Intelligence Flashcards
What is the importance of implicit theories?
- Important to every day life
- Can give rise to formal theories of intelligence
- Can help to question formal theories
- Can inform theories around psychological constructs
What does Layperson refer to?
A non-expert of non-professional in a field. So basically the average person’s implicit ideas of what intelligence is
What does practical problem solving entail?
- Analyse
- Reasoned decision-making
- Flexible thinking
- Effective solutions
What does verbal ability entail?
- Good vocabulary
- Confident use
- Communicates effectively
- Good reading comprehension
What does social competence entail?
- Good knowledge of themselves and others
- Can use this knowledge to successfully navigate relationships
- Goof interpersonal skills
- Good balance of independence and interdependence
What were the 6 dimensions of intelligence that Sterberg 1985 found?
- Practical problem solving
- Verbal ability
- Intellectual balance and integration
- Goal orientation and attainment
- Contextual intelligence
- Fluid thought
What contributes to these layperson theories of intelligence?
- Cultural background
- Age
- Individual Experience
- Educational Background
What seems to be a big difference between intelligence in western and eastern cultures?
Skills in problem solving are not only considered for the individual in eastern cultures, but also in relation to their family, knowledge of history, and their spiritual needs.
How do Western Cultures measure intelligence?
- Speed of mental processing
- Ability to gather, assimilate and sort information quickly and efficiently
- Good Memory
- Good Cognitive Skills
What does intelligence look like in Confucian tradition?
- Love each other, honour parents
- Do the right thing, not what is advantageous
- Intelligence through benevolence
What does intelligence look like in Taoist tradition?
- Humility
- Freedom from conventional judgements
- Ability to perceive and respond to changes
- Show full awareness of oneself and the world around us
What were the 5 aspects of intelligence found by Yang & Sternberg 1997?
- General Cognitive Factor Intelligence
- Interpersonal Intelligence
- Intrapersonal intelligence
- Intellectual self-assertion
- Intellectual self-effacement
Why may there be a reduction in cross-cultural differences?
- Use of western intelligence may be changing views on intelligence within Korea?
- Within increasing internationalisation, are layperson theories of intelligence converging acoss cultures?
What are the two aspects of intelligence with age?
- Perception of intelligence at different ages
- Perception of intelligent behaviours across the ages
What is considered intelligent in 6-month-olds?
- Person and object recognition
- Motor coordination
Some awareness
Some verbalisations
What is considered intelligent at 2years old?
- Verbal ability
- Ability to learn
- Awareness of people and the environment
- Motor coordination
- Curiosity
What is considered intelligent at 10 years old?
- Verbal ability
- Learning
- Problem-solving
- Reasoning
- Creativity
What is considered intelligent in adults?
- Problem-solving
- Verbal ability
- Reasoning
- Learning
- Creativity
What are primary perceptions of intelligence?
- Popularity
- Friendliness
- Respect for rules
- Interest in the environment
What are secondary perceptions of intelligence?
- Energy
- Verbal fluency
What are tertiary perceptions of intelligence?
- Logical thinking
- Broad knowledge
- Reasoning
- Maturity
What is unknown about intelligence?
- The exact nature of the influence of genetics
- Exact nature of the influence of the environment
- How nutrition affects intelligence
- Why there are differences in scores of intelligence tests between various groups
What did Alfred Binet come up with?
The concept of a mental age
Intelligence as malleable
Binet-Simon scale of intelligence
How is IQ calculated?
IQ = (mental age/chronological age) x100
What does IQ stand for?
Intelligent Quotient
How did Spearmant view intelligence?
As a set of cognitive resources
What was Spearman’s two-factor model?
Specific Abilities: - Vocab - Maths - Spatial General Intelligence: - Underlying performance on all specific abilities
What test did David Wechsler create?
WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) and WISC (for children)
What components does the WAIS test?
- Verbal comprehension
- Perceptual Organisation
- Working Memory
- Processing speed
What test did John Raven create?
Raven Progressive Matrices
- the idea that general intelligence was an abstract ability
What are the 3 big IQ tests?
- Lewis Terman (Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale)
- John Raven (Raven Progressive Matrices)
- David Wechsler (WAIS and WISC)
Where do all theories of intelligence come from?
Originating from Spearman but have slightly different conclusions
What are the 7 Primary Mental Abiltiies?
- Associative Memory
- Number
- Perceptual Speed
- Reasoning
- Space
- Verbal Comprehension
- Word Fluency
What does Raymond Cattell think general intelligence is made up of?
- Fluid Intelligence
- Crystallised Intelligence
What is fluid intelligence?
The ability to solve abstract relational problems that have not been explicitly taught and are free from cultural influences
What is crystallised intelligence?
The ability to solve problems that depend on knowledge acquired in school of through other experiences
What groups are elemental abilities split into in structure of intellect theory?
- Operations
- Content
- Products
Exaplain the object group in structure of intellect theory
Mental processing
Explain the content group in structure of intellect theory
Mental material we possess that operations are performed on
Explain the products group in structure of intellect theory
How information is stored, processed and used to make new connections
What is Vernon’s Hierarchical Theory?
Argued that intelligence is made up of various groups of abilities that can be described at various levels
What is the Three-Striatum Model of Human Cognitive Abilities?
- Similar structure to Vernon’s but integrated vast amount of research conducted since this was proposed
- Brings together the theories we have considered
What is CHC theory?
Brings together Carroll’s and Cattell’s work
- Idea that there are 9 broad ‘g’ abilities beyond fluid and crystallised
What is ‘g’?
General Intelligence
What is Howard Gardner’s Multiple intelligences?
- More practical uses of intelligence
- Disputes that intelligence is a sensory system
- Can’t be measured through traditional intelligence tests, needs to be assessed through activities
- Argues that western education is tailored to certain abilities and not others
What are the multiple intelligences in Howard Gardner’s Model?
- Logical-mathematical
- Linguistic
- Musical
- Spatial
- Bodily-kinaeshetic
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
- Naturalist
- Existentialist
Who tested musical ability?
Law & Zentner 2012
What is Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory?
1: Componential Sub-theory
2: Contextual sub-theory
3: Experiential sub-theory
What is componential sub-theory?
Analytical
The mental mechanisms that underly successful intelligence
What is contextual sub-theory?
Practical
The way in which people use these mechanisms to demonstrate intelligent behaviour
What is experiential sub-theory?
Creative
The role of experience in mobilising cognitive mechanisms to meet environmental demands
What is the Flynn Effect?
the tendency of IQ scores to change over time and across generations
What contributes to the Flynn Effect?
- Nutrition
- Better/different education
- Different child rearing practices
- Technology - greater access to info
What is factorial invariance?
We would not expect predictive coefficients to change drastically across cohorts, even though the scores themselves might change
Why is IQ not everything?
- Self-discipline accounted for twice as much variance in final grades than IQ scores
- Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents
What is a first degree relative?
Shares around 50% of genes e.g. parents and siblings
What is a second degree relative?
Share around 24% of genes e.g. grandparents, grandchildren, aunts etc
What is a third degree relative?
Shares around 12.5% of genes e.g. great-grandparents, great-aunt, first cousin etc
What did Francis Galton teach?
First to introduce the idea of nature vs nurture and heritability
What is genetic heritability?
The considering how much of any phenotype is passed on from parent to child.
How is genetic heritability assessed?
By considering the variability found between parents and child and considered in terms of the proportion of shared variance
What studies are used to assess genetic heritability?
- Family studies
- Twin Studies
- Adoption studies
How high is heritability of intelligence?
Estimates of 69-74%
What did Deary et al 2012 find about heritability estimates?
- there is genetic contribution to the stability of intelligence across the life span
- estimated to be only 38%
What 4 considerations do we need to keep in mind when considering the role of genes in the heritability of intelligence?
- Concepts of genetic heritability & environment
- Different types of genetic variance
- Assortative Mating
- Representativeness of twin + adoption studies
What are different types of genetic variance?
- Additive
- Dominant
- Epistatic
What is assortative mating?
Variation in traits between mating couples is not random - similar phenotypes or genotypes mate with each other
Why do we need to consider the representativeness of twin + adoption studies when considering genetic heritability?
they may under or over estimate heritability in the general populations
What environmental influences are there on intelligence? (4)
- Biological
- Family Environment
- School & Education
- Culture
How does biology influence intelligence?
- Nutrition
- Lead (-ve)
- Prenatal factors
How does family environment influence intelligence?
- Non-shared environments influence over shared
- Within family-factors considers how they influence trait behaviours that can complicate the genetic heritability route
- SES considered in terms of occupation
- birth order and family size
How does birth order and family size influence intelligence?
- As family size increases and birth order position increase, intelligence scores decreased
What is the admixture hypothesis?
- Influenced by SES and parental intelligence
- Lower IQ and SES tend to have more children
What is the resource dilution model?
- Parental resources are finite
- Family increases, resources for a single child decreases
What is the confluence model?
- Need to consider intelligence within the context of the family
- This intellectual environment is ever changing
How can culture influence intelligence?
- Decontextualisation
- Quantification
- Biologisation
What is decontextualisation?
The ability to disconnect from a situation, think about it abstractly and generalise from it
What is quantiifcation?
The ability to discover or express the quantity of something
What is culture biologisation?
- The prominance of biological and evolutionary theories over the last century
- Can give new insights but are concerned with millions of years of development
- study of ourselves is relatively new so should be careful
What 4 ideas does the Bell Curve propose?
1: The cognitive elite
2: Socioeconomic variables and IQ
3: The relationship between race and intelligence
4: The implications for social policy
Explain the cognitive elite
Suggests that there is an emergence of a CE within American based on the separation of society through college admission and the workplace
Explain socioeconomic variables and IQ
Suggests that an indvidivual’s intelligence is more important than SES for predicting enomic and social welfare
Explain the relationship between race and intelligence
Evidence fo higher IQ of asian-americans and lower IQ of african-americans in comparison to white americans
Explain the implications for social policy
- Population with lower IQ is increasing as women with lower IQ tend to have more children
- Immigrants also contribute towards this
What is eugenics?
A reproductive selection process within humans that aims to create children with desirable traits
What is positive eugenics?
Encouraging reproduction in those who are perceived to have superior traits
what is negative eugenics?
Discouraging or eliminating reproduction in those perceived to have poor hereditary traits
What is a Narrative Analysis Approach?
weighs up findings across studies by analysing whether each studies findings support or don’t support a hypothesis
What do we use to measure effect size?
Cohen’s d
What does effect size tell us?
How important a difference is
What did Lynn & Irwing find about sex differences in intelligence.
There is an effect size of men scoring higher than women even though it is small
What types of intelligence tests do men score better on?
Tests of spatial abilities
What types of intelligence tests do women score better on?
Tests of verbal ability
Can brain size account for biological difference in general intelligence?
- men’s brain are 10% larger
- only seen from adolescence onwards due to different rates of maturity
- link is small and overused as an explanation
Could differences in brain structure influence differences in intelligence?
- Females have a bigger splenium
- May mean tasks are more evenly distributed by hemispheres
What is the function of gray matter?
Processing information in the brain
What is the function of white matter?
Transports the information
Could differences in hormones account for sex differences in spatial ability?
Testosterone has been found to be related to higher performance in spatial ability tasks
Testosterone has an effect on organisation of spatial tasks
When did men need spatial tasks in the old days?
- Foraging and gathering food
- Engaging in warfare with others
- Maximising reproductive success
Where do preferences come from?
- Reinforcement
- Modelling
- Socialisation
What is test validity?
The extent to which a test accurately measures what it is supposed to measure.
What is internal reliability?
The different items within a test correlate positively with one another, suggesting they are measuring the same construct
What is test-retest reliability?
The reliability of a test over time. If the same person took an intelligence test at different points in time, you would expect the results to be similar
Why is it hard to measure internal validity of intelligence tests?
It depends on what you think intelligence is
Why is test validity important?
We need to make sure a test is measuring what we think it is otherwise we risk drawing false conclusions from it’s results. Particularly important if a test is going to be used to make decisions about people that will have a significant impact.
