Intelligence Flashcards
What is Gottfredson 1997 definition of intelligence ?
: “Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other
things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not an academic skill, rather, it requires a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings,
‘catching on’, making sense of things, or ‘figuring out’ what to do.”
Galton (1869)
- higher intelligence
- 3 measures (R,S,C)
- nature vs nurture
- Higher intelligence is caused by superior
qualities passed down by heredity - there are individual
differences in intelligence, and it is
possible to measure intelligence directly
Galton measured intelligence
– reaction time
– keenness of sight and hearing
– the ability to distinguish between colours - Galton was the first to differentiate between
the influences of nature and nurture
Binet (1905)
- Binet-Simon Sclale
- Binet-Simon scale (1905): first intelligence test aiming to identify
children who might require special
education - 30 tasks related to everyday life, e.g., Ø following light with eyes, naming parts of the
body, counting coins, recalling a number of
digits, filling in missing words in a sentence - Test results determined the child’s “mental age”
Stern (1912)
- (IQ)
- Stern developed the idea of an Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
- Mental age varied among children
proportionally to their real age - The ratio mental age : chronological age was
fairly constant, e.g., 5:6= 0.83, 8:10= 0.8 - He calculated the IQ as
mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100
Terman (1916)
- Revisited Binet Scale
- Revision of the Binet–Simon scale: Stanford–Binet scale (1916)
- Tested > 1,000 children (Binet had only tested 50): far more accurate information on how children typically
scored on intelligence tasks - Representative samples, standardized testing, age norms
Spearman (1904-1921)
- Positive manifold
- two factor theory “g” and “s”
- Positive manifold - the positive correlations between intelligence tests (person does well on one intelligence test they will perform well on a variety of cognitive ability tests)
- He proposed the idea of general intelligence “g”
- Two factor theory included:
- General intelligence factor ‘g’: mental energy
that is required to perform well on intelligence
tests of all types; deeper fundamental
mechanism - Specific abilities factor ‘s’: specific types of
intelligence needed to perform well on each
different task (Vocabulary intelligence, mathematical intelligence, and spatial intelligence are all specific abilities)
Development of standardised test
- Wechsler (1939-1955)
- Wechsler-Bellevue Scale (1939) – standardised
among a sample of 1,500 adults
– Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS; 1955) standardised among 2,000 adults aged 16-75
– Wechsler Scale for Children (WISC; 1955) for
children aged 5-16 - The Wechsler tests are still widely used in clinical settings today
- benefits - all people could take these tests
Deviation IQ
- Wechsler tested large groups of people to identify norms across different age groups
- The focus was on comparing scores with others of a similar age
- Deviation IQ = actual test score divided by expected score for that age multiplied by 100
- The IQ scores were then transformed and
standardised such that the mean is 100 and the
standard deviation is 15 - approximately 68% of the individuals in the population have an IQ between 85 and 115
Raven’s progressive Matrices (1938)
- culture
- Measure the abstract ability to see relationships
between objects, events and information and
draw inferences from those relationships - the overall IQ score is
based on an individual’s deviation from
standardised norms - It is (supposed to be) free of cultural influences
and language and is often favoured as a good
measure of ‘g’; culture-fair test
Theory of primary mental abilities (1938)
- Thurnstone
- g factor
- Thurstone (1938) challenged the concept of a g-factor. After analyzing data from 56 different tests of mental abilities, he identified a number of primary mental abilities that comprise intelligence as opposed to one general factor.
- The seven primary mental abilities in Thurstone’s model are verbal comprehension, verbal fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, perceptual speed, memory, and inductive reasoning
Fluid vs crystallised intelligence (1963)
- Catell
- Fluid intelligence is your ability to process new information, learn, and solve problems.
- Crystallized intelligence is your stored knowledge, accumulated over the years
Three-stratum theory (1993)
- Carroll
- he says there are three strata
- Stratum III - the general level (g)
- Stratum II - the broad factors
- Stratum I - the specific factors level
- he systematic organisation and integration of over 50 years
of research on the structure of human cognitive abilities
Cattel-Horn-Carrol Theory
- Multi factor theory
- Further integration of existing theories
with practicalities of psychometric testing
in mind
Theory of multiple intelligences
- Gardner 1983, 1996
- challenges the theory of
‘general intelligence
- says that intelligences
– reside in separate sections of the brain,
– are independent of each other, and
– are not controlled by any central
function of the brain
Critique of theory of mutliple intelligence
- Some of the Gardner’s intelligences (e.g., intrapersonal)
are hard to define; whether they are measurable is
questionable - Evidence does not support the existence of separate
neural mechanisms (e.g., Waterhouse, 2006) - Intelligences are intercorrelated with each other highly
and with personality traits (e.g., Furnham, 2009)