Intelligence Flashcards

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1
Q

Do you know when you see intelligence?

A

Sometimes it is hard to determine whether something has intelligence

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2
Q

What is intelligence?

A

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

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3
Q

What is intelligence not?

A

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

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4
Q

The birth of empirical intelligence - Spearman

A

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

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5
Q

Who came up with g?

A

Spearman

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6
Q

Cattell - 2 types of intelligence

A

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

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7
Q

Fluid intelligence

A

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

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8
Q

Crystallised intelligence

A

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

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9
Q

Three statue theory - Carroll

A

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

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10
Q

Why is measuring intelligence hard?

A

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

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11
Q

Solution to measuring intelligence

A

Observe an individuals actions on tasks that require aspects of intelligence

example: asked which shapes will fit in a certain box

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12
Q

What is important when measuring intelligence?

A

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

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13
Q

How do we compare children of different ages?

A

Use a standardise score - IQ

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

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14
Q

How to estimate IQ?

A

Raw score divided by chronological age times 100

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15
Q

The IQ bell curve

A

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

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16
Q

Practical applications of IQ

A

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

17
Q

IQ tests: the good predictability

A

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

18
Q

IQ tests: internal validity concerns

A

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

19
Q

Why are IQ tests hard to conduct in practise?

A
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
20
Q

IQ tests: ethical issues

A

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

21
Q

IQ tests: external validty - predicting academic achievement

A

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

22
Q

IQ tests: external validity - predicting occupational attainment

A

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

23
Q

What environmental factors contribute to intelligence?

A

Family
School
Society

24
Q

Family influences

A

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

25
Q

Non shared family environment

A

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

26
Q

School influences

A

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

27
Q

Societal influences

A

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

28
Q

What is the Flynn effect?

A

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