task 2 - the highest virtue

Question 1

first researcher to develop a proper intelligence test

Answer 1

Alfred Binet

Question 2

multidimensional aptitude battery (MAB)

Answer 2

Task 1 = vocabulary → asks respondents to identify which of several alternative words is closest in
meaning to the given word
o Task 2 = arithmetic → maths test
o Task 3 = spatial → spatial task
o Task 4 = picture arrangement → figure out which sequence of
the panels would make the most meaningful story

Question 3

raven’s matrices

Answer 3

task where you must notice the pattern of shapes within each cell of the matrix, figure out how the pattern of shapes changes from one cell to the next, and then apply this rule to figure out the pattern of shapes for the missing cell

Question 4

correlation of brain size and mental ability

Answer 4

positively correlated with an average of about .33

Question 5

cohort effects

Answer 5

difference between birth cohorts (e.g. different experiences of people born in 1970 and 2010)

Question 6

how stable is our mental ability across our life span?

Answer 6

Study: Deary found that participants’ scores at 79 or 80 years were about one standard deviation unit
higher than their scores at 11 years of age → the growth in mental ability during and after puberty was much greater than any decline in mental ability due to aging
o But the differences among the participants remained stable

Question 7

nerve conduction velocity

Answer 7

speed with which electrical impulses are transmitted between the cells• Methods of measurement:
o Presentation of a visual stimulus (flash of light) to the research participant, on whose head are
placed various electrodes that record brain waves
o Applying some stimulus to the skin of the wrist, and then measuring the time taken for the resulting
nervous system impulses to travel through the arm
• Inconsistent results

Question 8

reaction time

Answer 8

• Slower reaction times are associated with lower scores on tests of mental ability
• The speed of the brain and nervous system is part of the basis for the g factor of mental ability

Question 9

inspection time

Answer 9

= length of time that a stimulus must be present before the brain can notice that stimulus
• Strong links → .3 correlation
• People who have longer inspection times tend to have lower scores on mental ability tests
• Mental speed, as measured by these inspection time tasks, is strongly implicated in the g factor

Question 10

brain waves: averaged evoked potentials

Answer 10

=the electrical activity that occurs in the brain due to the activation of neurons
• Higher levels of mental ability are associated with many features of averaged evoked potentials:
o Shorter latency (i.e., faster brain wave response to a stimulus)
o Higher frequency
o Lower amplitude (i.e., less extreme response to a stimulus)
o Greater overall complexity of the waves
• Correlations go up to .3

Question 11

brain glucose metabolism

Answer 11

• Individuals with higher levels of mental ability tend to have brains that consume less glucose while performing mental ability tasks
• Higher-IQ persons appear to have brains that are more efficient = requiring less glucose to do the mental work of solving some cognitively difficult problem

Question 12

genetic and environmental influences on mental ability

Answer 12

• Twin studies
• Heritability of mental ability is typically about .40, and the effect of the common or shared environment is
almost as strong, at about .35
• When studies using mental ability test scores from adults are considered, the heritability of mental ability is
much higher
o Typically about .65, whereas the effect of the common or shared environment is much lower,
probably under .20
• So it means that different levels of mental activity are due to common environment
• The effect on one’s mental ability of the family or household tends to become less important as one grows
up
o By adulthood one’s level of mental ability is heavily dependent on one’s genetic characteristics
• Some evidence that the heritability of IQ tends to be lower when studies are conducted using participants of less enriched environments (economically underdeveloped countries or in the lowest socioeconomic classes of Western countries)
• Overall heritability is estimated at about .50, with additive genetic influences contributing about .35 and nonadditive genetic influences the remaining .15

Question 13

womb environment influences on mental ability

Answer 13

• The influence of the womb environment on mental ability was about .20 when fraternal twins were considered, and .05 when nontwin siblings were considered
o The heritability of mental ability was lower than generally considered, probably not more than .50
• Both kinds of identical twins were very similar in their levels of mental ability, but that the dichorionic twins
did show somewhat less similarity than did the monochorionic twins, at least in some aspects of mental
ability
• Differences in chorion type and the associated differences in prenatal nutrition might have at least some
effect on the development of the foetus

Question 14

nutrition and its effects on mental ability

Answer 14

• Problem in poor economically developed countries
• Breastfeeding
o Longer duration of breastfeeding was associated with higher levels of mental ability
o Young adults who had been breastfed as infants scored about 4 IQ points higher than did young
adults who had not been breastfed as children
o Perhaps mothers with higher levels of g are more likely to breastfeed, and also likely to have
children who inherit those high levels of g → not causal

Question 15

nutrition before birth and its effects on mental ability

Answer 15

o Children who had a low birth weight (below about 2500 grams) average about half of a standard
deviation lower than do children of normal birth weight
o Twins tend on average to have lower intelligence test scores than do their nontwin siblings, with a
difference of about 5 IQ points

Question 16

how does birth order affect mental ability?

Answer 16

• First-born children have slightly higher IQs as adults than do their siblings who were the second-born children and so on
• WHY?
o If the mother’s womb environment becomes less favourable with each pregnancy, then this might
slightly hinder brain development in later-born children
o Early-born children experience a better social environment for intellectual development than do
later-born children → undivided attention from parents
• The link between birth order and mental ability is likely due to the differences in intellectual stimulation
experienced by early-born and later born children

Question 17

evolutionary function of mental ability

Answer 17

• Genetic mutations could be an explanation to the differences amongst people
• Higher levels of mental ability can carry costs as well as benefits
o Advantages: help meet the challenges of survival and reproduction and parenting
o Disadvantages: larger brain consumes more energy while at rest, requires a longer time to grow to
maturity, and increases the risk of complications during childbirth
• For prehistoric humans, colder winters would have favoured higher levels of mental ability
o More successful in meeting the demands of making warm clothing and of hunting large animals.
• Higher levels of mental ability would have been favoured after people began to live in towns and to work in
specialized occupations→more likely to survive and reproduce
• Sex differences
o Men tend to average higher than do women in some aspects of spatial ability (especially those that require visualizing objects in 2D)
o Women tend to average higher than do men in some aspects of memory and of perceptual speed
o Could be due to the abilities required during the prehistoric times

Question 18

academic achievement and performance

Answer 18

• Mental ability does have a strong relation with academic achievement
o But the strength of that relation varies somewhat, depending on how academic achievement is
measured and on the level of education being considered
• When large groups of students are tested for general mental ability, their resulting IQ scores tend to be
correlated rather substantially with their grades in school
• The correlations between general mental ability and academic performance are stronger at the lower levels
of education than in the higher levels
o IQ is better able to predict grades in elementary school than in secondary school, and better able to
predict grades in secondary school than in college or university
o In elementary school, IQ tends to correlate in the .60s with academic achievement, whereas in
secondary school, the correlation tends to be in the .50s, and in college or university, in the .40 o Due to how much variation in mental ability there is at each level of education
• IQ can predict if someone drops out of school or not at about .55

Question 19

job performance, occupation status, and income

Answer 19

• Smarter workers = better workers
• For more complex jobs that require a great deal of thinking, a higher level of IQ translates into considerably
better job performance
• Problem: Perhaps people who are born into the higher classes of society tend to get better jobs and incomes simply by virtue of their social class (do better on mental ability tasks)
o Solution: Partial correlation = allows the researcher to see how much two variables are correlated when the influence of a third variable is statistically removed
Céleste Cockmartin
17
▪ Thelinkbetweenmentalabilityandoccupationalachievementreflectsamoderatelystrong tendency for smarter people to gain higher-status jobs and higher incomes

Question 20

longevity and health

Answer 20

• Whalley and Deary (2001 ) study: childhood mental ability scores of nearly 2800 people in relation to record of which of those people had died and at what age
o Substantial link between IQ and longevity within both sexes
o Of women whose intelligence test scores as 11-year-olds had been in the top quarter of the sample,
about 70% survived to the age of 75 years
▪ Forwomenwhosescoreshadbeeninthebottomquarterofthesample,theproportionwas
only 45%
o Among men, about 50% of those who had scored in the top quarter survived to the age of 75, versus
only about 35% of those who had scored in the bottom quarter
o Small differences due to the war → high IQ men died more easily as low IQ men weren’t selected for
service
• Fathers occupational status and overcrowdedness of neighbourhoods
o Among children who grew up in a similar neighbourhood and had fathers of similar occupational
status, the children with higher IQs tended to live longer than did the children with lower IQs

Question 21

how are low iq and health related?

Answer 21

o Due to some health-related problems that arise in childhood (or even before birth)
o Lower IQ in childhood could itself indicate that the body and brain are not functioning well overall o Lower IQ is associated with a tendency to adopt unhealthy behaviours
o Lower IQ is associated with a tendency to enter into unhealthy environments, such as hazardous or
stressful occupations
• Link between mental ability and understanding of health information and health risks

Question 22

assertive mating

Answer 22

= General tendency for spouses to be similar in some, but not all aspects of mental ability
• Wives’ and husbands’ levels of vocabulary showed a fairly strong positive correlation, about .45
• Wives’ and husbands’ levels of matrix reasoning were correlated only about .10.
• Both tasks are highly g-loaded

Question 23

how can assertive mating be explained?

Answer 23

o Two people will tend to have more rewarding conversations if they have similar levels of verbal
ability
o But that similar levels of nonverbal or mathematical reasoning ability are unlikely to contribute in an
important way to any aspect of relationship quality

Question 24

novel tasks

Answer 24

puzzles or riddles → fluid ability (novel tasks required a ‘fluid’ or flexible response to a new situation)

Question 25

familiar tasks

Answer 25

stuff given in schools → crystallized ability (familiar tasks required the use of some ‘crystallized’ or well-learned skills of knowledge

Question 26

the flynn effect

Answer 26

generational changes in mental abilities
• In the year 2000 scored about one full standard deviation higher than did people of the same age group in 1950
• These increases is that they differ greatly depending on the kind of mental ability test
o In modern times, people have been doing more of novel thinking that is used in puzzle-solving tasks,
and hence have been getting better at those tasks
o People have not really had any greater exposure to the tasks involving skills or knowledge related to
what is taught in school, because these tasks were already highly familiar even decades ago
• The difference between novel (fluid) and familiar (crystallized) tasks is sometimes almost impossible to
notice when considering people’s scores on those tests

Question 27

gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence

Answer 27

• He said that the g factor of mental ability is not particularly important for real-world outcomes, and that this factor emerges mainly because virtually all mental ability tests use a verbal format, which gives an advantage to people who are good at verbal skills
• Suggested that there are eight very distinct kinds of intelligence:
o Linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic (motor coordination), interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic
o However some of these don’t involve mental abilities
• Not much research done but measures of many of Gardner’s intelligences are indeed substantially
correlated with each other, and have strong loadings on the g factor of general intelligence
• Intrapersonal intelligence was only modestly related to the g factor
• Musical intelligence
o It correlates modestly with other mental abilities, and hence is moderately loaded on the g factor o Some say that composers and performers of classical music often have very high levels of mental
ability → pitch and what not blah blah takes skill
• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence tend to be correlated modestly with mental abilities, and hence have
relatively low loadings on g
➔ The evidence from empirical studies of mental abilities largely contradicts this theory

Question 28

steinberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence

Answer 28

• Tree separate aspects of intelligence: analytical, creative, and practical
• Not much evidence
• All correlated with each other → strongly related to an overall, general intelligence
• There may be some validity for “practical intelligence” tests designed as predictors of performance in
specific jobs
o These tests are likely to measure a kind of “situational judgment” that depends on specific job
experience in addition to general intelligence