Lecture #6 Flashcards
1
Q
What is psychometric approach?
A
Psychometric approach: intelligence is a trait or set on which individuals differ
2
Q
What is the Early Binet-Simon test?
A
- Intelligence scale that considered the age of the person being tested
- Which gave a score in terms of the child’s mental level
3
Q
What are the Weschler scales?
A
- Tests include both verbal and nonverbal measures
- IQ as a relative percentile
4
Q
What is Mental age?
A
- Binet-Simon test of intelligence
- To determine intelligence, they sought to examine items that were correlated with high teacher ratings
- From this they developed the Binet-Simon test of intelligence, which gave a score in terms of the child’s mental level (also referred to as mental age)
- Take a 10-year-old and test the 10-year-old on what they should be good at doing, and base them against other 10 year olds I.Q.
5
Q
How has IQ changed the way we look at intelligence?
A
- These tests were eventually modified in the U.S.A. to become the Stanford-Binet test
- This test reported test scores in terms of intelligent quotient (IQ), which takes mental age of the child and divides it by their actual physical age
- Adult version is the WAIS-III, child version is the WISC-III- Gives you a score for the child relative to other children that age
6
Q
How is the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Quotient calculated?
A
- IQ = Mental Age/Chronological Age x 100, but all modern tests now use Deviation IQs
- Deviation IQ’s- especially more important for late adolescence and adult hood
- Cut off for giftedness is 130 and children with intellectual disabilities is 70 and those are standard deviations
7
Q
What is General Intelligence?
A
- Sir Francis Gelton believed that intelligence was based on biological differences in the speed of neural conduction- late 19th century
- He believed intelligence was how fast your brain was – faster the signal in the brain, the more the brain can do, the more intelligent the individual is
- Tested reaction speed – flash a flight and then press a button as soon as you see the light
- He attempted to determine if there was a link between intelligence and the speed of sensory processes (using basic instruments!), but he did not find any significant correlation
8
Q
What did Charles Spearman say about intelligence?
A
- Charles Spearman developed factor analysis to determine if there was a general intelligence that underlay performance in the different forms of Binet’s tests
- He found that two factors influenced performance on these tests: general intelligence (g) and specific intelligence (s)
- Factor analysis is when you analyze a set of data and look for a general
- G stands fro general intelligence
9
Q
Specific vs. General intelligence
A
- Specific intelligence referred to skills that applied directly to the problem being solved (e.g., knowing how a specific calculation)
- General intelligence was a factor that correlated positively with the results of all of the tests (similar to Galton’s idea of general intelligence)
10
Q
Fluid vs. Crystal G
A
- Cattell further developed this idea by breaking gf into general fluid intelligence and gc into general crystal intelligence
- Fluid intelligence is a general mental ability that could be adapted to any use, while crystalized intelligence refers to previous experience / learning
- Fluid intelligence is most directly helpful in unfamiliar testing situations
- The opposite is true for crystallized intelligence
- Fluid intelligence appears to peak during the early 20s, whereas crystallized intelligence peaks at around age 50
11
Q
What is g?
A
- Mental speed and working memory have both been raised as possible basis of g
- Individuals with high IQ scores typically also have faster responses to sensory events
- Speed of sensory perception also correlates well with fluid g, although not as well with crystallized g
- The digit span of working memory also tends to be greater in individuals who score high on IQ tests
- These results suggest that an overall ability to process a lot of information quickly in the conscious mind is related to intelligence in general and fluid intelligence in particular
12
Q
What is Gardner’s theory of intelligence?
A
- There are 8 kinds of intelligence according to him
- musical-rhythmic
- visual-spatial
- verbal-linguistic
- logical-mathematical
- bodily-kinesthetic
- interpersonal
- intrapersonal
- naturalistic
13
Q
How stable are IQ scores across childhood?
A
- Young children can’t take IQ tests (lack the required verbal or written skills)
- Many children show fluctuations Increase or decrease; not random (i.e. Environment is important)
- IQ is highly reliable scale - Scores at age 8 correlate with scores at age 18 (.70)- results stay similar - Many children show fluctuations Increase or decrease; not random - Environment important
- Cumulative deficit: a hypothesis concerning the cause of lower mental test scores of groups considered environmentally deprived. It presupposes a progressive decrement in test scores, relative to population norms, as a function of age.
14
Q
What do IQ scores predict?
A
- Scholastic achievement (.50 correlation with future grades)
- Vocational outcome (occupation – higher in white-collar jobs)
- The gifted (130-150+)
- The mentally delayed (below 70)
15
Q
Factors that influence IQ
A
Evidence of heredity
- The Flynn effect: a secular trend of IQ
- Flynn effect is the data that shows that IQ scores have increased over time- To improvements in education and better nutrition
- People today have better fluid g than those in the past
- Grand parents probably exercised their fluid g less than we do
16
Q
Does Adoption affect IQ?
A
- Adoption to more advantaged family & IQ resembles biological parents more than adopted parents
- Children who are adopted IQ’s changes to the adopted families scores
- IQ scores of Romanian adopted children at 6 and 11 years of age
17
Q
Why are there racial, ethnic and social class differences in IQ?
A
- Cultural test bias hypothesis
- Language use and measures
- Culture-fair IQ tests?
18
Q
Motivational factors for IQ?
A
- Formal testing situations
- Examiner of different racial/ethnic group
19
Q
Negative stereotypes for IQ?
A
- Genetic hypothesis
- IQ differences are hereditary
- Environment can account
- Negative evidence from mixed-race children
20
Q
Environmental hypothesis for IQ?
A
- Group differ in IQ due to environment
- Some environments more conducive to intellectual growth than others
- Low-income families may be particularly at risk
- Malnourishment; if you’re not getting the same quality of food then your brain won’t grow as big
- Caregivers under stress- stress suppresses the brains growth
- Fewer age-appropriate toys, books
- Access to toys and shows they don’t develop as high in IQ than children coming from a rich environment with multiple factors we end up with differenced in IQ
21
Q
How do Social and cultural correlates with IQ?
A
Some at-home risk factors for low IQ scores
- Mother did not complete high school
- Family has four or more children
- Parents don’t have as much time for each child
- Father is absent from the family
- Family experienced many stresses Parents have rigid child-rearing values
- Mother has poor mental health- alcoholic, stress etc.
22
Q
How do children learn?
A
- Our large brains and lengthy childhood are very strong evidence that children are built to learn
- Much of our historical learning involved observation and imitation versus teaching and instruction
23
Q
Formal schooling
A
- Formal schooling is a civilized invention that dates back 3-4000 years
- For 97-98% of that time, it was only for wealthy boys
- Primary and secondary abilities
24
Q
Primary abilities
A
- Evolved through natural selection
- Acquired by children in all environments
- Intrinsic motivation
- Expert proficiency
25
Q
Secondary abilities
A
- Culturally dependent
- Requires explicit instruction
- Not intrinsically motivated
- Expert proficiency is rare
- Infant’s knowledge
26
Q
The three Rs: acquiring society’s core academic skills
A
- Reading, writing, arithmetic
- Reading depends on phonological recoding requires the brain to process visual signals into auditory signals
- Related to the orthography of a language – the link between visual symbols and sounds (deep = harder to learn/more obscure)
- Phonological processing, phonological recoding, is the single best predictor of reading disabilities
- Phonological difficulties associated with brain activation
27
Q
What is Dyslexia? How do the sexes differ?
A
Dyslexia: Great difficulty in learning to read despite an average intelligence
- Boys are far more likely to be identified as having reading disabilities than girls
- Sex differences in reading, verbal and writing ability with girls and women displaying higher levels of performance
28
Q
Possible explanations:
A
- Reading viewed as a stereotypical feminine activity
- Sex differences in brain structure or function
Children who are good readers are more likely to be good writers (Mathew Effect)
- Referred to as accumulated advantage, where those who have more have the advantage to acquire more
29
Q
Two basic approaches to teaching reading
A
- Phonemic method
- Whole-language / visual-based retrieval approach
- A combo of both approaches is most effective in teaching reading
- Reading instruction is most effective when individualized to child’s learning abilities and styles
- Learning to write involves the physical act of learning to write as well as the process of becoming a skilled communicator
- Preschoolers begin to write but do not differentiate written marks from things they represent
