Chapter 8 - Intelligence and Individual Differences in Cognition Flashcards
What are psychometricians?
Psychologists who specialize in measuring psychological characteristics such as intelligence and personality
How do psychometricians go about researching a particular question?
- Usually begin by administering a large number of tests to many individuals
- Then they look for patterns in performance across the different tests
- If changes in performance on one psychological test are accompanied by changes in the second test, then the tests appear to measure the same attribute or factor
What would you believe if a child’s performance were consistent across tasks?
- Intelligence is very broad and general
- Some people are smart regardless of the situation, task, or problem, whereas others are not so smart
- Smart children would always receive high scores and less smart youngsters should always get lower scores
What did Charles Spearman report?
Findings supporting the idea that a general factor for intelligence, or g, is responsible for performance on all mental tests
What did Thurstone and Thurstone analyze and find?
- Analyzed performance on a wide range of tasks and identified seven distinct patterns, each reflecting a unique ability
- Found that intelligence consists of distinct abilities
- Acknowledged a general factor that operated in all tasks, but emphasized that the specific factors were more useful in assessing and understanding intellectual ability
Due to conflicting findings, what did psychometric theorists start proposing?
Hierarchal theories of intelligence that include both general and specific components
What did John Carroll propose?
The hierarchical theory with three levels:
- g, general intelligence, 8 broad categories of intellectual skills, and skills at a specific level
What is fluid intelligence?
The ability to perceive relations among stimuli
What is crystallized intelligence?
Compromises a person’s culturally influenced accumulated knowledge and skills, including understanding printed language, comprehending language, and knowing vocabulary
What is Howard Gardner’s theory?
Theory of multiple intelligences in which he identified seven distinct intelligences, and later on two additional ones
How did Howard Gardner use his resources to develop his theory?
Rather than using test scores as the basis for his theory, Gardner drew on research in child development, studies of brain-damaged persons, and studies of exceptionally talented people
Which intelligences are included in psychometric theories of intelligence?
Linguistic, logical-mathematical, and spatial
Which intelligences are unique to Gardner’s theory?
Musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential
What is linguistic intelligence?
Knowing the meanings of words, having the ability to use words to understand new ideas, and using language to convey ideas to others
What is logical-mathematical intelligence?
Understanding nations that exist among objects, actions, and ideas, as well as the logical or mathematical operations that can be performed on them
What is spatial intelligence?
Perceiving objects accurately and imagining in the “mind’s eye” the appearance of an object before and after it has been transformed
What is musical intelligence?
Comprehending and producing sounds varying in pitch, rhythm, and emotional tone
What is bodily-kinesthetic intelligence?
Using one’s body in highly differentiated ways, as dancers, craftspeople, and athletes do
What is interpersonal intelligence?
Identifying different feelings, moods, motivations, and intentions in others
What is intrapersonal intelligence?
Understanding one’s emotions and knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses
What is naturalistic intelligence?
Recognizing and distinguishing among members of a group (species) and describing relations between such groups
What is existential intelligence?
Considering “ultimate” issues, such as the purpose of life and the nature of death
How did Gardner arrive at these nine distinct intelligences?
- First, each has a unique developmental history
- Second, each intelligence is regulated by distinct regions of the brain
- Third, each has special cases of talented individuals
What individuals often have musical intelligence?
Savants (individuals with mental retardation who are extremely talented in one domain)
Which intelligence is known best?
Emotional intelligence (ability to use one’s own and other’s emotions effectively for solving problems and living happily)
What several distinct facets does emotional intelligence include?
Perceiving emotions accurately, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions
What important implication did the theory of multiple intelligence have for education?
- Schools should foster all intelligences, rather than just the traditional linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences
- Teacher should capitalize on the strongest intelligences of individual children
- Teachers need to know a child’s profile of intelligence (strengths and weaknesses) and gear instruction to the strengths
- No matter the subject, instruction should try to engage as many different intelligences as possible
What did Robert Sternberg study?
Intelligence by beginning to ask how adults solve problems on intelligence tests
What have traditional theories of intelligence been rooted in?
Test scores (tody many scientists believe that these theories are too narrow)
How does Robert Sternberg define successful intelligence?
As using one’s abilities skillfully to achieve one’s personal goals
In achieving personal goals, what abilities do people use?
- Analytic ability: Analyzing problems and generating different solutions
- Creative ability: Dealing adaptively with novel situations and problems
- Practical ability: Knowing what solution or plan will actually work
How did Binet and Simon approach formulating a way to identify children who were likely to succeed in school?
To select simple tasks that children of different ages ought to be able to do, such as naming colours, counting backwards, and remembering numbers in order
What is mental age (MA)?
Children’s mental age referred to the difficulty of the problems that they could solve correctly (e.g., child who solved problems that the average 7-year old could pass would have an MA of 7)
What did Binet and Simon use mental age to distinguish?
“Bright” from “dull” children
- A bright child would have the MA of an older child
- A dull child would have the MA of a younger child
What did Terman describe the performance as?
An intelligence quotient, or IQ
What is IQ?
The ratio of mental age to chronological age, multiplied by 100 (IQ = MA/CA x 100)
At any age, children who are perfectly average will have an IQ of what?
100 because their mental age equals their chronological age
How are IQ scores now computed?
Determined by comparing a child’s test performance to that of others their age
What is the WISC-IV?
- Test for 6-16-year-olds
- Includes subsets of verbal and performance skills
- Based on performance, children receive an overall IQ score as well as scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed
How are the Stanford-Binet and WISC-IV tests alike?
They are administered to one person at a time
What does individual testing optimize and provide?
The motivation and attention of the child and provides an opportunity for a sensitive examiner to assess factors that may influence test performance
Since the Stanford-Binet and WISC-IV can’t be used to test intelligence in infants, what can?
The Bayley Scales of Infant Development
- Designed for 1 - 42-month-olds
- Consist of cognitive, language, motor, social-emotional, and adaptive behaviour scales
If intelligence is a stable property of a child, then what should scores obtained at younger ages do?
Predict IQ scores at older ages
What do infant tests do that make it so their scores can’t be related to IQ scores obtained later in life?
Place more emphasis on sensorimotor skills and less on tasks involving cognitive processes such as language, thinking, and problem-solving
What is habituation and what does it predict?
A measure of information processes that can predict later IQ scores more effectively than do scores from the Bayley
What is the average correlation between habituation and IQ in childhood?
Approximately 0.5
What correlation was found between infants’ information-processing efficiency and their intelligence as young adults?
0.34
Why are these tests used at all if they can’t predict later IQs?
They are important diagnostic tools
- Scores from the Bayley Scales can be used to determine whether development is progressing normally
What are IQ scores powerful predictors of?
Developmental outcomes, school grades, scores on achievement tests, number of years of education, and occupational success
What may be linked between IQ and occupational success?
These professions require more education and we’ve already seen that IQ scores predict educational success
What does dynamic testing measure?
A child’s learning potential by having the child learn something new in the presence of the examiner and with the examiner’s help
What is dynamic testing based on?
Vygotsky’s ideas of the zone of proximal development and scafolding
How can learning potential be estimated?
By the amount of material the child learns during interaction with the examiner and from the amount of help the child needs to learn the new material
What are some of the evidence for hereditary factors of intelligence?
Fraternal twins would have less similar scores than identical twins but similar scores to those that siblings have and more than scores of children and their adoptive siblings
How does the environment influence intelligence?
- Characteristics of parent’s behaviour and home environments relate to children’s intelligence
- IQ changes have risen during the 20th century
- Intervention programs provide schooling for economically disadvantaged children
What did the problem of bias lead to in terms of intelligence testing?
The development of culture-fair intelligence tests, which include test items based on experiences common to many cultures
What is a stereotype threat?
Self-fulfilling prophecy, in which knowledge of stereotypes leads to anxiety and reduced performance consistent with the original stereotype
When might tests underestimate a child’s intelligence?
If the child’s culture encourages children to solve problems in collaboration with others and discourages them from excelling as individuals
If all tests reflect cultural influences, at least to some degree, how should we interpret test scores?
Regardless of ethnic group, a child with a high test score has the intellectual skills needed for academic work based on middle-class values
What does gifted mean?
Traditionally referred to individuals with scores of 130 or greater on intelligence tests
What is the modern meaning of gifted?
Exceptional talent in an assortment of areas, including art, music, creative writing, and dance
What prerequisites do exceptional talent seem to have?
- Child loves the subject and has an almost overwhelming desire to master it
- Instruction to develop a child’s special talent usually begins at an early age with inspiring and talented teachers
- Parents are committed to promoting their child’s talent
What is the stereotype for a gifted child?
Often thought to be emotionally troubled and unable to get along with peers, but in reality, gifted youngsters tend to be more mature than their peers and have fewer emotional problems
What is intelligence associated with?
Convergent thinking, using information that is provided to determine a standard, correct answer
What is creativity associated with?
Divergent thinking, where the aim is not a single correct answer (often there isn’t one) but novel and unusual lines of thought
How is divergent thinking often measured?
By asking children to produce many ideas in response to some specific stimulus
Like giftedness, what does creativity need?
To be cultivated
- Encourage children to take risks, think of alternatives to conventional wisdom, praise children for working hard, and help them get over the “I’m not creative hurdle”
What does mental retardation refer to?
Substantially below-average intelligence and problems adapting to an environment that emerge before the age of 18
What is below-average intelligence defined as?
A score of 70 or less on an intelligence test
What is adaptive behaviour?
The daily living skills needed to live, work, and play in the community - skills for caring for oneself and social skills
How is adaptive behaviour usually evaluated?
From interviews with a parent or other caregiver and
What is organic mental retardation?
No more than 25% of cases which can be traced to a specific biological or physical problem (e.g., Down syndrome)
What does familial mental retardation represent?
The lower end of the normal distribution of intelligence
What does it mean to have a learning disability?
- Have difficulty mastering an academic subject
- Have normal intelligence
- Are not suffering from other conditions that could explain poor performance, such as sensory impairment or inadequate instruction
What does one common classification scheme distinguish?
Disability in language (including listening, speaking, and writing), in reading, and in arithmetic
What is the most common area of learning disability?
Reading
What do many children with a reading disability have problems with?
Phonological awareness (understanding and using the sounds in written and oral language)
