Intelligence and Educational Achievement Flashcards
What subjects do History and English, Mathematics and Science correlate with?
How does scores on intelligence tests correlate with years of formal education?
English/history: higher correlations verbal ability and Gc, also correlated with Gf but lower
Mathematics/Science: higher correlations with Gf
IQ tests correlates between .3 and .65 to YFE
What is a better predictor of YFE, IQ or other social economic status (SES) such as fathers education or any other predictors/ sociological factors
IQ is a better predictor
Describe Terman’s Study of the Gifted
What about studies following individuals with low IQ scores
Sampled 800 students who scored in the top 1% of IQ within their age group and followed them throughout their life course
- 90% enrolled at Uni, 70% graduated
By age 40:
- published 67 books
- produced more than 1400 scientific articles
- had 150 patents registered
- produced more than 200 plays and short stories
Very small number of these students failed university, served a prison term, had a mental disorder, unhappy marriage or unsuccessful career.
This group of people achieved 10-30 times as much as expected for 800 people representative of the general population
A study following a group of 50 yr old people with an IQ less than 70 in their childhood were examined:
- 11% institutionalised
- 24 % could not live an independent life of their own
- In the US, there is a 10-15 point difference in average IQ between those who graduate from HS and those who do not.
Educational Modifiability of Intelligence
Describe Project Headstart and other interventions attempting to increase IQ test performance
- Educationalists hope they can now only increase student knowledge (Gc) but also increase capacity for learning (Gf)
- New methods over old methods more effective in raising level of test performance?
- Consider effects of educational interventions in early stages of childhood seperately from the effects of the intervention at the later stages.
Headstart project 1965
- Revolutionary, aimed to provide an enriched preschool environments for disadvantaged kids
- Duration 2 months to 2 years
- A control group was compared to experimental group
- Results were disappointing
- 6-7 point IQ difference was achieved at the end of the program, however this difference dissappeared relatively quickly
Similar outcomes obtained in other large-scale projects
- Intellectaul stimulation provided for several hours a week for infants before age of 6
- mother also trained
- Little credible evidence that these interventions will create enduring changes in performance on intelligence tests
- However, other aspects did change in a useful way
- School retention was significantly higher in experiemental group
- Exposure to pre-school training resulted in a more positive reaction to school environment in later years compared to control
- Treatment effects were in non-cognitive skills rather than changes in IQ
- Better relationships with teachers (increased agreeableness and conscientiousness)
- Improved motivation (attributable to increased openness)
Describe the educational interventions that take place during adolescence and adulthood
- Practice studies
- Studies that employ coaching
- training studies
Describe the Effect of Practice on IQ
- Purpose is for acquisition and maintenance of cognitive skill
- Participants who practice Iq tests by doing 400 items over 8 consecutive days, participants can solve 2-3 items more than at the beginning of practice
- This is the same as systematic error
- This indicates IQ scores often show no systematic change and are resistant to practice effects
- Can fluctuate slightly from day to day but are relatively resistant to change
Is coaching for SAT effective?
Coaching in test-taking skills
- Coaching in the use of SAT has become a big business and there are many different systems of coaching
- Some are more successful than the others
- Meta analysis showed that expensive coaching courses improved SAT scores by 2 points
- Not very impressive
- More recent studies show some gains but overall are still pretty small
Describe the difficulty of practice in achieving transferability to different tasks.
How does training attempt to solve this?
What experiment was designed?
Like practice, training involves repeated activity
However, it differs from practice in that the repeated activity consists of processes that are theoretically distinct from those of the skill of interest
- Training denotes changes in tasks that are not identifcal, evidence of its effectiveness provides an important justification for educational enterprise
- skills taught in schools are likely to be transferred to real life situations
- Traditionally, of course, the educational system makes this assumption
- The problem lies in finding effective means for achieving maximum transfer
Kvashchev experiment (1970)
- Took all syllabuses taught in secondary schools in that country and engaged teachers to design lectures to cover various topics in a way that would elicit use of principles of creative problem solving
Thus, he encouraged teachers:
- To ask students to design critical experiements in order to arrive at answers to particular problems in science subjects
- To develop creative writing exercises in language subjects
- To look for hidden meanings in texts dealing with history and other social science subjects
- Over the years, he did 1on1 coaching with teachers to improve their teaching methods and developing teahcing modules for individual topics within school subjects
- Also worked individually with his students
Kids were taught how to solve problems creatively, not how to answer questions
Results:
Gf gain = 22.04%
Gc gain = 24.32%
Statistically significant effects!
- Exercises in creative thinking seem to be effective
List and describe the use of various technology to increase IQ?
- Brain Training Software:
- working memory
- problem solving ability - Nootropics (Smart drugs): memory enhancers, cognitive enhancers, intelligence enhancers
- Memory
- Attention
- IQ - Cortical stimulation: applying electrical stimulation Transcranial direct current stimulation) to excite or inhibit activity of neurons
Does it help? Not really.
Metacognitive beliefs are key non-cognitive predictors of academic performance. Explain.
Non-cognitive factors:
Self-efficacy
Self-concept
MARCI
Anxiety
Confidence
Evaluation
Confidence had a 0.489 correlation, highest predictor
Another experiment by Kleitman showed that when students were more confident, teachers gave them higher grades (Gf was controlled)
Another experiment showed resilience was a good predictor of mental well-being and adjustment.
