Lecture 2 - History of Intelligence

Question 1

Who were the two main psychologists that influenced intelligence? What did they suggest?

Answer 1

Francis Galton:
- Inspired by Darwin
- Said intelligence was due to superior aspects passed down through families
- Tested intelligence in multiple ways now discarded e.g discarded

Albert Binet:
- Wanted to identify special needs kids in primary school
- Created Binet-Simon Scale: 30 tasks, increasing in difficulty
- Leveled kids against each other to see if they function well for their age

Question 2

What did Lewis Terman do?

Answer 2

• USA made their own investigation into intelligence as the Binet-Simon scale did not work for American children
• Revised the scale, tried it on 1000+ kids from ages 4-14
• Start of standardised testing, comparative data

Question 3

What did William Stern do?

Answer 3

• Developed Intelligence Quotient
• One figure indicates a general level of intelligence
• Formula: Mental Age/ Chronological age x 100

Question 4

How were intelligence tests adapted to adults?

Answer 4

• Army needed tests to place soldiers in certain positions
• Tests needed to be done at the same time and applicable to all
• Army Alpha Test designed for literate groups, comprised of 8 subsets
• Army Beta Test designed for illiterates, comprising of 7 subsets
• Subsets get accumulated into intelligence e.g D- is worse intelligence
• Testes 1.5 mil people for war, but found no affect for success of war, questioning legitimacy of IQ tests

Question 5

What evidence did Galton put forward for the theory that intelligence is biologically related?

Answer 5

• The number of eminent relatives of an eminent person was greater for 1st degree relatives than 2nd
• Looked at status as a measure for intelligence through a newspaper
• Started twin studies

Question 6

What are the environmental factors that affect intelligence?

Answer 6

• Biological variables: Nutrition, Exposure to lead, Prenatal factors
• Family: Socioeconomic status, Parental occupation, Birth order&size
• School & Education: Learning, -8 points of IQ for every year of school you miss
• Culture: IQ is culturally biased, created for western populations and intelligence is defined differently

Question 7

What did Bouchard and Loehlin do?

Answer 7

• Created framework combining genetic and environmental influences on behaviour

Question 8

How was Race affected with intelligence?

Answer 8

• Herrnstein&Murray published a book analysing IQ test scores throughout the USA

Question 9

What were the main themes of the book?

Answer 9

• The cognitive elite: looked at top part of distribution, indicative of college attendance without contextual background. Those with higher intelligence are rising in society, creating a hierarchy
• Socioeconomic variables and IQ scores: Lower end of distribution, suggested low intelligence causes unemployment and poverty. IQ is more important at predicting socioeconomic differences
• Relationship between intelligence and race: Believed that intelligence is passed through genes and IQ is fixed. Asians score 5x more than White, White score more than Black

Question 10

What implications were drawn from the book?

Answer 10

• National IQ is getting lower: Women with low IQ = reproduce more, immigrants = lower IQ
• Intervention would not work: Argued against help for those struggling
• Spend more resource supporting high IQ people: As inequality is inherited, we should organised society around it to stabilise it.

Question 11

What were the assumptions the book made?

Answer 11

• The premises on which the book is made are questionable, making their recommendations insecure
  Assumes:
• General factor of intelligence
• IQ tests measure intelligence accurately
• Relies that IQ is stable over time
• Genetic stability assumed

Question 12

What was wrong with the stats in the book?

Answer 12

• Statistical knowhow: Analysis ignored stats knowledge, correlation does not mean causation
• Validity of Measures: Criticism of some articles they used and things ignored e.g skewed data
• Research used to build arguments: Issue of eugenics

Question 13

What are some Sex differences in intelligence?

Answer 13

• Girls score slightly higher in the original Stanford-Binet test
• No difference on intelligence across sex
• Meta-analysis showed men scored 3-5 points higher than women on Raven’s Matrices
• Men score better on measures of spatial ability

Question 14

Why are there differences in intelligence based on sex?

Answer 14

• Brain size: never been linked to intelligence, but men have bigger brains
• Evolution: men needed spatial awareness more for hunting etc
• Brain Functioning
• Testosterone
• Stereotypes