Intelligence

Question 1

Do you know when you see intelligence?

Answer 1

Sometimes it is hard to determine whether something has intelligence

Question 2

What is intelligence?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What is intelligence not?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

The birth of empirical intelligence - Spearman

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Who came up with g?

Answer 5

Spearman

Question 6

Cattell - 2 types of intelligence

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Fluid intelligence

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Crystallised intelligence

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Three statue theory - Carroll

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Why is measuring intelligence hard?

Answer 10

It is an abstract concept, can’t reach out and take intelligence, it doesn’t exist in the concrete world

Question 11

Solution to measuring intelligence

Answer 11

Observe an individuals actions on tasks that require aspects of intelligence

example: asked which shapes will fit in a certain box

Question 12

What is important when measuring intelligence?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

How do we compare children of different ages?

Answer 13

Use a standardise score - IQ

Can make judgements about a child by comparing their IQ to the general population

Question 14

How to estimate IQ?

Answer 14

Raw score divided by chronological age times 100

Question 15

The IQ bell curve

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Practical applications of IQ

Answer 16

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

Question 17

IQ tests: the good predictability

Answer 17

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

Question 18

IQ tests: internal validity concerns

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Why are IQ tests hard to conduct in practise?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

IQ tests: ethical issues

Answer 20

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

Question 21

IQ tests: external validty - predicting academic achievement

Answer 21

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

Question 22

IQ tests: external validity - predicting occupational attainment

Answer 22

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

Question 23

What environmental factors contribute to intelligence?

Answer 23

Family
School
Society

Question 24

Family influences

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Non shared family environment

Answer 25

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

Question 26

School influences

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Societal influences

Answer 27

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

Question 28

What is the Flynn effect?

Answer 28

A rise of 3 points per year in IQ scores across a population