Lecture 10 - Biology & Intelligence Flashcards
What was Alfred Binet’s aims?
REMEDIAL
- He wanted to identify those who weren’t getting on so he could identify them and help them
- developed Binet-Simon test (1905)
He said labels like Idiot, imbecile etc were not the end point, you can take people like that and help them recover
Outline the Binet-Simon test (1905)
The Binet-Simon test (1905)
- first test of intelligence, before then it hadn’t really been examined as a measureably concept, like height or weight
Ask them several questions/ tasks
•Follow a beam of light
•Point to _____ part of the body
• What is a chimney etc
By 1908 - the test allowed ranking
- the test would give you a score
- this way you could rank scores from highest to lowest
- Binet was interested in the ones who were loweest
Outline Terman and the changes to intelligence testing
Terman was from Stanford university and developed the stanford-binet test from the original (French) Binet test
Initially, intelligence testing was remedial - find the weak and make them strong
- but in 1916: WW1 starts, and there was the need to screen recruits for the army to find out what job best suits their abilities - large amount of people applying and needed to get them into the job that best fits their abilities - where would they best be
- Scholars therefore thought they could use an intelligence tests to use in large scale military selection
FOCUS SHIFTS FROM REMEDIAL TO SECTION
- find who is weak and don’t choose them
What was the initial calculation?
The initial calcuation for Inteligence Quotient was
- Mental age ÷ Chronological age X 100
- E.g. a childs score is typical of 10 year olds, but they are 12 = (10÷12) X100 = 85
X - not very good beyond teen years as scores get more extreme
What is the current Stanford-Binet test
- what are the 5 things it tests
Tests 5 things:
1. Knowledge - where are we, what date is it?
- Fluid Reasoning (words)
- sally is taller than peter but shorter than jane, is jane taller than Peter? - Quantitative reasoning (Numbers)
- a farmer has twice as many sheep as it does cows, and twice as many cows as hens. How many more times does he have sheep than hens? - Visual-Spatial PRocessing
- which shape fits into this pattern
- e.g. Raven’s Progressive Matrices - Working memory
- number sequences that get progressively bigger
Whats the current IQ system?
** IS THIS RIGHT/ UNDERSTAND IT?
Old one was replaced as it wasnt very sensitive above teen years
- it’s been replaced in modern times by deviation scores/ percentiles
Variance = how widely distributed a score is
If you have a data set, you calculate the mean then you see how a certain score deviated from that mean - ignoring if the difference is positive or negative.
You calculate the differences for each score and add them up
- THEN DO SQUARE ROOT OF THIS - THIS GIVES YOU THE SD
Then you judge a persons IQ based on how many SD’s away from the mean they are
What is the criteria for a learning disability in the UK?
Criteria for learning/ intellectual disability in UK:
•Mild LD: less than 70
- one SD
•Severe LD: Less than 50
- might not even have language
Known as mental retardation in the US
Outline correlation between intelligence and success and previous attitudes towards intelligence during scool time
there is a correlation between intelligence and school achievement - a correlation of 0.4 or 0.6
Previous Argument was: If you were intelligent at 11, this was fixed and you would remain at that level of intelligence for your adult life - no point putting an unintelligent 11 year old through school as they will never be intelligent
- therefore, Sir Cyril Burt introduced the 11-Plus exam
- he argued intelligence was a genetically given trait, like eye colour, and it was stable like them to
Outline the experiment of Cyril Burt
He wanted to investigate genetics and intelligence - so he looked at MZ twins that were raised apart!
- that way you could isolate genetic influence from environmental influence
- Claimed to have found 25 of these pairs, and found a correlation of .771 between genetics and intelligence
He then claimed to have found 15 more of these pairs but didnt specificy where they come from, who they were or how he found them
- he again reported a correlation of .771
Years later, people began to question how he had found so many of these pairs, and how he managed to find the exact same correlation - very unlikely
BPS opened an investigation and found his findings were falsified - this was catastrophic for his results
- but this was found out years after his results were published and the 11+ was introduced, and he had been knighted!
Give examples of Cyril Burt’s 11+ test (1940s)
Included questions like:
• Ink is to pen as ______ to brush
• Subtract two-thirds of eight hundred and thirty four from 23 times 185
Measured a broad range of skills
- Some questions are culturally specific lack arranging movement verbs in order of speed:
Gallped, trudged, crawled, raced, trotted
Summarise how Binet, Terman and Burt differed in their approaches to intelligence
Binet: REMEDIAL
- wanted to find the wake and help them
Terman: SELECTION
- Find those who were weak and not select them
Burt: RESOURCES
- find those who would benefit from attention, and who would do well in the future
- find the weak and dont waste time on them
- find the strong and work on them
What are the 2 book debates
*****
- Herrnstein & Murray (1994) - “The Bell Curve”
- argued: IF we accept the hypothesis that intelligence is related to genetics - then surely we would be right in estimating that people who differ genetically would differ in terms of intelligence - Lewontin, Rose & Kamin (1984) - Not in our genes
- said the opposite, that that is not correct
What are the 4 arguments set out from Herrnstein & Murray (1994) - The Bell Curve
*****
If you take the idea that intelligence is caused by genetics, you also buy into the idea that intelligence:
- Is unitary - black and white thing
- Is fairly tested by intelligence tests
- Is inherited and unchangeable- influenced by genetics/ heriditary stuff
- Differs according to genetic groups (races)
Therefore, it would be a waste of resources to help those with low scores
What are the 4 counter arguments from Lewontin, Rose & Kamin (1984)
*****
Their book argues these 4 things
- if you take the idea that intelligence is determined by society’s needs, intelligence is:
- might be a unitary ability - but there is much more to it
- Some might be fair - but could be cultural unfairness
- Debateable if its entirely inherited and unchangebale
- if it differs according to race - depends on your definition of race
Therefore, it’s a societal decision on who to allocate resources to
Outline the counter argument against intelligence being an unitary ability
- Gardner
Are there multiple intelligences? - Intelligence tests kind of just measure mathematical and linguistic skills - what about memory and other stuff?
Gardner argued there is more to intelligence than just one thing - he said the view on intelligence has been shaped by the purposes of initial intelligence tests - i.e. remedy/ selection
He suggests its not hard to consider other things people do as intelligent:
- Intrapersonal
- interpersonal - e.g. emotional intelligence
- Musical
- Bodily - e.g. dancing, agility
- Spatial
- Linguistic
- Logical-Mathematical
What is Harold Gardner’s more all encompassing definition of intelligence?
“The capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are value in one or more cultural setting”
Outline the counter argument against intelligence tests measuring fairly
- 2 ways
Can evaluate if tests are fair measures in 2 measures:
- In the content
- Certain questions can easily be culturally biased towards certain groups
- E.g. name 4 Australian prime ministers since 1950 - would clearly benefit Australians - In their testing conditions
- e.g. cramming and stress might impact on one persons performance more than others
- and those who attend private schools are often more likely to be exposed to these tests - practice
Outline the counter argument against intelligence being inherited and unchangeable
EVIDENCE FROM WHO?*** EMAIL
Although many twin studies have had lots of fraud/ false results, there has been some correlational evidence from studies in the 80s and 90s (From WHO???) that has found mixed evidence for this:
- Unrelated children reared together - .3
- .3 correlation - environment has a clear impact, even if genetics is 0 - get benefit of environment
- similar to siblings reared apart - only get one benefit genetics - Siblings reared together - .45
- get benefits of both genetics and environment so it is a bit higher - both nature and nurture - Dz twins reared together .6
- a bit higher - Mz Twins Apart * IMPORTANT ONE*
- .7
- correlation is still very high when environment is different - genes still had a massive impact despite no shared environment - Mz Twins together - .85
MAYBE ISNT ACTUALLY A COUNTER ARGUMENT - MAYBE ACTUALLY SUPPORTS IT - SEE CAVEATS THOUGH
What are the 3 Caveats of these genetics findings?
- Even if raised apart, adoptive environments are likely to be quite similar
- not necessarily going to be YORKSHIRE/ CORNWALL - it might just be different aunties/ uncles, could be same town or same street even
- may be similar in parental/ rearing style - Genetic potential would still need environment
- environment is still very important
- even if there was a single intelligence gene identified (which there isnt) it would depend on the environment to bring it out
- they depend on each other
- 6 feet gene wouldnt work if you were malnourished - How sound is the notion of races anyway
Outline the counter argument against intelligence being the notion of races
There is evidence for subtle differences between races, for instance, in America American Asians> White> African Americans
- more Asian get higher grades and go into university than white people, who then get higher grades….
CHALLENGE TO THIS:
X - there is only one race - the human race (homo sapiens) of which there is just variation in intelligence - like there is variation in eye or hair colour
Skin colour doesnt mark different races:
- for instance evidence suggests that the first Britains had actually dark skin
- we are all really the same arent we
Outline the importance surrounding differences and significance
Differences between groups are over-estimated, compared to differences within groups
Just because a result is statistically significant, it doesnt mean that it is literally substantial - danger with psychological research
- in the media people will think it means substantial
Outline the issues with race
If you want to find a correlation to do with intelligence, it doesnt take much effort to look beyond race
- for instance IQ and child poverty (Societal factors) correlate at 0.4
Many today will still claim IQ differences based on race - e.g. watson & crick were racists
- The social impact of race is still with us in this area
What did Binet say about pessimism?
Said we had to break free of the pessimism that intelligence was fixed and unchangeable
- its pessimistic to say that IQ is indeed one thing, unchangeable and inherited - but its unclear if it is or not
Binet: We Must protest and react against this brutal pessimism
