Lecture 3- The Structure of Intelligence Flashcards
What is intelligence?
Howard (1993)
1) something in the head
2) a particular way in which people behave
3) the sum and total of all abilities and skills
Explain what they mean by intelligence is something in the head?
- property of the brain that is related to test scores
1) Jensen= neural transmission speed
2) Eysenck= info transmission accuracy
Explain a particular way in which people behave in terms of intelligence.
- assumes that differences in test scores reflect identifiable differences in behaviour between people- reductionist reserach
Explain what the sum of total of all abilities and learning in terms of intelligence
- People have different strengths and weaknesses
- differences in test score reflect differences in experience
- holistic research
- impossible to measure and rank ppl
What is general intelligence?
absolute level of cognitive ability
what is g?
labels the underlying cause of individual differences in intelligent behaviour and IQ
What are the 4 categories of theory?
1) Single factor theory
2) Hierarchal theories
3) Multiple ability theories
4) Contextual theories
Describe single factor theory
Spearman (1900-1930)
- correlations between school subjects were always positive
- performance at mental tasks were correlated
- this is due to g (general intellectual ability)
- performance= g + s
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What does the psychologist think g is?
- Spearman- mental energy
- Raven- the ability to detect order out of chaos (inductive reasoning)
- Carpenter et al- working memory capacity, ability to create and control long sequences of actions.
What is s?
- knowledge/ skill related to a specific task
- a unique bundle of skills for a specific task (contextualized)
outline Spearman’s single factor theory
- g is the only one worth testing to account for performance and make predictions
- beyond g we can not make predictions about intellectual destiny
Describe Hierarchical theories
The 1940s onwards
- g- important universal predictor
- there are also specific abilities that predict performance
- performance= g + specific abilities + s
State some examples of specific abilities
- verbal ability
- numerical ability
- spatial ability
What is Fluid intelligence?
- domain-free reasoning ability
- important for novel tasks and complex tasks where a solution cannot be retrieved from memory
What is crystallised intelligence?
- domain- specific skills and knowledge
- skills and knowledge important to context and culture
- tests for this will cause cultural bias
what is gr/gs?
efficiency of basic cognitive operation
what is gv?
ability to imagine manipulations of objects and space
What does the Multiple ability theory propose?
- people have separate independent, uncorrelated specific abilities
- performance depends on a person’s skill level at an appropriate combination of these
- no g that predicts performance across all tasks.
What did Thurstone (1930’s) find?
- identify 7 independent primary mental abilities
- no general intelligence factor (factor analysis performed to force uncorrelated abilities)
What did Guilford (1960) find?
- 20% correlations between cognitive tasks found to be non-sig (no g)
- identified 4 contents (types of material ppl think about)
- 5 operations (thinking methods ppl use
- 6 products (outcomes)
- which gives us the intellect cube
What did Gardner (1990) find?
Multiple intelligences
- key domains ability that are independent
- Savant syndrome- ppl with a mental disability may excel at one single task
- Brain damage selectively impair one single skills
- Gifted people excel in one domain
Describe Contextual theories
- Skill depends on experience, acquired for specific tasks in specific contexts, skills do not generalise
- performance predicted by possession of relevant domain-specific knowledge and skill
How do we measure g?
- Raven Progressive Matrices
- correlated with g(gf): r=.7-.8
