Intelligence - 1 Flashcards
Why is the concept of intelligence contentious?
- No agreed standard definition
- Because psychologists don’t agree on theory of intelligence
How can culture impact what they perceive intelligence to be?
-Different societies and cultures perceive intelligence in different way and see different components as determinants of intelligence
How does gender and ethnicity affect historically the way intelligence was perceived?
- Male smarter than females
- Asians perceived to be more intelligent
What other key component could define intelligence?
-Different rules if you disabled
What other individual characteristics could contribute to intelligence?
- Personality
- Morality
- Integrity
- Empathy
- Honesty
What demonstrates intelligence?
- Ability to demonstrate knowledge
- Education
- Analytical skills
- Financial acumen
What do psychologists argue regarding intelligence?
- That intelligence doesn’t exist as a real entity
- Argue that is just a label
What is general definition for intelligence?
-A hypothetical mental ability that enables people to direct their thinking adapt to their circumstances and learn from their experiences
What should intelligent people be able to do?
- Have general ability to understand and use information, and to think logically.
- Form mental representations or models of how we understand our surroundings and the world
- to adapt to new situations and make sense of the world
What was Francis Galton’s theory of Intelligence and what year was it proposed?
-Theory of Hereditary Genius (1869)
What did Galton’s theory entail?
- Variation in ability within the population
- Variations are inherited
- Proposed idea of Nature vs nurture
- First person to use questionnaire assessments to measure intelligence
Who proposed the idea of Mental age?
-Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon
Why was the idea of mental age proposed?
- In the 1900s in France there was eduction reform
- Children of all social classes were allowed into education
- Issue was all children had different levels of education and meant that classes had different ranges of ability
- Billet and Simon devised aptitude tests to test Childs raw ability regardless of education to devise mental age
- With these tests they placed children into classes most suited to them
What is mental age?
-Refers to abilities a child should have for their age
Who proposed theory of general intelligence and in what year?
- Charles Spearman
- 1904
What did theory of general intelligence propose?
- Spearman noticed performance on one type of intelligence test correlated to performance in other types of test
- He thought it was due to underlying general ability
- He then proposed “TWO FACTOR THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE”
- First factor was just general underlying intelligence (g)
- Second was that each individual had special factor abilities (s)
How did Raymond Catell develop Spearman theory?
- Suggested that intelligence is crystallised or fluid
- What is fluid intelligence (gf)- ability to solve new problems and find patterns such as abstract reasoning or problem solving (don’t depend on education or experience or prior knowledge)
- Crystallised intelligence (gc) - ability of individual to use learnt knowledge or experience
What was the theory of Howard Gardner?
- Multiple intelligences - potentials
- That there are multiple intelligences rather than one underlying intelligence
Linguistic Musical Logical / mathematical Spatial Bodily- kinesthetic Intrapersonal Interpersonal
-Individuals are better at some rather than others
What is evidence for Gardner theory?
- Difficult to support empirically
- Evidence from stroke patients where one area of brain is damaged or in car accidents
What is Savant syndrome?
- Where individual has general low IQ
- But have high abilities in specific area of intelligences
- Such as musical or linguistics
