuals that fall in that range of scores
Terman succeeded in selling his intelligence tests ..
to the US military during world war I and afterwards to the US public school system
Social darwinism
the idea that naturally superior social groups emerge as dominant in competition for wealth and power and therefore have earned the right to rule over members of other groups, who have less wealth and less power
-involves racist concepts like “the white man’s burden”and the notion of a hierarchy of race- which ordered races according to their presumed genetic relationship to apes
eugenics
aimed at improving the genetic quality of the ppl that formed a nation
Galton’s tree of scientifically talented/ brilliant relatives
lots of ppl in his family are very intelligent
terman stanford-binet intelligence test
-high grade or border line deficiency is very very common among Spanish-indian and Mexican families of the southwest and also among negroes
-their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come
children of this group should be segregated into separate classes
from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem bc of their unusually prolific breeding
they cannot master the abstractions, but they can often be made into efficient workers
sterilization relies heavily on
intelligence tests scores
most of the sterilized were new immigrants, poor ppl, aboriginal and black ppl
intelligence tests and cultural bias
the task here is to fill in whatever is missing i each image
- tests in english
- relied heavily on concepts that are common from middle to upper class white ppl
john raven’s progressive matrices
intelligence tests that are free from cultural bias
- based on pictures rather than words
- patterns, shapes or colours
- still showed cultural bias, asians tended to score better
Meritocracy
the idea that wealth, power, and status should depend solely on hard work and natural ability
-this idea ignores the reality that not everyone starts the competition for wealth, power and status at the same level
the testing situation is inherently culturally biased
members of different ethnic groups vary in how comfortable they are in formal testing situations, with test administrators, and in their motivation to perform well
stereotype threat
discriminatory views about the intelligence level of members or an ethnic group can actually lead members of those groups to perform worse on standardized tests
IQ scores are…
- not direct measures of innate intellectual ability
- also measures of racial discrimination and unequal civil rights
incremental theory
the belief that a person’s intelligence can be improved with experience and effort
Entity theory
the belief that intelligence is a stable trait that is nearly impossible to improve
-contrary to entity theory, a person’s IQ score is not written in stone
Weschler adult intelligence scale (WAIS)
full scale IQ
-provides a measure for a persons overall level of intelligence
full scale IQ consists of a combo of :
- the general ability index (GAI)
2. the cognitive proficiency index (CPI)
the general ability index (GAI)
a measure of performance on verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning tasks
the cognitive proficiency index (CPI)
a measure of working memory capacity and processing speed
psychology has a history of
unethical and human rights violations
