Intelligence Flashcards
What is Galton’s concept of intelligence?
- ‘HEREDITARY GENIUS’
- physical measurement of intelligence: sensory acuity, head size, strength, speed of reactions (this one we have kept)
- tests show little relationship to any external criteria
- LEGACY: scientific/empirical approach to human intelligence; statistical methods (INVENTED NORMAL CURVE, CORRELATION); study of nature vs. nurture.
What was the first intelligence testing? And what was it purpose?
- Stanford - Binet
- used to look at which children needed more help than others.
What was one of the practical OUTCOMES from the Stanford - Binet?
TASK:age level assigned to each task (youngest age at which a child of normal intelligence should be able to complete this task)
INDIVIDUAL: mental age assigned to the person (age level at which normal children in his sample can pass this task)
How did Henry Goddard use the Binet- Simon test?
- used to detect “feeble-minded” school children
- used in adult populations –> set up an island called ‘Ellis Island’ to stop immigrants coming into NYC (to stop ppl coming into NYC)
- stop them from reproducing (Eugenics movement)
- Kallikak family: A study in the Heredity of Feeble - Mindedness (1912)
- (Binet had mental age) –> Goddard had classification on “feeble-mindedness”
How were IQ tests used in the armed services?
- ARMY ALPHA: written material, required literacy
- ARMY BETA: apparently used visual tests that didn’t require literacy
- literate ppl first administered Alpha,
- ppl that failed beta, individually tested.
What were some problems with the administration of mass army tests?
- resistance from Army personnel
- level of literacy differed amongst camps–> impossible to test all ppl on beta
- many were not tested further if they failed Alpha
- under huge cognitive load
What did Lewis Terman do in intelligence testing?
- revised and published Binet’s test as the Stanford-Binet
- labelled it as “MEASUREMENT”
- became the standard against which OTHERS HAD TO BE VALIDATED
- introduced, “MENTAL AGE”
What was Terman’s introduction into intelligence testing?
- age level at which the majority of “normal” children in the standardisation sample passed the test. e.g. you pass a test that most 12 yr olds can pass, but not that a 13 yr olds test, your mental age is 12.
What is a problem with mental age?
- hard to make comparisons across ppl of different ages e.g. a retarded 18 yr old and 7 yr old both have a mental age of 9, are they equally intelligent?
What was the solution to the problem of mental age being unable to make comparisons across ppl of different ages?
- RATIO IQ = mental age/chronological age X 100
What are some problems with ratio IQ?
- ratio IQ only works if mental age increases proportionally with chronological age
- difficult to say anything substantive about adults
PRACTICAL DECISION: cut off age 16
Who invented deviation IQ? And what is it?
- Wechsler “invented” deviation IQ.
DEVIATION IQ = HOW DIFFERENT YOU ARE (HOW MUCH YOU DEVIATE)FROM THE MEAN PERFORMANCE OF A COMPARISON GROUP - related to the idea of norm-referenced testing used throughout psychology
- we judge a person’s score in terms of how it compared to an appropriate STANDARDISATION SAMPLE
What is the importance of norm-referenced testing?
- a score may have different percentile rankings for each group, and THUS DIFFERENT PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
What are some implications of IQ scores?
- IQ scores means the same thing regardless of the comparison group
- again, deviation means the same thing regardless of the comparison group
- gives the “appearance” of stability in IQ
- 100 was set as average to be consistent with the ratio IQ which was familiar.
What was Spearman’s theory of intelligence?
- based on his observations, he proposed there was a GENERAL ENTITY that exists to explain this positive manifold, that it is INNATE
- each test is made up of 2 factors:
1. specific factor ‘s’ (different for each test)
2. general factor ‘g’
What observation did Spearman make about the psychometric correlations of intelligence?
- all tests of intelligence correlate positively with all others POSITIVE MANIFOLD
What is factor analysis?
- analysis of HOW MANY FACTORS parsimoniously explain the observed pattern of correlations
What were Spearman’s laws according to ‘g’
- law of positive manifold (all intelligence tests must correlate positively with one another)
- indifference of the indicator (bc everything correlates positively, it doesn’t matter which one you use)
What are different indicators of variances in Spearman’s scores on different intelligence tests?
- ‘G’ (ppl’s general ability) - latent variable (presence is inferred)
- Spearman’s ‘S’
- ‘E’ (error)
What are different inferences about ‘g’?
- ‘g’ isn’t the same for all groups of tests (i.e. depends what the test is measuring)
- ‘g’ is the first principal component in a factor analysis of intelligence test scores –> g can be tilted in any direction by the tests chosen E.G. G FROM VOCAB/READING COMPREHENSION VS. G FROM MAZE-LEARNING/PATTERN RECOGNITION
What are some propositions about multiple factors in factor analysis?
- there is something common underlying all tests (POSITIVE MANIFOLD)
- whatever is ‘causing’ the correlations btw tests 1-3, is different to what is ‘causing’ correlations between tests 4-6.
- ‘eye-ball’ factor analysis
What did Thurstone/s (1983) suggest about group factors of intelligence?
there are 7 PRIMARY MENTAL ABILITIES:
- verbal meaning; 2. word fluency 3. reasoning 4. number 5. spatial relations 6. associate memory 7. perceptual speed
- 7 PMAS
- originally proposed they were unrelated (no ‘g’)
- later suggested it could be ‘g’ that is underlying these mental abilities
What legacy did Thurstone leave?
- simple structure (in FA)
2. idea that there are multiple abilities that comprise intelligence.
