Jensen 1969 Flashcards
What was Jensen’s (1969) controversial claim about the education of children with low SES?
Education should be tailored to the abilities of low SES children.
What did the 1954 Brown v Board of education end?
segregation in education
when was discrimination banned
1964
What differences were found in academic achievment?
- Minority groups
- Socioeconomic status (SES)
- Lead to:
- President Lyndon Johnson’s Great society & War on Poverty
- Head Start Program (since 1965)
what is the head start programme?
• Comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition and parental assistance to low-income children and their families in the US.
How did Sesame Street help children?
Sesame street helps children get to a minimal level of education before school
What did Jensen think psychologists could try to raise
naitonal IQ
What is the definition of intelligence?
“The aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment” (Wechsler, 1944)
What does IQ stand for?
Intelligence Quotient
What % of the population have an IQ between 85-115?
68%
What % of the populaiton have an IQ between 70-130
95%
What % of the populaiton have an IQ between 55-145?
99.7%
What is a paired association task?
recall randomly paired stimuli
what is a serial learning task?
recall items in the correct order
How was SES and IQ measured
Paired association and serial learning tasks
What did IQ correlate to?
• IQ highly correlated to learning scores in mid/high SES
What can IQ tests also assess
cultural learning
What are races?
populations with different distributions of genes
Where are genetic differences?
• Genetic differences manifest in virtually all anatomical, physiological and biochemical comparisons to date (in 1969 this was mainly in blood constituents)
what is heritability?
the proportion of variation in a trait in a population that can be attributed to genetic differences
What is the heritabiltiy estimate for IQ?
0.45-0.80
High heritability does not mean what
that a trait is immutable
What was the research q?
Understand the discrepancy between IQ and achievement in low/high SES
what was Jensens main argument?
Open up genetics as a potential avenue of research into IQ differences
how much further below was African American IQ
• African-American IQ distribution is 15 IQ points below the IQ distribution of European-Americans
smaller variance too
What is Jensenism?
The belief that African-Americans are mentally inferior
how did Jensen disagree with science only being used for some things?
– He claimed that this was why the discussion of the possibility of genetic determination of racial differences in test scores had stopped
– Just because something is ‘socially inappropriate’ doesn’t make it immune to scientific scrutiny… if anything, it makes it all the more necessary to investigate all avenues with appropriate rigor
What is the Flynn effect
• Worldwide intelligence test scores rise by 3 points per decade
what is stereotype threat?
• Knowledge of traits (e.g. gender, race) associated with low scores tend to reduce the scores in people who have those traits (Steele & Aronson, 1995)
– Reminding women about their gender before a maths test leads to lower maths performance
– Reminding African Americans about their ethnic background leads to lower performance on intelligence tests
