Cog Psych: Intelligence

Question 1

Charles Spearman

Answer 1

suggested individual differences in intelligence are largely due to variations in the amount of a general, unitary factor which he called “g”

Question 2

Louis Thurstone

Answer 2

identified 7 abilities: primary mental abilities, including verbal comprehension, number ability, perceptual speed, general reasoning…
and used factor analysis more specific than “g”

Question 3

Robert Sternberg’s triarchic theory

Answer 3

Suggests that there are three aspects to intelligence
Componential: performance on tests
Experiential: creativity
Contextual: “street smart” or “business sense”

Question 4

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences

Answer 4

Defined seven intelligences:
linguistic ability, logical-mathematical ability, spatial ability, musical ability, bodily-kinesthetic ability, interpersonal ability, and intrapersonal ability
Gardner argued that Western culture values linguistic and logical-mathematical the most

Question 5

Raymond Cattell

Answer 5

divided mental abilities into fluid and crystallized intelligence
Fluid: ability to quickly grasp relationships in novel situations and make correct deductions from them (increases throughout childhood/adolescence, levels off in young adulthood, and decreases with age)
Crystallized: ability to understand relationships or solve problems that depend on knowledge acquired as a result of schooling or other life experiences (increases throughout the lifespan)

Question 6

Arthur Jensen

Answer 6

prominent educational psychologist who studied intelligence; claimed that intelligence as measured by IQ was almost entirely genetic in nature; could not teach skills to increase IQ test scores; also focused on differences in IQ across race provoking a great deal of controversy

Question 7

McClelland and Rumelhart (mid 1980s)

Answer 7

published two-volume book about parallel distributed processes (PDP), proposing that information processing is distributed across the brain and done in parallel fashion (rather than processing information as previously thought: serially, performing one stage of processing at a time)

Question 8

Metacognition and Metamemory

Answer 8

refer to a person’s ability to think about and monitor cognition and memory, respectively