Chapter 9: Intelligence and Its Measurement Flashcards
We may define intelligence as a multifaceted capacity that manifests itself in different ways across the life span. In general, intelligence includes the abilities to acquire and apply knowledge, reason logically, plan effectively, infer perceptively, make sound judgments and solve problems, grasp and visualize concepts, pay attention, be intuitive, find the right words and thoughts with facility, cope with, adjust to, and make the most of new situations.
Intelligence
Intelligence Defined: Views of Scholars and Test Professionals (5)
1) Edwin G. Boring—what the tests test
2) Francis Galton—heredity, sensory=intelligent
3) Alfred Binet—reason, judge, memory, abstract
4) David Weschler—differential, moral
5) Jean Piaget—cognitive development (4 stages)
_____ who was not a psychometrician, attempted to quell the argument by pronouncing that “intelligence is what the tests test.” Although such a view is not entirely devoid of merit, it is an unsatisfactory, incomplete, and circular definition.
Edwin G. Boring
_____ believed that the most intelligent persons were those equipped with the best sensory abilities. This position was intuitively appealing because, as _____observed, “The only information that reaches us concerning outward events appears to pass through the avenues of our senses; and the more perceptive the senses are of difference, the larger is the field upon which our judgment and intelligence can act”.
Among other accomplishments, Sir _____ is remembered as the first person to publish on the heritability of intelligence, thus framing the contemporary nature–nurture debate
Francis Galton
_____ did not leave us an explicit definition of intelligence. He did, however, write about the components of intelligence. For _____, these components included reasoning, judgment, memory, and abstraction.
Galton had viewed intelligence as a number of distinct processes or abilities that could be assessed only by separate tests. In contrast, _____ argued that when one solves a particular problem, the abilities used cannot be separated because they interact to produce the solution.
Alfred Binet
Intelligence, operationally defined, is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment.
It is aggregate or global because it is composed of elements or abilities which, though not entirely independent, are qualitatively differentiable.
Intelligence is not identical with the mere sum of these abilities, however inclusive. The only way we can evaluate it quantitatively is by the measurement of the various aspects of these abilities.
_____ added that there are nonintellective factors that must be taken into account. e “capabilities more of the nature of conative, affective, or personality traits [that] include such traits as drive, persistence, and goal awareness [as well as] an individual’s potential to perceive and respond to social, moral and aesthetic values”.
_____ was of the opinion that the best way to measure this global ability was by measuring aspects of several “qualitatively differentiable” abilities. Wechsler wrote of two such “differentiable” abilities, which he conceived as being primarily verbal- or performance-based in nature.
David Wechsler
_____ research focused on the development of cognition in children: how children think, how they understand themselves and the world around them, and how they reason and solve problems.
As cognitive skills are gained, adaptation (at a symbolic level) increases, and mental trial and error replaces physical trial and error.
Cognitive development is thought to occur neither solely through maturation nor solely through learning. He believed that, as a consequence of interaction with the environment, psychological structures become reorganized.
Jean Piaget
Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development:
he believed that their order was unchangeable
1) Sensorimotor Period 0-2
2) Preoperational Period 2-6
3) Concrete Operations Period 7-12
4) Formal Operations Period 12+
Piaget used the term _____ to refer to an organized action or mental structure that, when applied to the world, leads to knowing or understanding.
schema
Infants are born with several simple _____ (the plural of schema), including sucking and grasping. Learning initially by grasping and by putting almost anything in their mouths, infants use these _____ to understand and appreciate their world
schemata
Piaget hypothesized that learning occurs through two basic mental operations:
1) Assimilation - organizing new info sa existing perceived and throughts
2) Accomodation - changing to fit with new information
The four periods of cognitive development:
Child develops ability to exhibit goal-directed, intentional behavior; develops the capacity to coordinate and integrate input from the five senses; acquires the capacity to recognize the world and its objects as permanent entities (that is, the infant develops “object permanence”).
Sensorimotor Period
The four periods of cognitive development:
Child’s understanding of concepts is based largely on what is seen; the child’s comprehension of a situation, an event, or an object is typically based on a single, usually the most obvious, perceptual aspect of the stimulus; thought is irreversible (child focuses on static states of reality and cannot understand relations between states; for example, child believes the quantities of a set of beads change if the beads are pushed together or spread apart); animistic thinking (attributing human qualities to nonhuman objects and events).
Preoperational Period
The four periods of cognitive development:
Reversibility of thought now appears; conservation of thought (certain attributes of the world remain stable despite some modification in appearance); part-whole problems and serial ordering tasks can now be solved (able to put ideas in rank order); can deal only with relationships and things with which he or she has direct experience; able to look at more than one aspect of a problem and able to clearly differentiate between present and historical time.
Concrete Operations Period
The four periods of cognitive development:
Increased ability to abstract and to deal with ideas independent of his or her own experience; greater capacity to generate hypotheses and test them in a systematic fashion (“if-then” statements, more alternatives); able to think about several variables acting together and their combined effects; can evaluate own thought; applies learning to new problems in a deductive way.
Formal Operations Period
A major thread running through the theories of Binet, Wechsler, and Piaget is focus on interactions. _____ refers to the complex concept by which heredity and environment are presumed to interact and influence the development of one’s intelligence.
Interactionism
As we will see, other theorists have focused on other aspects of intelligence. In _____ theories, the focus is squarely on identifying the ability or groups of abilities deemed to constitute intelligence.
Ex. Factor analysis is a technique that is used to reduce a large number of variables into fewer numbers of factors.
factor-analytic
In _____ theories, the focus is on identifying the specific mental processes that constitute intelligence.
The idea of information processing was adopted by cognitive psychologists as a model of how human thought works. For example, the eye receives visual information and codes information into electric neural activity which is fed back to the brain where it is “stored” and “coded”.
information-processing
Factor-Analytic Theories of Intelligence:
______ is a group of statistical techniques designed to determine the existence of underlying relationships between sets of variables, including test scores. In search of a definition of intelligence, theorists have used factor analysis to study correlations between tests measuring varied abilities presumed to reflect the underlying attribute of intelligence.
Factor analysis
Factor-Analytic Theories of Intelligence:
In _____, the researcher essentially explores what relationships exist. In confirmatory factor analysis, the researcher is typically testing the viability of a proposed model or theory.
exploratory factor analysis
As early as 1904, the British psychologist _____ pioneered new techniques to measure intercorrelations between tests.
He found that measures of intelligence tended to correlate to various degrees with each other.
Charles Spearman
This theory is sometimes referred to as a _____ theory of intelligence, with g representing the portion of the variance that all intelligence tests have in common and the remaining portions of the variance being accounted for either by specific components (s), or by error components (e) of this general factor.
The greater the magnitude of g in a test of intelligence, the better the test was thought to predict overall intelligence.
two-factor
Many multiple-factor models of intelligence have been proposed. Some of these models, such as that developed by _____, have sought to explain mental activities by deemphasizing, if not eliminating, any reference to g.
Guilford
_____ initially conceived of intelligence as being composed of seven “primary abilities”. However, after designing tests to measure these abilities and noting a moderate correlation between the tests, _____ became convinced it was difficult if not impossible to develop an intelligence test that did not tap g.
Thurstone
_____ developed a theory of multiple (seven, actually) intelligences: logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal
Gardner
As originally conceived by Raymond Cattell, the theory postulated the existence of two major types of cognitive abilities:
crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence
The abilities that makeup _____ (symbolized Gc) include acquired skills and knowledge that are dependent on exposure to a particular culture as well as on formal and informal education (vocabulary, for example). Retrieval of information and application of general knowledge are conceived of as elements of _____.
Ex. knowing how to ride a bike or read a book.
crystallized intelligence
The abilities that make up _____ (symbolized Gf) are nonverbal, relatively culture-free, and independent of specific instruction (such as memory for digits).
Ex. solving puzzles and coming up with problem-solving strategies.
fluid intelligence
Through the years, _____ proposed the addition of several factors: visual processing (Gv), auditory processing (Ga), quantitative processing (Gq), speed of processing (Gs), facility with reading and writing (Grw), short-term memory (Gsm), and long-term storage and retrieval (Glr).
Horn
Another influential multiple-intelligences model by Carrol based on factor-analytic studies is the _____ theory of cognitive abilities.
three-stratum
Carrol based on factor-analytic studies is the three-stratum theory of cognitive abilities:
1) Top Stratum—general intelligence is g
2) Second Stratum—8 abilities and processes
3) Third Stratum—level and speed factors
The _____ of Carroll’s model is composed of eight abilities and processes:
fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), general memory and learning (Y), broad visual perception (V), broad auditory perception (U), broad retrieval capacity (R), broad cognitive speediness (S), and processing/decision speed (T).
second stratum
The _____ models are similar in several respects, among them the designation of broad abilities (second-stratum level in Carroll’s theory) that subsume several narrow abilities (first-stratum level in Carroll’s theory).
was proposed by Kevin S. McGrew
features ten “broad-stratum” abilities and over seventy “narrow-stratum” abilities, with each broad-stratum ability subsuming two or more narrow-stratum abilities.
Cattell-Horn and Carroll
The _____ abilities, with their “code names” in parentheses, are labeled as follows: fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), quantitative knowledge (Gq), reading/writing ability (Grw), short-term memory (Gsm), visual processing (Gv), auditory processing (Ga), long-term storage and retrieval (Glr), processing speed (Gs), and decision/reaction time or speed (Gt).
ten broad-stratum
Another approach to conceptualizing intelligence derives from the work of the Russian neuropsychologist _____. This approach focuses on the mechanisms by which information is processed— how information is processed, rather than what is processed.
Aleksandr Luria
Aleksandr Luria’s two basic types of information-processing styles:
1) simultaneous or parallel processing—ex. driving, map reading
2) successive or sequential processing—ex. memorization numbers letters
_____ proposed another information-processing approach to intelligence, arguing that “the essence of intelligence is that it provides a means to govern ourselves so that our thoughts and actions are organized, coherent, and responsive to both our internally driven needs and to the needs of the environment”
He proposed a triarchic theory of intelligence with three principal elements.
Robert Sternberg
Robert Sternberg triarchic theory of intelligence with three principal elements:
1) Metacomponents
2) Performance Components
3) Knowledge-acquisition Components
Ex. a student may plan to write a paper (metacomponents), write the paper (performance components), and learn new things while writing (knowledge-acquisition components).
Measuring Intelligence: Types of Tasks Used in Intelligence Tests
In _____, intellectual assessment consists primarily of measuring sensorimotor development. This includes, for example, the measurement of nonverbal motor responses such as turning over, lifting the head, sitting up, following a moving object with the eyes, imitating gestures, and reaching for a group of objects.
infancy (the period from birth through 18 months)
Measuring Intelligence: Types of Tasks Used in Intelligence Tests
One assessment technique common to infant development tests is a test of the _____ response. The alerting response indicates an infant’s capacity for responsiveness
alerting
Measuring Intelligence: Types of Tasks Used in Intelligence Tests
It is deemed to be present when the infant’s eyes brighten and widen—in contrast to the _____ response, which defines the response of turning in the direction of a stimulus.
orienting
Measuring Intelligence: Types of Tasks Used in Intelligence Tests
Typically, measures of _____ intelligence rely to a great degree on information obtained from a structured interview with the examinee’s parents, guardians, or other caretakers.
infant
Measuring Intelligence: Types of Tasks Used in Intelligence Tests
The focus in evaluation of the _____ child shifts to verbal and performance abilities. More specifically, the child may be called on to perform tasks designed to yield a measure of general fund of information, vocabulary, social judgment, language, reasoning, numerical concepts, auditory and visual memory, attention, concentration, and spatial visualization.
older
Measuring Intelligence: Types of Tasks Used in Intelligence Tests
In a bygone era, many intelligence tests were scored and interpreted with reference to the concept of _____. _____ is an index that refers to the chronological age equivalent of one’s performance on a test or a subtest. This index was typically derived by reference to norms that indicate the age at which most testtakers are able to pass or otherwise meet some criterion performance.
mental age
Measuring Intelligence: Types of Tasks Used in Intelligence Tests
According to _____, adult intelligence scales should tap abilities such as retention of general information, quantitative reasoning, expressive language and memory, and social judgment.
Wechsler
Theory in Intelligence Test Development and Interpretation:
A chapter in Galton’s Hereditary Genius entitled _____ discussed sensory and other differences between people, which he believed were inherited. Perhaps not surprisingly, many Galtonian measures of cognitive ability were perceptual or sensorimotor in nature.
“Classification of Men According to Their Natural Gifts”
Theory in Intelligence Test Development and Interpretation:
Although _____ did write about the nature of intelligence, the formal theory with which the original Binet test is best associated is Carl Spearman’s “universal unity of the intellective function”, with g as its centerpiece.
Alfred Binet
Theory in Intelligence Test Development and Interpretation:
_____ wrote extensively on what intelligence is, and he usually emphasized that it is multifaceted and consists not only of cognitive abilities but also of factors related to personality. Still, because his original test and all subsequent _____ tests provided for the calculation of a Verbal IQ and a Performance IQ, some have misinterpreted his position as representing a two-factor theory of intelligence: verbal abilities and performance abilities.
David Wechsler
Theory in Intelligence Test Development and Interpretation:
According to _____, intelligence can be conceived in terms of three clusters of ability: social intelligence (dealing with people), concrete intelligence (dealing with objects), and abstract intelligence (dealing with verbal and mathematical symbols)
Thorndike
Intelligence: Some Issues
Nature versus Nurture
_____ holds that all living organisms are preformed at birth: All of an organism’s structures, including intelligence, are preformed at birth and therefore cannot be improved upon
**observing semen under the microscope. Various investigators “claimed to have seen a microscopic horse in the semen of a horse, an animalcule with very large ears in the semen of a donkey, and minute roosters in the semen of a rooster”
The theory could not explain the regeneration of limbs by crayfish and other organisms. With the progression of work in the area of genetics, preformationism as the dominant theory of development was slowly replaced by predeterminism.
Preformationism
Intelligence: Some Issues
Nature versus Nurture
_____ is the doctrine that holds that one’s abilities are predetermined by genetic inheritance and that no amount of learning or other intervention can enhance what has been genetically encoded to unfold in time.
Predeterminism
Intelligence: Some Issues
Nature versus Nurture
_____ firmly believed that genius was hereditary, a belief that was expressed in works such as Hereditary Genius and English Men of Science. _____ came to these conclusions not on the basis of intelligence tests (which had not yet been devised) but rather on the basis of family histories of eminent people. In doing so, he greatly minimized the role of environmental enrichment.
Galton
Intelligence: Some Issues
Nature versus Nurture
In general, proponents of the _____ side of the nature–nurture controversy emphasize the crucial importance of factors such as prenatal and postnatal environment, socioeconomic status, educational opportunities, and parental modeling with respect to intellectual development.
“nurture”
Intelligence: Some Issues
Nature versus Nurture
_____ position: that intelligence, as measured by intelligence tests, is the result of the interaction between heredity and environment.
Interactionist
Intelligence: Some Issues
Nature versus Nurture
According to the _____ view, people inherit a certain intellectual potential. Exactly how much of that genetic potential is realized depends partially on the type of environment in which it is nurtured.
interactionist
The Construct Validity of Tests of Intelligence
For intelligence tests, it is essential to understand how the test developer defined intelligence. If, for example, intelligence were defined in a particular intelligence test as _____, then we would expect factor analysis of this test to yield a single large common factor.
Spearman’s g
The Construct Validity of Tests of Intelligence
By contrast, if intelligence were defined by a test developer in accordance with _____ theory, then no one factor would be expected to dominate. Instead, one would anticipate many different factors reflecting a diverse set of abilities.
Guilford’s
The Construct Validity of Tests of Intelligence
In a sense, a compromise between Spearman and Guilford is _____. _____ theory of intelligence leads us to look for one central factor reflecting g along with three additional factors representing social, concrete, and abstract intelligences
Thorndike
Other Issues
Another possible factor in measured intelligence is what is called the _____. James R. _____ presented compelling evidence of what might be termed intelligence inflation.
Flynn effect
Other Issues: Personality
Aggressiveness with peers, initiative, high need for achievement, competitive striving, curiosity, self-confidence, and emotional stability are some personality factors associated with gains in measured _____ over time.
intelligence
Other Issues: Personality
Passivity, dependence, and maladjustment are some of the factors present in children whose measured _____ ability has not increased over time.
intellectual
Other Issues: Personality
_____ can affect an infant’s measured intellectual ability in that irritable, restless children who do not enjoy being held have a negative reciprocal influence on their parents—and perhaps on test administrators as well.
Temperament
Other Issues: Gender
_____ may have the edge when it comes to the g factor in intelligence, especially when only the highest-scoring group on an ability test is considered. _____ also tend to outperform _____ on tasks requiring visual spatialization. However, there is suggestive evidence indicating that more experience in spatialization might be all that is required to bridge this gender gap.
Males, males, females
Other Issues: Gender
_____ may generally outperform on language skill–related tasks, although these differences may beminimized when the assessment is conducted by computer.
Girls
Other Issues: Family environment
_____ may bring with it many negative consequences ranging from the loss of residential stability to the loss of parental and extended family supports. As such, divorce may have significant consequences in the life of a child ranging from impaired school achievement to impaired social problem-solving ability
Divorce
Other Issues: Culture
_____ shared with many others the desire to develop a measure of intelligence as untainted as possible by factors such as prior education and economic advantages. This desire to create what might be termed a culture-free intelligence test has resurfaced with various degrees of fervor throughout history.
Alfred Binet
Other Issues: Culture
A related assumption is that the effect of culture can be controlled through the elimination of _____ items and the exclusive reliance on nonverbal, performance items.
verbal
