Lecture 4 Flashcards
Education effects
- education scores correlate high with IQ scores
both cause and effect
brighter students stay longer at education and education makes students brighter - school attendance as an influence to intelligence
attendance > no attendance
regular attendance > intermittent attendance
effects of delayed onset of schooling
effects of summer vacation for low income students
effects of early termination of schooling
how does schooling help?
- improves factual knowledge (crystallised intelligence)
encyclopaedic knowledge
vocan - improves abilities that contribute to intelligence (compatible with IQ tests)
problem solving
abstract thinking
categorisation
sustained attention
manipulation of symbols and operations - education also related to SES
SES as mediating factor - high SES families prepare children better for school
provide resources (books, computers, better schools and tuition) - low SES families lack ability to assist children at school
Education and intelligence - do interventions work?
- a numer of early-life education interventions have attempted to increase IQ for disadvantaged children
HEAD START PROJECT - short-lived immediate gains in IQ which disappeared later
- but students likely to drop-out and more likely to continue into higher education
ABECEDARIAN PROJECT - control (no intervention) and experimental (intervention) groups
-participants tested up to 21 years - some encouraging results
heavily criticised on methodological grounds
- difference between groups due to sampling errors
Family effects
- shared family environment: growing up siblings will share an environment with certain factors influencing equally
- unique environment: maybe children treated diff or may be factors outside family .e.g peer group
Within family factors
- passive model
PASSIVE MODEL
parent + child –> intelligent behaviour –> child intelligent due to genes
- intelligence caused by 50% overlap in genes
- intelligence child is intelligence due to genetic influence/parents giving them intelligent genes
- no consideration of interactions in the family
- non-dynamic
within family factors - Child effect model
CHILD EFFECT MODEL
child shows intelligent behaviour –> child being intelligent causes the parent to be intelligent –> child is intelligent
- child is intelligent in response to the parent encouraging their intelligent behaviour
- interaction between the child and parent increases intelligence
- the child may not be necessarily be showing intelligent behaviour - the parent may encourage intelligent behaviour
- result in increased intelligence - genetic capacity to do so
- parents actively involved in the development of intelligence
within family factors - Child driven effects
- parents and children do not behave in uniform fashion e.g. parent will behave differently to well behaved compared to a naughty child
- parents behaviour can either encourage or discourage natural tendencies
positive/encourage and negative/discourage feedback loops - discouraging/encouraging natural tendencies could suppress/facilitate expression of heritable traits
Socioeconomic status of the family
- assessed by parents occupation status, income, education level, status in community
occupation category provides crude index
Class I: professional; Class II: managerial & Technical; Class III: skilled workers; Class IV: partly skilled workers; Class V: unskilled workers - IQ scores correlate with SES (r=0.3 , r=0.4)
- correlation remains strong when family size, financial situation, residence area taken into account
- correlation dont indicate causal relationships
likely that intelligence affects SES, unclear that SES affects intelligence
Adoption studies: deprived children
- low IQ before adoption < 86
- adopted between 4.6 years old tested again 13.5 years old
- within each group - rank order remained relatively stable
increase in IQ was added constant
Family size & birth order
- increasing family size associated with lower IQ r=0.30
- biological explanation: if only genes control intelligence it suggests that low IQ parent have more children
- difference in children IQ correlate with birth order
partial explanation for lower IQ in large families
Birth order: admixture hypothesis
- taken into account parental intelligence, socioeconomic status, ethnic group, income
- high number of children than middle class families but also IQ
working class families tend to have more children than MC families but also lower IQ
both parents IQ and SES affect intelligence need to examine effect within families than across - not all studies find birth order effect
- across families first births contain more high SES children - higher IQ
- if birth order matters, should be differences between siblings
birth order : resource dilution
parental resources: time, energy, attention money are finite (Blake, 1981)
birth order: confluence model
- family environment become less intellectually stimulating with every child born (Zajonc, 1976)
reduced complexity in language, ideas, discussions, problem solving - birth order linked with average family intelligence level
1st born exposed to more adult speech, next child hear less mature sleep
1st born look after next born, increased 1st born intelligence
JENSEN (1997) - birth order effect due to each successive pregnancy increasing risk mothers immune system will attack and damage foetus
maternal recourse depletion theory
biological or social order
birth order within families
Study in Swedish conscripts
- negative relationship between birth order intelligence
- effect not due to family SES but sensitive to interval between births
six years gap eliminate effect
consistent with and confluence
birth order and social rank
- physiological changes affecting subsequent births
Study: birth order had an effect:
1st - 2nd - 3 IQ
1 - 3rd - 4.2 IQ
2 - 3 - 1.2 IQ - effect eliminated if siblings died
- birth order effect is effect of social rank
Outside family effect
Harris (1995) more important than family
- group socialisation
- people view the world as in-groups and dissimilar in the out-group
Context specific socialisation
- as children get older - less influence by family life
- school - new peer groups
outside home socialisation
- children identify with many social groups
- based on age, gender, personality, intelligence itself
- group encourages little intellectual activity - child will not aim to learn and improve intelligence
- group processes often serve to widen group differences
- intelligence norms for group rely on how group relates to out group
- process will serve to exaggerate pre-existing differences or create differences via cultural perception
outside family factors
- group process can also exaggerate difference within a group
- group is not entirely homogenous - individuals in group will share common characteristics still variation
- feel not a leader so go along with others
position in group changes intelligence
outside family factors : culture
- individuals values and beliefs in context of value and beliefs society
- Western intelligence different from other conceptualisations (Serpell 2001):
o Quantification
o Decontexualisation
o Biologisation
decontextualisation
- western thinking follows ancient greek philosophers
- maths, science and language - right and wrong
- empiricist dominated stoic thought
- logical progression moving from low to higher plain ideas
- — ability to detach oneself and think abstractly
- industrial revolution and rapid societal change means its important
Quantification
– study of intelligence encompassed by quantification
define
measure
score
- intelligence theory is designed to quantify intelligence
- many facets which we give single value to
reification - seeing abstract concepts as concrete, intelligence being something physical in the brain
- some things are not measurable-creating things of beauty
biologisation
- evolutionary psychologists argue intelligence is result of natural selection of genes of million of years
- our advanced study of ourselves is in its infancy
- cannot use genetics to explain intelligence of short period of time
Group differences in intelligence: - intelligence differences is political issue
- real or perceived differences can determine beliefs, attitudes and policies
education
social policy
civil rights
leadership
Eugenics
- good race
- refers to belief and practises that attempt through controls imposed on human reproduction to improve inherent characteristics of human race
- positive eugenics: encourage the reproduction of people with desired traits
- negative eugenics: discourage or prohibit the reproduction of people with undesired traits
- based on idea that natural selection does no longer operate in human societies resulting in weakening and demise of human race
- Francis Galton - introduced term and advocated use of reproduction controls for intelligent people
- eugenics popular at beginning of 20th century
- many countries introduced eugenics laws against mentally ill, people low intelligence - convicted criminals, blind and deaf
birth control, marriage license, segregation, forced sterilisation and abortion, immigration controls, forced immigration - pseudoscience used to cover racist and supremacist beliefs
no agreed definition or understanding of complex concepts: intelligence or ‘criminality’
intentionally confuses heritability with malleability
disregard of environment factors e.g. nutrition, living conditions
Eugenics 2
- nazi germany used genocide against ‘impure’ races and groups with undesirable traits
millions of jews perished in holocaust but also 250,000 roma gypsies and large number of disabled + mentally ill germans
‘law for prevention of Progeny from hereditary diseases’ resulted in 400,000 mentally ill and disabled people being forcibly sterilised - eugenics operate at individual level too
selective abortions on basis of gender, or likelihood of genetic conditions - some claim modern techniques that aim to eradicate inherited disabilities amount to eugenics
but the responsibility has been shifted from state to individual - preimplantation screening: genetic diagnosis aims to select babies without harmful or fatal conditions
designer babies - recent controversy: three parent babies where mitochondrial DNA comes from a third person so future baby is free from mitochondrial diseases including forms of diabetes, heart and liver conditions
approved by house of lords feb 2015
brain size and intelligence
MRI measured brain volume size shows a moderate size correlation with intelligence (r=0.33)
- correlation involved full scale IQ or ravens scores and was evident in both female and male samples
- other studies have shown significant correlations between g and both grey and white matter
sex differences in intelligence
male brain size 8-10% > female brain size when adjusted for body weight
male IQ > female IQ
- fewer women in top management and among nobel winners
- small % of women in STEM subjects
- two meta analysis studies showed male advantage at Raven’s progressive matrices test
RPM is test of non-verbal abstract reasoning
very closely related to g and concept of fluid intelligence
- male advantage in general population = 5 IQ points
- male advantage in student pop = 4.6
- male advantage in g
large sample: 1292 sibling paired tested at 16yrs
matched socio-economic status
male g = 8.66, female g= 8.45
sex differences 2
male advantage IQ
- very large sample: 14,469 tested at 16 in 1974
male IQ = 101.5 > female = 99.7
- statistically significant but extremely small
greater variance among males than females
small than the 5 IQ points in RPM
What does it mean?
- more interesting to look at specific aspects of intelligence
- small IQ and g differences influenced by test composition
males > females in:
- science, arithmetic, mechanical comprehension, electronics information
females > males in:
work knowledge, paragraph comprehension, numerical operations, coding speed
male = females
mathematical knowledge
sex differences on specific intelligences in adolescents
girls better at: verbal reasoning abstract reasoning numerical ability perceptual speed language spelling
boys better at:
spatial relationships
mechanical reasoning
sex differences on specific intelligences in all ages
women better:
vocab
reading comprehension
speech quality
women better:
spatial visualisation
mental rotation
spatial perception
main sex differences on verbal ability (f) and spatial ability (M)
- large differences in ravens progressive matrices could be due to heavy loading on spatial ability
- evolutionary, biological and environmental explanations
Sex differences in intelligence: evolutionary explanations
- ability to adapt to changing environments will increase probability of passing own genes to future gen
- hereditary traits should be subject to natural processes
- sex differences are the by-product of natural selection
males with good spatial skills had greater chances to mate and pass on abilities - foraging: males as main providers
searching for resources such as food over long distances
good navigational skills, awareness of physical environment, understanding of spatial and spatio-temporaral relationships - range: males as seeking polygamous relationships
travel far to seek females
to have good knowledge of different geographical environment - warfare: males as warriors
fighting other males for provision and females
extensive travle, good navigational skills, good knowledge of environment
Sex differences in intelligence: biological explanations
- can differences in brain size account for IQ differences
brain size differences can predict 5 IQ difference
link is circumstantial/correlational = not real proof
not clear why bigger brains are needed for some cognitive tasks but not others - no sex differences in number of neurons
female brain contain smaller but more densely packed - brain size argument based on differences between species
not valid explanations - men and women tend to use different strategies to learn routes
men tend to use distance and cardinal directions
women use landmarks and relative directions
Choi and Silverman (2002) - found that testosterone levels in men correlated with use of distance and cardinal directions
