Chapter 9

Question 1

What is a psychological test?

Answer 1

• • a standardized measure of a sample of a person’s behaviour
• • Your responses to a psychological test represent a sample of your behaviour; a particular behaviour sample may not be representative of your characteristic behaviour. Everyone has bad days
• • They’re used to measure the individual differences that exist among people in such things as intelligence, aptitudes, interests, and aspects of personality.
• • A good test must meet three criteria: validity, reliability, and standardization

Question 2

What are intelligence tests?

Answer 2

• • measure general mental ability

- - They’re intended to assess intellectual potential rather than previous learning or accumulated knowledge.

Question 3

What are aptitude tests?

Answer 3

• -aptitude tests assess specific types of mental abilities

- -also designed to mea- sure potential more than knowledge, but they break mental ability into separate components

Question 4

What are achievement tests?

Answer 4

–gauge a person’s mastery and knowledge of various subjects ( measure previous learning instead of potential)

Question 5

What are personality tests?

Answer 5

• • measure various aspects of personality, including motives, interests, values, and attitudes
• • since these tests do not have right or wrong answers, many psychologists prefer to call these tests personality scales

Question 6

What is standardization?

Answer 6

• • refers to the uniform procedures used in the administration and scoring of a test, as well as norms and performance standards for the test
• • Norms are established by giving the test to a large group representative of the population for whom the test is intended
• • All participants get the same instructions, the same questions, and the same time limits so that their scores can be compared meaningfully

Question 7

What are test norms?

Answer 7

• -Test norms provide information about where a score on a psychological test ranks in relation to other scores on that test
• -the sample of people that the norms are based on is called a test’s standardization group

Question 8

What is a percentile score?

Answer 8

A percentile score indicates the percentage of people who score at or below the score one has obtained.

Question 9

What is reliability?

Answer 9

–the extent to which a test yields a consistent, reproducible measure of performance

Question 10

How can you test a test’s reliability?

Answer 10

• -test–retest reliability: comparing subjects’ scores on two administrations of a test
• • any changes in participants’ scores across the two administrations of the test would presumably reflect inconsistency in measurement.
• • require the computation of correlation coefficients (numerical index of the degree of relationship between two variables and ranges from -1 to +1)
• • The closer the correlation between the two sets of scores comes to +1.00, the more reliable the test is.

•Alternate forms reliability involves giving alternate forms of the test on two different occasions

Question 11

What is validity? What are the different types of validity?

Answer 11

• • refers to the ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure
• -content validity: refers to a test’s ability to test a broad range of the content to be measured (ex. when measuring intelligence, you don’t want to only test math problems, there should be a broad range of problems)
• -criterion-related validity: a test’s ability to predict performance when assessed by other measures (criteria) of the attribute. Ex. your score on one type of intelligence test should predict similar scores on other types of intelligence tests)
• -construct validity: (the broadest form of validity) refers to whether the test actually measures the essence of the theoretical construct (i.e abstract qualities such as creativity, intelligence, extraversion)

Question 12

What is the Intelligent Quotient?

Answer 12

• • expansion and revision of Binet’s test
• • Lewis Terman incorporated a new scoring scheme based on William Stern’s “intelligence quotient”
• -IQ: a child’s mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100

Question 13

What is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)?

Answer 13

• -IQ test designed specifically for adults
• • less dependent on subjects’ verbal ability than the Stanford-Binet
• • separate scores for verbal IQ, performance (nonverbal) IQ, and full-scale (total) IQ
• • discarded the intelligence quotient in favour of a new scoring scheme based on the normal distribution
• -This scoring system has since been adopted by most other IQ tests, including the Stanford- Binet.
• • scores on intelligence tests are no longer based on an actual quotient

Question 14

What is factor analysis?

Answer 14

• • correlations among many variables are analyzed to identify closely related clusters of variables
• • If a number of variables correlate highly with one another, the assumption is that a single factor is influencing all of them. Factor analysis attempts to identify these hidden factors

Question 15

How has factor analysis been used to identify one core intelligence factor?

Answer 15

• -Spearman used factor analysis to examine the correlations among tests of many specific mental abilities. Concluded that all cognitive abilities share an important core factor (labelled this factor g for general mental ability). Spearman recognized that people also have “special” abilities (e.g., numerical reasoning or spatial ability). However, he thought that individuals’ ability in these specific areas is largely determined by their general mental ability
• • Using a somewhat different approach to factor analysis, Thurstone (invented SAT) concluded that intelligence involves multiple abilities. Carved intelligence into seven independent factors called primary mental abilities
• -Guilford’s theory divided intelligence into 150 separate abilities and did away with g entirely
• -both views of the structure of intellect have remained influential.

Question 16

What is fluid and crystallized intelligence?

Answer 16

• -fluid intelligence: involves reasoning ability, memory capacity, logic, and speed of information processing.
• -crystallized intelligence: abilities influenced by formal/informal education (accumulated knowledge). Knowledge acquired through either education, or through experience, as well as applying this knowledge appropriately in real life
• -the prefrontal cortex is more involved in problem solving accessing fluid intelligence but less involved in tasks implicating crystallized intelligence

Question 17

How is brain size correlated with intelligence?

Answer 17

• -The early studies in this area used various measures of head size as an indicator of brain size
• • positive but very small correlations led researchers to speculate that head size is probably a very crude index of brain size
• • the invention of sophisticated brain-imaging technologies examined the correlation between IQ scores and measures of overall brain volume based on MRI scans, yielding an average correlation of about 0.40
• • Thus, it appears that larger brains are predictive of greater intelligence.

Question 18

How is white/grey matter correlated with intelligence?

Answer 18

• • the amount of grey matter should reflect the density of neurons and their dendrites, which may be predictive of information-processing capacity.
• • the amount of white matter should reflect the quantity of axons in the brain and their degree of myelinization, which may be predictive of the efficiency of neuronal communication
• • higher intelligence scores are correlated with increased volume of both grey matter and white matter, with the association being a little stronger for grey matter

Question 19

How is health related to intelligence?

Answer 19

• • IQ scores measured in childhood correlate with physical health and even longevity decades later
• • Quite a number of studies have arrived at the conclusion that smarter people tend to be healthier and live longer than others
• • One possibility is that good genes could foster both higher intelligence and resilient health.
• -A second possibility is that health self-care is a com- plicated lifelong mission, for which brighter people are better prepared
• -A third possibility is that intelligence fosters educational and career success, which means that brighter people are more likely to end up in higher socioeconomic strata. People in higher socioeconomic classes tend to have less-stressful jobs with lower accident risks, reduced exposure to toxins and pathogens, better health insurance, and greater access to medical care

Question 20

What is the cognitive perspective to intelligence?

Answer 20

focuses on how people use their intelligence

Question 21

What is Sternberg’s triarchic theory of successful intelligence?

Answer 21

–asserts there are three aspects, or facets, of intelli- gence: analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence
–Analytical intelligence involves abstract reasoning, evaluation, and judgment. It is the type of intelligence that is crucial to most schoolwork and that is assessed by conventional IQ tests.
–Creative intelligence involves the ability to generate new ideas and to be inventive in dealing with novel problems
–Practical intelligence involves the ability to deal effectively with the kinds of problems people encounter in everyday life, such as on the job or at home
–successful intelligence consists of individuals’ ability to harness their analytical, creative, and practical intelligence to achieve their life goals
–Three sub-theories (ideas) about the nature (meaning, structure) of Intelligence.
– Each sub-theory applies to each of the three different types of intelligence (analytical, creative, practical)
•Contextual: “intelligence” (intelligent behaviour) is a concept that is culturally defined. The specific definition of intelligence will vary depending on what behaviours are valued within that cultural context.
•Experiential: “intelligence” (intelligent behaviour) involves the ability to deal effectively with new/novel situations, and also involves the ability to handle familiar tasks with little effort
•Componential: This sub-theory describes the mental processes involved in intelligent thought:
—-Meta-components – the cognitive processes that monitor our own cognitive processing (thinking about our own thinking)
—-Knowledge-acquisition components – the cognitive processes involved in taking in new information and assimilating it with existing knowledge
—-Performance components – the cognitive processes involved when we apply our thinking and knowledge to real world problem

Question 22

What is multiple intelligences and how does Howard Gardner define intelligence?

Answer 22

• • theorists argue that to assess intelligence in a truly general sense, tests should sample from a wider range of tasks
• • Garnder concluded that humans exhibit eight intelligences: logical–mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily–kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist
• • critics: encompasses too many things/too broad, no research on predictive value of each

Question 23

What is emotional intelligence and how does it work?

Answer 23

• -E.I: consists of the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion
• • Includes four essential components:
• -First, people need to be able to accurately perceive emotions in themselves and others and have the ability to express their own emotions effectively.
• • Second, people need to be aware of how their emotions shape their thinking, decision making, and coping with stress.
• • Third, people need to be able to understand and analyze their emotions, which may often be complex and contradictory.
• • Fourth, people need to be able to regulate their emotions so that they can dampen negative emotions and make effective use of positive emotions
• • Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS) has the strongest empirical foundation

Question 24

What is the normal distribution?

Answer 24

– a symmetric, bell-shaped curve that represents the pattern in which many characteristics are dispersed in the population

Question 25

What is the scoring system adopted by IQ tests?

Answer 25

• • raw scores are translated into deviation IQ scores that locate subjects precisely within the normal distribution, using the standard deviation ( It tells you, on average, how far each score lies from the mean) as the unit of measurement
• • for most IQ tests, the mean of the distribution is set at 100 and the standard deviation (SD) is set at 15
• • a score of 115 means that a person scored exactly one SD (15 points) above the mean. A score of 85 means that a person scored one SD below the mean
• • Deviation IQ scores can be converted into percentile scores
• —> -+1 SD = 34.1
• —> -+2 SD = 13.6
• —> -+3 SD = 2.1
• —> -+ 4 SD = 0.1

Question 26

Are IQ tests reliable?

Answer 26

• -Yes, in comparison to most other types of psychological tests, IQ tests are exceptionally reliable
• • However, like other tests, they sample behaviour, and a specific testing may yield an unrepresentative score.
• • Variations in examinees’ motivation to take an IQ test or in their anxiety about the test can some- times produce misleading scores

Question 27

Are IQ tests valid?

Answer 27

• • Yes, but this answer has to be qualified very carefully. IQ tests are valid measures of the kind of intelligence that’s necessary to do well in academic work. But if the purpose is to assess intelligence in a broader sense, the validity of IQ tests is questionable
• • intelligence tests were originally designed to predict school performance
• • Typically, positive correlations in the 0.40s and 0.50s are found between IQ scores and school grades
• • any factors besides a person’s intelligence are likely to affect grades and school progress (motivation, personality, teacher biases)
• • students’ self-discipline are surprisingly strong predictors of students’ school performance
• • students’ subjective perceptions of their abilities influence their academic performance, even after controlling for actual IQ
• • Keith Stanovich argues that IQ tests do not assess the ability to think critically, weigh conflicting evidence, and engage in judicious reasoning.

Question 28

Do IQ tests predict vocational success?

Answer 28

• • People who score high on IQ tests are more likely than those who score low to end up in high-status jobs
• • Because IQ tests measure school ability fairly well and because school performance is important in reaching certain occupations, this link between IQ scores and job status makes sense
• • a meta-analysis of many studies of the issue, Strenze found a correlation of 0.37 between IQ and occupational status
• • means that there are plenty of exceptions to the general trend (people probably outperform brighter colleagues through bulldog determination and hard work)
• • research suggests that (a) there is a substantial correlation (about 0.50) between IQ scores and job performance, and (b) this correlation varies somewhat depending on the complexity of a job’s requirements, but does not disappear even for low-level job

Question 29

Are IQ tests used in other cultures?

Answer 29

• • yes in western cultures, but very little in most non-Western cultures
• • The tests have been well received in some non-Western cultures, such as Japan but they have been met with indifference or resistance in other cultures, such as China and India
• • different cultures have different conceptions of what intelligence is and value different mental skills and using an intelligence test with a cultural group other than the one for which it was originally designed can be problematic

Question 30

What is intellectual disability?

Answer 30

• • refers to general mental ability accompanied by deficiencies in adaptive skills, originating before age 18
• • Adaptive skills fall on 3 domains: are conceptual skills (e.g., managing money, writing a letter), social skills (e.g., making friends, coping with others’ demands), and practical skills (e.g., preparing meals, using transportation, shopping)
• • periodic changes in the scoring norms for IQ tests have had erratic effects on the percentage of children falling below the cutoffs
• • the most recent version (i.e., the DSM-5) balances IQ and adaptive functioning in determining a classification

Question 31

What are the different levels to intellectual disability?

Answer 31

• -classified into four levels characterized as mild (55–70) , moderate (40–55), severe (25–40), or profound (Below 25)
• • Many individuals with mild intellectual disability are not all that easily distinguished from the rest of the population

Question 32

What are the possible causes of intellectual disability?

Answer 32

• -Many organic conditions can cause intellectual disability
• • For example, Down syndrome (extra chromosome and more likely with increased age of mother) is a condition that is associated with mild to severe intellectual disability
• • fragile X syndrome (FXS), a common cause of hereditary intellectual disability, phenylketonuria is a metabolic disorder that can lead to intellectual disability if it is not caught and treated in infancy, hydrocephaly, an excessive accumula- tion of cerebrospinal fluid in the skull destroys brain tissue and causes intellectual disability
• • A number of theories have attempted to identify the factors that underlie intellectual disability in the absence of a known organic pathology
• • vast majority of children with mild disability come from the lower socioeconomic classes where a number of factors—such as greater marital instability and parental neglect, inadequate nutrition and medical care, and lower-quality schooling—may contribute to children’s poor intellectual development

Question 33

What is a Savant?

Answer 33

– a person affected with a mental disability (such as autism) who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (such as mathematics or music)

Question 34

What constitutes giftedness?

Answer 34

• -efforts to identify gifted children focus almost exclusively on IQ scores and rarely consider qualities such as creativity, leadership, or special talent even though experts consistently assert that giftedness should not be equated with high intelligence and they recommend that schools not rely too heavily on IQ tests to select gifted children
• -the minimum IQ score for gifted programs usually falls somewhere around 130

Question 35

What are the qualities of the gifted?

Answer 35

• • a major longitudinal study of gifted children begun by Lewis Terman in 1921 found gifted children (IQ <150) to be above average in height, weight, strength, physical health, emotional adjustment, mental health, and social maturity. As a group, Terman’s subjects continued to exhibit better-than-average physical health, emotional stability, and social satisfaction throughout their adult years
• • Contrary to the findings of the Terman study, investigators have found elevated rates of mental illness in these samples

Question 36

How does giftedness relate to life outcomes?

Answer 36

• • Terman’s gifted children grew up to be very successful by conventional standards (92 books, 235 patents, and nearly 2200 scientific articles) however, no one in the group achieved recognition for genius-level contributions
• • concept of giftedness is applied to two very different groups: one consists of high-IQ children who are the cream of the crop in school, the other consists of eminent adults who make enduring contributions in their fields
• -The accomplishments of the latter group involve a much higher level of giftedness
• • Joseph Renzulli theorizes that this rarer form of giftedness depends on the intersection of three factors: high intelligence, high creativity, and high motivation
• • He emphasizes that high intelligence alone does not usually foster genuine greatness. Thus, the vast majority of children selected for gifted school programs do not achieve eminence as adults or make genius-like contributions to society
• • specific subgroups of gifted children exist, including one they refer to as the “hidden gifted” who for a variety of reasons (e.g., learning disabled/gifted, cultural minority gifted, gifted females) may not be properly identified as gifted as they are underperforming academically. As a result, these hidden gifted students are not afforded the opportunities offered by educational programs designed to help gifted students meet their potential

Question 37

What do twin/adoption studies show for the heritability of intelligence?

Answer 37

• • the average correlation reported for identical twins (0.86) is very high. The average correlation for fraternal twins (0.60) is significantly lower
• -These results support the notion that IQ is inherited to a considerable degree
• • critics argue that identical twins are more alike in IQ because parents and others treat them more similarly than they treat fraternal twins (this has some merit. After all, identical twins are always the same sex, and gender influences how a child is raised)
• • this explanation seems unlikely in light of the evidence on identical twins reared apart because of family breakups or adoption
• • the gap in IQ similarity between identical twins reared apart and fraternal twins reared together appears to widen in middle and late adulthood, suggesting paradoxically that the influence of heredity increases with age
• -studies indicate that there is indeed more than chance similarity between adopted children and their biological parents

Question 38

What is the evidence for the hereditary influence of genetics?

Answer 38

– heritability ratio is an estimate of the proportion of trait variability in a population that is determined by variations in genetic inheritance.
– A heritability estimate cannot be applied meaningfully to individuals. Even if the heritability of intelligence truly is 60 percent, this does not mean that each individual’s intelligence is 60 percent inherited.
– the heritability of a specific trait can vary from one group to another depending on a variety of factors
(heritability is suppressed by the negative environmental conditions associated with poverty)
– molecular genetics data have yielded heritability estimates that converge nicely with the estimates based on decades of twin and adoptions studies
– molecular genetics research attempted to identify the specific genes that shape intelligence, however thus far they have miniscule effects

Question 39

recent research has demonstrated that the heritability of intelligence ______________ with age

Answer 39

increases

Question 40

What do adoption studies show for the evidence of environmental influence?

Answer 40

• -adopted children show some resemblance to their adoptive parents in IQ.
• • adoption studies also indicate that siblings reared together are more similar in IQ than siblings reared apart
• • entirely unrelated children who are raised in the same home also show a significant resemblance in IQ
• • A recent meta-analysis of relevant studies found that adopted children scored notably higher on IQ tests than siblings or peers “left behind” in institutions or disadvantaged homes
• • These findings show that IQ scores are not unchangeable and that they are sensi- tive to environmental influences.
• • investigators did find that environmental deprivation led to the predicted erosion in IQ scores

Question 41

What is the Flynn Effect?

Answer 41

• • the finding that performance on IQ tests has steadily increased over generations
• • James Flynn gathered extensive data from 20 nations and demonstrated that IQ performance has been rising steadily all over the industrialized world since the 1930s
• • the level of performance required to earn a score of 100 jumped upward every time the tests were renormed (IQ 100 today would be 120 back in the 1930s)
• • attributed to environmental factors, reductions in the prevalence of severe malnutrition among children, including improved schools, smaller families, better-educated parents, and higher-quality parenting

Question 42

What is the interaction between heredity and environment in intelligence?

Answer 42

• • reaction range refers to genetically determined limits on IQ (or other traits)
• • heredity may set certain limits on intelligence and that environmental factors determine where individuals fall within these limits
• • According to this idea, genetic makeup places an upper limit on a person’s IQ that can’t be exceeded even when environment is ideal
• • can explain why high-IQ children sometimes come from poor environments. It can also explain why low-IQ children sometimes come from very good environments

Question 43

What are the cultural differences in IQ scores?

Answer 43

• • the average IQ for many of the larger minority groups in the United States (such as African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics) is somewhat lower than the average for whites (10-15 points)
• • However, newer data suggest that the gap has shrunk in recent decades
• • Arthur Jensen sparked a heated war of words by arguing that cultural differences in IQ are largely due to heredity
• • Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray argued that ethnic differences in average intelligence not easily reduced by educational programs for the dis- advantaged, and at least partly genetic in origin.
• • Leon Kamin’s analogy shows how between-group differences on a trait (the average height of corn plants) could be due to environment, even if the trait is largely inherited. The same reasoning presumably applies to ethnic-group differences in average intelligence

Question 44

How do socioeconomic disadvantages affect cultural differences in IQ scores?

Answer 44

• • Most minority groups have endured a long history of economic discrimination and are greatly overrepresented in the lower social classes
• • lower-class children tend to be exposed to fewer books, to have fewer learning supplies and less access to computers, to have less privacy for concentrated study, and to get less parental assistance in learning
• • stereotype vulnerability can undermine group members’ performance on tests, hence when a minority student does poorly on a test, they worry others will attribute the failure to racial/gender inferiority
• • for example, standardized tests such as IQ tests may be especially anxiety-arousing for members of stigmatized groups because the importance attributed to the tests makes one’s stereotype vulnerability partic- ularly salient
• • this anxiety may impair students’ test performance by temporarily disrupting their cognitive functioning.

Question 45

What is the cultural bias in IQ tests?

Answer 45

• -Historically, measures of intelligence in the U.S. had shown consistent differences between white and minority (African-American and Hispanic) children
• -However, it has been proposed that Socio-Economic Status, not race or ethnicity accounts for the majority of these observed differences
• -since minority groups, through systemic racism, made up a large portion of the lower socioeconomic class, they got lower IQ scores because these tests of intelligence were biased against poor people
• -Because of this, people just assumed that minority people were less intelligent than whites
• -because IQ tests are constructed by white, middle-class psychologists, they naturally draw on experience and knowledge typical of white, middle-class lifestyles and use language and vocabulary that reflect the white, middle-class origins of their developers ((the types of games, problems, etc that wealthier children would have regularly encountered))
• • IQ tests measure a combination of ability and knowledge, but factual knowledge clearly has an impact on IQ scores
• • cultural disparities in IQ reflect differences in knowledge rather than differences in ability.

Question 46

What is creativity and how does it work?

Answer 46

• -Creativity involves the generation of ideas that are original, novel, useful, and adaptive (appropriate to the situation and problem)
• • Creative ideas do not come out of nowhere but come from a deep well of experience and training in a specific area
• • convergent thinking: one tries to narrow down a list of alternatives to converge on a single correct answer (ex. MC test)
• • divergent thinking: one tries to expand the range of alternatives by generating many possible solutions
• • divergent thinking contributes to creativity, but it clearly does not represent the essence of creativity, as originally proposed (the cognitive processes that underlie creativity are multifaceted)

Question 47

How do you measure creativity?

Answer 47

• • the items on creativity tests assess divergent thinking by giving respondents a specific starting point and then requiring them to generate as many possibilities as they can in a short period of time ( ex. list as many uses as you can for a newspaper)
• • Subjects’ scores on these tests depend on the number of alternatives they generate and on the originality and usefulness of the alternatives

Question 48

How Well Do Tests Predict Creative

Productivity?

Answer 48

• -creativity tests may have limited value because they measure creativity out of context
• • evidence suggests that creativity is specific to particular domains
• • creative people usually excel in a single field, in which they typically have considerable training and expertise

Question 49

What are the characteristics of creative people?

Answer 49

• • Research suggests that highly creative people tend to be more independent, nonconforming, introverted, open to new experiences, self-confident, persistent, ambitious, dominant, and impulsive
• • Creative people tend to think for themselves and are less easily influenced by the opinions of others than the average person is
• • the amount of time spent living abroad correlated positively with measures of creativity
• • the degree to which people adapted to foreign cultures was responsible for the association between living abroad and creativity.

Question 50

Are Creativity and Intelligence

Related?

Answer 50

• • a recent meta-analysis of many studies reported a correlation of only 0.17 between creativity and intelligence
• • conceptually, creativity and intelligence represent different types of mental ability. Thus, it’s not surprising that correlations between measures of creativity and measures of intelligence are generally weak

Question 51

Is There a Connection between

Creativity and Mental Illness?

Answer 51

• • data do suggest a correlation between creative genius and maladjustment, in particular, mood disorders such as depression
• • Recent studies suggest that mental illness may be especially elevated among poets
• • creativity and maladjustment probably are not causally related but that certain personality traits and cognitive styles may both foster creativity and predispose people to psychological disorders

Question 52

How has the definition of intelligence affected people’s lives?

Answer 52

Intelligence, a Harvard psychologist famously remarked, is whatever intelligence tests measure. The observation may have been made in jest (joke), but its effects have been all too serious. A multibillion dollar “intelligence testing” industry largely determines which children attend the best schools and universities. So many intelligence tests, such as the MCAT, LSAT, GRE, etc. gatekeep institutions. What we want to know is what intelligence is in essence. Is it something that only intelligence tests can measure? There are different types of intelligence and people can be intelligent in different ways. If there are different types of intelligences, then shouldn’t there be schools or programs that can help students develop their different forms of intellect? Unsurprisingly, this is not how schools work which can be frustrating because students depend on this system for their future success.

Question 53

What is the definition of intelligence?

Answer 53

• Problem solving skills and the ability to adapt to and learn from life’s everyday experiences
• Cannot be measured directly; can be evaluated by studying the intelligent acts that people perform (ex. observing someone solve a problem if we think problem solving is a sign of intelligence)

Question 54

How does the western definition of intelligence differ from other cultures?

Answer 54

• Western definitions seem to emphasize adaptation to the environment, basic mental processes, higher order thinking, and speed of processing.
• However, some cultures may be suspicious of the quality of work that is done very quickly – hence, emphasizing depth of processing rather than speed of processing.

Question 55

What is the Confucian perspective to defining intelligence?

Answer 55

– emphasizes the characteristics of benevolence and of doing what is right (understanding the problem and the nature of the circumstance, and then coming up with not an easy answer but the morally right answer). The intelligent person spends a great deal of effort in learning, enjoys learning, and persists in lifelong learning.

Question 56

What is the Taoist perspective to defining intelligence?

Answer 56

–emphasizes humility (recognizing that we don’t always have all the answers), freedom from conventional standards of judgment, and full knowledge of oneself as well as of external conditions.

Question 57

What did Yang and Sternber find about how Taiwanese Chinese define intelligence?

Answer 57

– found five factors underlying Taiwanese Chinese conceptions of intelligence: general cognitive factor (general intelligence that we use for any task), interpersonal intelligence (understanding the relationship/dynamics between people), intrapersonal intelligence (understanding ourself), intellectual self-assertion (asserting that you are correct) , and intellectual self-effacement (acknowledging that you may wrong and you may not know everything).

Question 58

What did Chen find about how Chinese define intelligence?

Answer 58

– found three factors underlying Chinese conceptions of intelligence: nonverbal reasoning ability (engaging in logic/reasoning without the use of words like algebra), verbal reasoning ability (being able to solve word problems), and rote memory.

Question 59

What did Das find about how Buddhist and Hindu define intelligence?

Answer 59

–suggests that Buddhist and Hindu philosophies of intelligence involve: waking up (waking up to the world around you), noticing, recognizing, understanding, comprehending, determination, mental effort (determination to get things done), and even feelings and opinions

Question 60

What did Ruzgis & Grigorenko find about how people in Africa define intelligence?

Answer 60

in a review of conceptions of intelligence in Africa, note that these revolve largely around skills that help to facilitate and maintain harmonious and stable intergroup, and intragroup relations

Question 61

What did Serpell find about how Chewa. adults in Zambia define intelligence?

Answer 61

Chewa adults in Zambia emphasize social responsibilities, cooperativeness, and obedience as important to intelligence; intelligent children are expected to be respectful of adults.

Question 62

What did Super & Harkness find about how Kenyan parents define intelligence?

Answer 62

Kenyan parents emphasize responsible participation in family and social life as important aspects of intelligence (being able to set aside your own needs and wants to be responsible for the needs of others).

Question 63

What did Dasen find about how people in Zimbabwe define intelligence?

Answer 63

–intelligence means to be prudent (careful) and cautious, particularly in social relationships.

Question 64

What did Durojaiye find about how the Yoruba define intelligence?

Answer 64

– The Yoruba emphasize the importance of depth (thinking about something deeply) (listening rather than talking) to intelligence, and of being able to see all aspects of an issue and to place the issue in its proper overall context.

Question 65

What is the point of knowing the different definitions of intelligence across the world?

Answer 65

• • the point of all these definitions is to recognize that all cultures all over the world have their own definitions of intelligence and that these definitions are equally as legitimate as the western definition we have
• • We have to also recognize that if we are going to use intelligence tests based on the western definition of intelligence to gatekeep schools and programs such as law schools or medical schools, then it will create a problem
• • is it possible to create a test that is not culturally biased

Question 66

How did Francis Galton define/test intelligence?

Answer 66

– Galton studied family trees of wealthy people and found that success and eminence appeared consistently in some families over generations
– discounted the advantages of such an upbringing to better demonstrate that intelligence is governed by heredity (coined nature vs nurture)
–invented the concepts of correlation and percentile test scores
Defined intelligence in two ways:
•Energy – the capacity for labour – the intellectually gifted have remarkable levels of energy
• Sensitivity – the sensitivity of our perceptual systems would permit more/less environmental information to reach our minds – thus, there would be differences in our capacity for the range of information on which intelligence could act
Test:
•Weight discrimination – three cases of varying weights – participants had to arrange them in order of weight
•Created a whistle to assess the highest pitch that individuals could perceive (higher pitch = higher intelligence)
•Discovered that people’s ability to hear high pitches declines with age
•Discovered that people’s ability to hear high pitches was not as sensitive as the ability of cats
(this presented a problem for his theory of intelligence testing since cats are obviously not as smart as humans)

Question 67

How did Clark Wissler dispute Galton’s theory of intelligence?

Answer 67

• Clark Wissler (1901) tested Columbia University undergraduates using a number of Galton’s tests – and compared the results of the testing with the students’ college grades.
• Results: the test scores did not correlate with each other (ability to discriminate weights and hear high pitched sounds did not correlate with each other), and these test scores did not correlate with grades.
• Thus, a new approach to intelligence testing was needed.

Question 68

How did Alfred Binet test intelligence?

Answer 68

– Intelligent thought is composed of three distinct elements:
•Direction: knowing what has to be done and how it is to be accomplished
•Adaptation: one’s selection and monitoring of one’s strategy during task performance
– Selecting a problem solving technique and then paying attention to how well you are solving the problem
•Control: the ability to criticize one’s own thoughts and actions

– Binet realized that it was important to examine individuals with age - appropriate testing (this was a gigantic breakthrough).
•Infant: “Le Regard” – a lighted match is moved back & forth before the eyes – the tester is looking for the ability to orient and coordination of movement
– If they are able to follow/focus on the lighted match, and how long they are able to keep their focus before they get bored or distracted
•Age 2: place a triangle, circle & square into the appropriate holes on a board
– And how fast they are able to do this
•Age 8: defining words; recognizing verbal absurdities (e.g., “Why is the statement foolish?”); recognizing and explaining similarities or differences between two objects
•Age 14: solve arithmetic word problems
•Thus, developed the concept the Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
•Chronological Age (CA)
•Mental Age (MA) – the individual’s level of mental development relative to typical others (of varying ages) -when doing IQ tests, this is what you are being tested on
— to get this, you have to sample and test thousands of people in a particular age (like 12 years old) and we give them a range of really hard tests and we look at how well someone of that particular range can solve those problems. For example, on average, a sample of 1000 12 year olds can solve geometry problems but not algebra problems
•IQ = (MA/CA) x 100
•Having an IQ of 100 would indicate that the person’s intelligence is “average” (the norm) for the person’s age.

Question 69

How did Prifitera, Weiss, & Saklofske investigate the biases in IQ testing?

Answer 69

• -Sampled African-American, Hispanic and white participants on a number of measures of IQ and demographic variables (age, SES socioeconomic status, level of education, gender, region of the country, number of parents living at home, etc.)
• -Found differences between the three groups on measures of IQ (the white americans were outperforming the African-americans and hispanics)
• -However, considerable variation in the differences between the three groups depending upon which scale is used (the difference in IQ scores between the three groups might be larger or smaller depending on the type of IQ test used)
• -To investigate the relation between SES and IQ, they matched their samples on a number of variables (age, region, sex, parental education level, number of parents living in the household, and SES)
• • • matching people of the same age (ex.18 year old white, black, and Hispanic), sex (ex only female white, black, Hispanic), etc
• -The variable that showed the most disparity was when they matched them on SES (a wealthy black, white, Hispanic and poor white, Hispanic, black). What was shown was that the difference in IQ scores between the different races in the same SES disappeared
• -Saw that the difference in IQ scores between younger participants of the different races (5-6 year old black, white, Hispanic) was lower but the difference was more noticeable between older participants of different races
• -• The younger participants have not lived that long in that impoverished environment so the impacts of being in a lower socioeconomic class have not had a chance to accumulate so it has not affected them as much and the same goes for wealthier children because their wealthy environments have not had a chance to lift them up and benefit them
• -thus, indicating that the observed differences may be the result of socio-economic and cultural variables

Question 70

What was the Mozart Effect study?

Answer 70

– Participants randomly assigned to one of three conditions
•Listening to a Mozart sonata
•Listening to a relaxation tape (beach waves, sound of birds, etc)
•Silence
–Assessed on just one part of an IQ test -spatiotemporal ability (measured by tests of pattern analysis, matrices, paper-cutting and paper-folding)
–Calculated “IQ” after the three conditions
•Silence = 110, Relaxation = 111, Mozart = 119
–The silence/relaxation difference is not statistically significant, but it is for the Mozart one
–The effects of listening to Mozart do not last more than 10-15 minutes and is only limited to this particular kind of logical, spatial task being tested

Question 71

What study disputed the Mozart Effect?

Answer 71

– Proposed that the “Mozart Effect” is not specific to the composer or the music – rather, is a result of an arousal effect that is produced by the tempo of the music
–First study was on uni students and second study was on younger children
STUDY 1
–48 Canadian Undergraduates listened to music composed by Mozart or Albinoni (10 minutes) and subsequently completed an IQ test.
• Mozart (uptempo & bright), Albinoni (very slow, sad and sonder, think “funeral”)
– Arousal and mood were measured before and after music listening.
– Result: only when arousal and mood were significantly elevated, was there a difference in performance on a measure of IQ
STUDY 2
–Participants were 39 Japanese children, age 5
–Each child made a “baseline drawing” (to establish baseline measures of creativity, which is a sign of intelligence)
–Four conditions
1. Mozart
2. Albinoni
3. Listening to familiar children’s songs
4. Singing familiar children’s songs
–Dependent variables: A set of adult raters compared the 1st and 2nd drawings on drawing times, creativity, energy, and technical proficiency
–Results: Listening/Singing familiar music significantly increased drawing times, as well the drawings in these two conditions were rated as more creative, energetic, and technically proficient. The music of Mozart or Albinoni did not produce the same results
–Conclusions:
•Mozart effect is not specific to composer or music.
•Music-enhanced cognitive performance is a byproduct of arousal and mood
•Cognitive enhancement after music listening extends to tests of creativity
•Enhancement depends on a match between the music and the listener (can’t just be any music, it has to be music that makes the person feel better and energized)

Question 72

What is Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory of Intelligence?

Answer 72

–Also called the “g Factor” Theory
–Two-Factor Theory because there are two intelligence factors (two components of intelligence) that are involved in any mental task/activity.
•A general factor (g) common to all tasks requiring intelligence (rational, comprehension, or deductive operations, etc.)
•And one specific factor (s) that is unique to each different type of task

Question 73

What was the study that compared humour styles and emotional intelligence?

Answer 73

–111 undergraduate students
•Questionnaires on Humour Styles, Emotional Intelligence, Social/Interpersonal Competence
•Individuals who are better able to regulate their emotions tend to experience more cheerfulness and less negative moods.
•Low abilities in accurately perceiving and understanding emotions in oneself and others are associated with a prevalence of sad, distressed and grumpy moods
•People who have difficulties with accurate emotion perception may tend to use humour in inappropriate ways, either to tease and disparage others (aggressive humour) or to excessively disparage themselves and hide their true feelings (self-defeating humour) and report a lower ability to provide emotional support to others and to manage conflicts in relationships.
•Interpersonal competencies (asserting one’s personal rights, providing emotional support, managing conflicts) were related to a lack of negative humour styles.
•Positive styles of humour were related to a better ability to initiate relationships (striking up conversations with strangers and initiating friendships).