Chapter 10: Intelligence Flashcards
Average IQ score?
100
Flynn effect
on average, IQ scores were rising even on tests which are supposed to be immune to cultural influences; controversial since it implies that on average, most people several generations back were quite unintelligent
Who created a lot of controversy when they published the results of a series of studies that seem to indicate that average scores on IQ tests were increasing over time?
James Flynn
The three main explanations to identify the precise cause(s) of the apparent change in IQ scores over time:
- Better nutrition and health care.
- Better education, including more abstract thinking and knowledge of (and need for) science (in the post-industrial society,
- Increasing complexity of our environment due to changing technology
*FLYNN EFFECT IS DECLINING/REVERSING
Francis Galton is whose cousin?
Charles Darwin
Francis Galton used what kinds of measures and methods? And for what reason?
empirical; for precise measurement
Galton conceptualized that one’s general cognitive ability (g) was the product of what things (2)?
heredity/physiological measures (eye colour, hair colour) (g) and measures of one’s sensitivities to perceptual differences (reaction time, body proportions, muscular power, and sensory acuity, weight discrimination, pitch sensitivity)
Was Galton successful to support his hypothesis?
No.
Who plotted the normal distribution/bell curve?
Galton
Although many biological features are _____, it is poor logic to assume that they are necessarily _____ (Galton’s conclusion)
normally distributed; biologically innate
Galton: nature or nurture
nature (intelligence formed a normal distribution, it was biologically innate, like a person’s height)
Binet: nature or nurture?
nurture; mental exercises can improve performance
Galton: nature or nurture?
nature
Who suggested Lewis Terman to incorporate the intelligence quotient (IQ)?
William Stern
What did Terman find after testing 905 children?
- distribution of scores was approximately normal
- the scores matched the assessment by teachers of each student’s intelligence, which suggested some validity to the test
What were Wechsler’s three tests?
the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III), the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III0), and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI)
WAIS contains several figural tests known as ____, and what are they?
performance tests; designed to assess an individual’s ability to detect non-obvious patterns and use them to answer a question; standardized way of seeing how well people can “read between the lines.”
Who is the founder of eugenics?
Sir Francis Galton
When did eugenics become popular in the US?
early 1900s, preventing “less-desirable” people from having children and passing on their perceivably inferior DNA
What does eugenics prevent?
“less-desirable” people (depending on class or race) from having children and passing on their perceivably inferior DNA
Eugenics is based on _____
social Darwinism
Why is social Darwinism is now largely discredited?
misunderstood Darwin’s theory as claiming that the strong survive while the weak perish; dramatic oversimplification of Darwin’s theory
Terman’s recommendations on eugenics (2):
- believed that these people should be steered into lower status and more menial jobs
- people of low IQ should be sterilized without their consent to prevent them from reproducing and thereby increasing the number of individuals with low intelligence
Did Terman believe in eugenics?
Yes (white people had the highest intelligence).
Terman’s test results on eugenics:
non-white ethnicities inevitably came up with lower scores for the individuals he tested
Why did Terman get the results that he did?
- many did not understand English well or at all
- many of them had little knowledge of American culture, which also reduced their score on the test
Terman’s assumptions
- because IQ scores fell on a normal distribution, the scores were valid measures of innate intelligence
- one’s place in society was determined solely by intelligence, but in times of widespread and overt prejudice and discrimination
(failure to look at confounding variables)
Scores on various portions of intelligence tests likely reflected the test taker’s ______ as opposed to their ______
socioeconomic status; innate intelligence
Measured differences in scores across groups may also be due to systematic differences between the environments of test takers… (3)
- adequate nutrition, quality of attachment between parent and caregiver, and even reliable access to books in the home all correlate with measures of intelligence
- questionable whether tests such as Raven’s Progressive Matrices are not driven to some degree by features specific to the test
- consensus of scholars in evolutionary biology and anthropology that racial distinctions fail because “they are not genetically distinct, are not reliably measured, and are not scientifically meaningful”
Researchers believe that several characteristics that correlate with modern measures of intelligence were shared by other species of Homo…
meaning some of these abilities are older than humans
stereotype threat
refers to the risk of confirming negative expectations about one’s social group
Two important intervening variables that are found between one’s intelligence and one’s performance on intelligence test:
- stereotype threat
- how we conceptualize intelligence
role of stereotype threat
- feel pressure to not provide evidence supporting negative stereotypes of the group to which they belong
- increases their anxiety while taking the test and divides their attention from the task at hand; consequently degrading performance
If you think your intelligence is fixed..
you would likely perceive personal failures as the result of your lower intelligence; trying seems pointless
If you think your intelligence is malleable…
failure is not so devastating because it simply indicates that more effort is needed or different strategies are needed
mental structure of representations, attitudes, and interpretations that affects how one evaluates information and thereby responds to situations
mindset
Can mindset have an impact on performance?
Yes.
Is it likely that your attitude and manner of identification with your intelligence actually changes your intelligence?
No; more likely that stereotype threat and mindset are intervening
Evidence shows that your IQ is not constant in adulthood. T/F?
False; it is constant
Equally valuable traits as intelligence
rationality and expertise
How is mindfulness good for cognitive function? (2)
- change working memory function and attention
- can resist the decline in intelligence that comes with age and improve brain function
Men are better at ____? Women are better at ____?
visuospatial tasks, aiming at target; verbal abilities
use of statistical measures to determine how much variables are related to each other in order to find clusters called “factors.”
factor analysis
g
general factor of intelligence (general intelligence, general cognitive abilities)
Who initiated the use of factor analysis?
Charles Spearman
What did Charles Spearman find when studying intelligence?
- schoolchildren’s grades in various subjects were positively correlated with each other
- students tended to score similarly across different academic subjects despite the dramatic differences in the subject matter
If students’ scores are similar across the high jump, long jump, hurdles, and sprinting (where scores are highly correlated), then it would be reasonable to recognize these items as part of…
one factor
The lack of relatedness between two tasks mean they are from
different factors
Who introduced the g-factor?
Charles Spearman
Who hypothesized that intelligence is made up of two levels?
Spearman
What are the two levels of intelligence?
- higher-order level of general intelligence (g)
- lower-order specialized abilities that are specific to certain subjects or tasks (s)
Difference between higher and lower levels of intelligence?
- higher: an ability that you can apply to any content area
- lower: more specialized version of this general ability; can only be applied to more limited content areas
s
specific level of intelligence
Who contradicted Spearman’s theory of a general intelligence factor?
Louis Thurstone
What did Thurstone conclude?
intelligence is made up of seven factors that he referred to as primary mental abilities
Induction of a pattern from a sequence and deduction of a conclusion from some premises
reasoning
Trying to identify the differences and similarities between two stimuli
perceptual speed
Repeat back a sequence given to you
memory
Similar to Raven’s Progressive Matrices
spatial visualization
What is 23 times 15
numeric abilities
Recognizing synonyms and antonyms
Verbal Comprehension
Generate as many words that start with S as possible in 5 minutes, then as many as possible that start with C in 4 minutes
word fluency
The seven primary mental abilities are:
- word fluency
- verbal comprehension
- numeric abilities
- spatial visualization
- memory
- perceptual speed
- reasoning
Who tried to reconcile Spearman’s theories regarding two levels of intelligence with Thurstone’s theory of primary mental abilities?
Raymond Cattell
What kind of model did Raymond Cattell try to create?
hierarchical
What does Cattell’s hierarchial structure look like?
top is general intelligence, which comprised two major factors found at the intermediary level: fluid general intelligence (Gf) and crystallized general intelligence (Gc)
fluid intelligence
ability to think and solve problems in complex and novel situations in a flexible manner without relying primarily in the knowledge you already possess
crystallized intelligence
ability to solve problems and reason about situations because of knowledge you already possess
cognitive flexibility
ability to change one’s attention accordingly; involves breaking out of standard and/or automatic forms of behaviour (knowing when to apply knowledge)
Why do fluid and crystallized intelligence also have a complex developmental relationship?
Initially, they are highly correlated, but they diverge in adult life and continue to do so for the rest of the lifespan.
Who came up with the Wisdom Paradox?
Elkhonon Goldberg
Wisdom Paradox
We seem to get wiser as we age even though our intelligence goes down with age; intelligence is a fixed trait while rationalities and skills are abilities that can be increased with training and practice.
________’s theory of triarchic intelligence
Sternberg
Three different content areas in Sternberg’s theory of triarchic intelligence?
- analytical intelligence
- creative intelligence
- practical intelligence
analytical intelligence
the kind of intelligence that is used in a standard IQ test such as mathematic reasoning
creative intelligence
ability to solve problems in novel situations often by demonstrating cognitive flexibility
practical intelligence
ability to solve problems in real-world settings
Criticisms for Sternberg’s theory
- all three intelligences were strongly related to each other
- there was no evidence for practical intelligence being separate from g
What kind of intelligence uses all three components of Sternberg’s theory? What does it do?
successful intelligence; helps one perform in the greatest possible variety of contexts
Who proposed the concept of multiple intelligences?
Howard Gardner
multiple intelligences:
There are many intelligences that apply to specific domains of human behaviour; Gardner claims this is reflected in those domains where we find prodigies
Who many sources of intelligence did Gardener propose?
Eight; four are central
Gardner’s eight types of intelligence include:
– Bodily-kinesthetic
– Interpersonal
– Verbal-linguistic
– Logical-mathematical
– Naturalistic
– Intra-personal
– Visual-spatial
– Musical
True or false: there has been little evidence other than some case studies for multiple intelligences.
True.
Why is it not appropriate to think that 50% of your intelligence is genetic and 50% is environmental?
- it is probable that the biological and the cultural evolution of intelligence are deeply intertwined
- it is extremely unlikely that there is a “gene for intelligence”; probably based on many genes, and various combinations of these genes can be turned off and on by environmental changes
So while it is safe to say that some significant proportion of the variance in intelligence is due to heritable genetic factors, we should not simplistically conclude that
50% is genetic and 50% is environmental
In family studies in which one sees if biologically related individuals are more similar in intelligence than non-related individuals and whether the similarity increases with biological relatedness… what are the results? Is intelligence heritable?
There are consistent findings that intelligence level is heritable.
self-enhancement bias
the tendency to judge one’s performance better than the average without any evidence of special expertise or training
How did Sir Francis Galton purport to measure differences in abilities?
Using multiple physiological measures
Galton’s measurements predicted academic success. (T/F)
F
Galton collected data from many patrons and found that most characteristics cluster around some value, but also have variability that is known as the _________.
standard deviation
Why are Galton’s tests not predictive of each other?
they had low concurrent validity, nor were they predictive of academic success (i.e., they had low predictive validity)
functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI)
physiological measures of intelligence has re-emerged with neuroscience and new technologies
Galton concluded that since intelligence formed a normal distribution, it was ______
biologically innate
Recognizing synonyms and antonyms
Verbal Comprehension
Trying to identify the differences and similarities between two stimuli
perceptual speed
