Test #3 Flashcards
what is intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use our knowledge to adapt to new situations
intelligence consists of what 4 abilities
Reason abstractly
Adapt to novel environmental circumstances
Acquire knowledge
Benefit from experience
what were the first intelligence tests
- Galton’s tests
- Sensory-motor tests including two-point thresholds, just noticeable differences, reaction time for sounds, and time for naming colours
- low correlations with academic performance
where did intelligence tests originate
- The French government wanted to identify slow and fast learners.
- Alfred Binet & Theodore Simon (1904) - first intelligence test
- They developed questions to predict children’s progress based on their mental age
- Diverse content:
Object naming
Drawing pictures from memory
3 word sentence completion
Word meanings
Incomplete sentences - Virtually all items on modern intelligence tests have followed in Binet and Simon’s footsteps
general intelligence
explains the overall difference in intellect among people
specific abilities
particular ability level in a narrow domain
fluid intelligence
The ability to learn new ways of solving problems
Like the first time we try to solve a puzzle or task or skill we’ve never encountered before (e.g., driving a motorcycle for the first time)
more likely to decline with age
fluid intelligence may better capture the power of the “mental engine”
crystallized intelligence
Accumulated knowledge of the world we acquire over time.
We rely on our crystallized intelligence to answer questions such as “What’s the capital of Italy?”
crystallized abilities may increase with age, including old age
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Test
Lewis Terman adapted Binet’s test for school children and named the test the Stanford-Binet test
The formula for Intelligence Quotient (IQ), introduced by William Stern that Terman adopted early on in the Stanford-Binet test.
Terman’s great achievement was to eventually establish a set of norms for the Stanford-Binet
norms
baseline scores in the general population from which we can compare each individual’s score
Sternberg’s 3 types of intelligences (Triarchic theory)
- Analytical intelligence: assessed by intelligence tests, which present well defined problems having a single right answer (“book smarts”)
- Creative intelligence: reacting adaptive to novel situations. Creating novel ideas (“creating music”)
- Practical intelligence: required for everyday tasks, which are frequently ill-defined, with multiple solutions (“street smarts”)
Brain size and intelligence
Recent studies indicate some correlation (about +.40) between brain size and intelligence.
As brain size decreases with age, scores on non-verbal intelligence tests also decrease
Studies of brain functions show that people who score high on intelligence tests perceive stimuli faster, retrieve information from memory quicker, and show faster brain response times.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
- David Wechsler, a psychologist who developed this test, was a Romanian immigrant who was among those classified as feebleminded by early, flawed IQ tests used with immigrants arriving to the U.S. in the early 1900s.
- The Wechsler scales are designed to measure mental abilities such as vocabulary, arithmetic, spatial ability, verbal reasoning, and general knowledge about the world.
- yields 5 major scores: (VPPW)
overall IQ
verbal comprehension
perceptual reasoning
processing speed
working memory
Is IQ Useful
- IQ scores predict academic success. They correlate about .50 with high school and college grades
- The correlation between IQ and job performance is higher in more mentally demanding occupations, such as physician or lawyer, than in clerk or newspaper delivery positions.
- Restricted range - explains why SAT and GRE are not strong predictors of grades in college. Like height is not a good predictor of NBA performance, because everyone is tall!
restricted range
correlations tend to decrease when we limit the range of scores
test bias
tendency of a test to predict outcomes better in one group than in another
are IQ tests racially biased
no
culture fair test
a test that involves abstract reasoning items and don’t depend on language and are often believed to be less influenced by cultural factors than other IQ tests
racial differences in IQ
- On average, African and Hispanic Americans score lower than Caucasians on standard IQ tests, and Asian Americans score higher than Caucasians
- Yet - the variability within any given race tends to be considerably larger than the variability between races. So IQ scores for different races overlap substantially
- As a result, many African Americans and Hispanic Americans have higher IQs than many Caucasians and Asian Americans. So we can’t use race as a basis for inferring any given person’s IQ.
is IQ biologically determined
Twin studies reveal that scores of identical twins raised in different environments were significantly more alike than those of fraternal twins raised together
is IQ due to environment
- The average IQ scores of poor Whites in the U.S. is 10 to 20 points lower than the average score of middle class Whites
- That poor Southern Whites test lower than middle class Blacks living in Northern states also suggests environmental factors
- U.S. Black children adopted by White families show higher IQ and school achievement than Whites
the Flynn effect
IQ scores have been increasing in many countries at about 3 points per decade influences: - increased test sophistication - increased complexity of modern world - better nutrition - changes at home and school
intelligence test
diagnostic tool designed to measure overall thinking capacity/ability
abstract thinking
capacity to understand hypothetical concepts
multiple intelligences
entirely different domains of intellectual skill
frames of mind
numerous different ways of thinking about the world
existential intelligence
the ability to grasp deep philosophical ideas, like the meaning of life
metacognition
our knowledge of our own knowledge
Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
systematic means of quantifying differences among people in their intelligences
mental age
age corresponding to the average individuals performance on an intelligence test
deviation IQ
expression of a persons IQ relative to their age group
eugenics
movement in the early 20th century to improve a populations genetic stock by encouraging those with good genes to reproduce, preventing those with bad genes from reproducing
test - retest reliability
the extent to which scores on a measure remain stable overtime
concurrent validity
an important indicator of a tests validity, its ability to relate to outcomes measured at about the same time the test is administered
threshold effect
above a certain level of IQ, intelligence is no longer predictive of important real world accomplishments
assertive mating
the tendency of individuals with similar genes to bear children together
selective placement
adoption agencies frequently place children in homes similar to those of the biological parents
sex differences in IQ
- womens IQ tend to cluster together in the middle
- mens IQ tend to be more variable (widespread)
within group heritability
extent to which a trait, like IQ is heritable within groups
between group heritability
extent to which differences in a trait between groups is genetically influenced
stereotype threat
fear that we may confirm a negative group stereotype
divergent thinking
capacity to generate many different solutions to a problem
covergent thinking
capacity to generate the single best solution to a problem
emotional intelligence
ability to understand our own emotions and those of others and apply this information to our daily lives
ideological immune system
our physiological defense against evidence that contradicts our views
wisdom
application of intelligence toward a common good
developmental psychology
- the scientific study of behavioural changes across the lifespan
- uses scientific methods to describe, explain, and predict changes in infants and children psychological development
- includes a wide range of psychological process including motor, perceptual, conceptual, cognitive, social, emotional, and language development
visual acuity
the sharpness of vision based on the ability to see the contrasts in the world that represent lines, shapes, and shadows
preferential looking method
research finds that infants prefer to orient to larger things they can see over smaller things they cannot see
habituation method
most of us become bored if we see the same thing again and again, the habituation method purposely creates this kind of boredom as a way to create a preference for a new stimulus
dishabituates
renewed interest
visually evoked potential (VEP) method
involves attaching electrodes to the baby’s scalp to measure brain activity to determine at what point the changing stripped patterns that the infant is watching on the screen no longer causes corresponding changes in the brains electrical activity
early competencies and interest
- we are born preferring faces
- newborns pay attention to the direction of others’ eyes
- young infants can tell apart individual human faces and monkey faces, but as they get older they decline in their ability to tell apart monkey faces but improve at distinguishing between human faces
hearing: development
- ambient sounds, including the mothers voice, pass into the uterus clearly
- newborns prefer their mothers voice to another woman’s or to their fathers voice
- brain waves show that newborns can distinguish their mothers voice from another woman’s
- fetal heart rates increase in response to the mothers voice
the Mozart effect
- the supposed enhancement in intelligence after listening to classical music
- college students who listened to about 10 min of mozart showed significant improvement on a spatial reasoning task
- it’s more about short term arousal that you get from the music not about the classical music making you smarter
- telling someone a scary story before doing the task elicits the same effect
- anything that boosts alertness is likely to increase performance
- no long term effects
Piagets stages of cognitive development
sensorimotor (0-2)
pre-operational (2-7)
concrete operational (7-12)
formal operational (12+)
sensorimotor stage
- infants gain an understanding of the world through their senses and motor activities
- object permanence - a child recognizes that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible (occurs by about 8 months)
object permanence
- object permanence - a child recognizes that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible (occurs by about 8 months)
- research suggests that infants younger than 8 months (as early as 5 months) show object permanence
- infants understand rule violation - infants respond differently to possible events than impossible ones (they look longer at surprising or impossible events)
baby logic
- infants 4.5 months of age look longer at unexpected scene of car seeming to pass through a solid object
- babies seem to have a more intuitive grasp of simple laws of physics
baby math
- when shown a numerically impossible outcomes, infants stare longer
- the doll behind the cover video
- babies get upset when an impossible outcome happens which implies they understand its impossible
pre operational stage
- inability to perform mental operations
- children develop symbolic function
- thinking is animistic, intuitive, and egocentric (inability to see the world from others perspectives)
- lack reversibility (being able to undo an action)
- lack conservation - awareness that physical quantities remain constant despite changes in their appearance
theory of mind
- the ability to infer others mental states
- around ages 4-5 children worldwide come to realize that others may hold false beliefs
concrete operational
- children develop conservation and reversibility
- develop more logical thinking
- trial and error for problem solving
- poor at performing mental operations in abstract or hypothetical situations
formal operational
- apply logical thought to abstract, verbal, and hypothetical situations and to problems in the past present and future
- think logically about abstract non physical concepts
gene environment interaction
situation in which the effects of genes depend on the environment in which they are expressed
nature via nurture
tendency of individuals with certain genetic predispositions to seek out and create environments that permit the expression of those predispositions
gene expression
activation or deactivation of genes by environmental experiences throughout development
epigenetic
whether genes are activated is regulated day by day and moment by moment environmental conditions
cross sectional design
research design that examines people of different ages at a single point in time
cohort effect
effect observed in a sample of participants that result from individuals in the sample growing up at the same (growing up in different era’s)
longitudinal design
research design that examines development in the same group of people on multiple occasions over time
developmental effects
changes overtime within individuals as a result of growing older
post hoc fallacy
false assumption that because one event occurred before another event it must have caused that event
prenatal
prior to birth
zygote
fertilized egg
blastocyst
ball of identical cells early in pregnancy that haven’t yet begun to take on any specific function in a body part
embryo
2nd-8th week of prenatal development, during which limbs, facial features, and major organs take form
fetus
period of prenatal development from 9th week unit birth after all major organs are established and physical maturation is the primary change
viability point
the point in the pregnancy at which infants can typically survive on their own (25 weeks)
teratogen
an environmental factor that can exert a negative impact on prenatal development