Intelligence Flashcards
Do you know when you see intelligence?
Sometimes it is hard to determine whether something has intelligence
What is intelligence?
The capacity of a personn to understand the world, meets its demands
General reasoning capacity
Defining intelligence is hard, there is a debate about the definitions
What is intelligence not?
The definitions don’t reflect:
learning, general knowledge, artistic ability, practical abilities, creativity, common sense, success
There are subjective differences in perspectives of intelligence, intelligence is the capacity of doing these things
Intelligence is abstract
The birth of empirical intelligence - Spearman
Collected school achievement and test score data, found positive correlations across differing abilities of intelligence - explained the correlations by assuming that there was a single mental ability factor underlying all the tests.
Created factor analyses to analyse the covariance (looking at the correlations between things). Came up with a single factor for majority of variance, labelled G - general cognitive ability
Who came up with g?
Spearman
Cattell - 2 types of intelligence
Fluid intelligence
Crystalised
Measures within each intelligence type correlate more highly than measures across the intelligence types - good at one fluid task, good at them all, vice versa
Use fluid intelligence when younger, but crystallised as you get older
Fluid intelligence
Basis reasoning ability that can be applied to a wide range of problems
highly heritable and biologically based
e.g. working memory, speed of information processing
Crystallised intelligence
Factual knowledge about the world - culturally specific
investment theory - crystallised ability develops through investing fluid ability in specific learning experiences
e.g. answers to arithmetic problems, vocal
Three statue theory - Carroll
Attempting to make all the models fit in together
Meta analyses created a 3 stratum model
stratum 1 = narrow abilities (aprox 60)
stratum 2 - broad abilities (fluid intelligence)
stratum 3 - g
Majority of variance accounted for by g
Why is measuring intelligence hard?
It is an abstract concept, can’t reach out and take intelligence, it doesn’t exist in the concrete world
Solution to measuring intelligence
Observe an individuals actions on tasks that require aspects of intelligence
example: asked which shapes will fit in a certain box
What is important when measuring intelligence?
Age - need to make sure that you use test items which make sense to the children
Validity of test items
We have different IQ tests for different ages to improve the validity of test items
How do we compare children of different ages?
Use a standardise score - IQ
Can make judgements about a child by comparing their IQ to the general population
How to estimate IQ?
Raw score divided by chronological age times 100
The IQ bell curve
Assume intelligence is normally distributed
the mean score is 100
scores vary either side, 15 points above/below the mean will be 1SD point difference
95% of scores fall within 2 SD of mean
Practical applications of IQ
IQ tests created to identify children that are not likely to benefit from mainstream education - people who are 2SD above or below the mean
Provide info about a child to make decisions about education and career of that child
IQ tests: the good predictability
IQ scores match what people mean when they use the word intelligence
They show impressive continuity from age 5 onwards
Good predictors of academic and occupational achievement
Identify children who need different education - low functioning children or gifted children
Used to inform social policy
IQ tests: internal validity concerns
Reducing IQ to one score may be too simplistic- lots of elements are important
Culturally biased - reliant on verbal ability, but if have English as second language wouldn’t do well, questions may assume cultural knowledge and correlations are higher with crystallised intelligence - shows culture
Rely on representative population but populations change over time
Might be training children to get better at Iq tests
Hard to conduct in practise
Why are IQ tests hard to conduct in practise?
Mood of experimenter Relevance of the test Motivation/alerntness of testee and tester Rapport between testee and tester Experience of test items Perseverance with standardised process Environmental influences
IQ tests: ethical issues
Potential for error when conducting IQ tests - continuity studies show a average change of 13 points - almost 1SD
Confidence in IQ tests can lead to big judgements:
setting - no evidence it helps but does cause pitfall for low sets
teacher expectations and perseverance
opportunities
Can impact self concept - and motivations
Group differences may be impacted - leading to prejudice
IQ tests: external validty - predicting academic achievement
Average correlation between IQ and academic achievement is .5 (only 25% of variance) - this correlation decreases from primary school to college
Study shows that personality traits are predictors of academic achievement but no correlation with emotional intelligence
IQ tests: external validity - predicting occupational attainment
IQ is a decent predictor of job success but doesn’t predict as well as academic achievement - r = .3
Tests measuring g more predictive than tests measuring for a particular job
What environmental factors contribute to intelligence?
Family
School
Society
Family influences
HOME (home observation for measurement of the environment) measures aspects of the home life (emotional and verbal responsively of carers, availability of learning materials such as books, internet). HOME positively correlates with IQ scores - stimulating home environment increases intelligence
But, could be due to parents being more intelligent, so could be genetic factors
Studies on adoptive families report lower correlations
Non shared family environment
Environmental influences that differ from child to child, within the same home e.g. sibling position, similarity to parent
Influence of non shared environment increases with age
If you disregard homes which are lacking intellectual stimulation, within family variations have greater impact than between family variations - non shared environment
School influences
Schooling has an effect on intelligence performance - intelligence will increase if you go to school
Cahan and Cohen - cross sectional study, completed lots of different tests. As you get older, ability to do certain tasks increases. When you jump from year to year, able to solve more problems than before, shows school words
Societal influences
The Flynn effect shows that something which society is doing which is making us more intelligent
Why is it increasing?
might represent a shift to abstract problem solving as well as using technology - far more jobs that need hands on skill etc
in more equal societies, this gain is higher and most represented in low SES children
in unequal societies, bigger differences in IQ across SES groups - environment has a big impact
What is the Flynn effect?
A rise of 3 points per year in IQ scores across a population
