Week 16 Readings Flashcards
What is intelligence?
An individual’s cognitive capability. This includes the ability to acquire, process, recall and apply information.
How has the social nature of primates contributed to their intelligence?
The social nature of primates, who live in troops or family groups, has driven the development of their brains for communication and long-term thinking. This complex social environment has led to abilities such as deception, altruism, numerical concepts, and theory of mind (a sense of self as a unique individual separate from others in the group).
What is the “general factor” or “g” proposed by Charles Spearman in relation to intelligence?
Charles Spearman proposed the “general factor” or “g” as a single underlying factor of intelligence, based on his observation that individuals who perform well in one intellectual area, such as verbal ability, also tend to perform well in other areas, like logic and reasoning.
How did Francis Galton contribute to the study of intelligence and psychological measurement?
Francis Galton pioneered psychological measurement by assessing physical and psychological attributes, such as grip strength and color discrimination, as early measures of individual ability.
He hypothesized that intelligence was heritable, tracking family trees of top scholars and popularizing twin studies to explore the heritability of psychological traits. Although his methods were rudimentary, Galton established intelligence as a measurable variable.
What was Alfred Binet’s contribution to the measurement of intelligence?
Alfred Binet pioneered the formal measurement of intellectual ability, focusing on the development of intelligence by observing children in classrooms and studying individual differences, such as the memory abilities of chess players.
What test did Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon create, and what was its significance?
Binet and Simon created the first IQ test by developing individual test items appropriate for specific ages, such as pointing to body parts for a three-year-old and naming months for a nine-year-old. This became the foundation for modern intelligence testing.
What is IQ?
Short for “intelligence quotient.” This is a score, typically obtained from a widely used measure of intelligence that is meant to rank a person’s intellectual ability against that of others.
What is the origin of the IQ score, and how was it used in the Stanford-Binet test?
The IQ score originated from the Binet-Simon test by dividing a child’s mental age by their chronological age. The test was later adapted by Lewis Terman into the standardized Stanford-Binet test, which plotted scores in a normal distribution (bell curve), allowing for easy comparison and categorization of intelligence.
How did David Wechsler’s WAIS differ from the Stanford-Binet test in its approach to measuring intelligence?
The WAIS addressed criticisms of the Stanford-Binet by focusing on a wide range of intellectual abilities, such as memory, reasoning, and language, rather than relying heavily on verbal ability or a single score, offering a more comprehensive view of intelligence compared to Spearman’s concept of general intelligence.
What does it mean when a test is normed?
Assessments are given to a representative sample of a population to determine the range of scores for that population.
These “norms” are then used to place an individual who takes that assessment on a range of scores in which he or she is compared to the population at large.
What is the Flynn Effect, and what are some possible explanations for it?
The Flynn Effect refers to the observed increase in average IQ scores over the past 80 years. Possible explanations include better nutrition, increased familiarity with testing, and more exposure to visual stimuli.
How did Carroll organize the concept of intelligence in his three-stratum model?
Carroll’s three-stratum model organizes intelligence into three levels:
- the most general (stratum III) is “g” (general intelligence),
- followed by more specific categories (stratum II) like fluid intelligence and processing speed,
- and at the most specific level (stratum I), individual components like spatial scanning and word fluency.
What is the difference between fluid and crystallized intelligence, according to Horn and Cattell?
How are they related to age?
Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve novel problems quickly and think on your feet, while crystallized intelligence involves using language, skills, and experience to solve problems.
Fluid intelligence tends to decrease with age, while crystallized intelligence increases.
What is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and what are some of the types of intelligence it includes?
Gardner’s theory posits that people have different types of intelligence, each processed through independent “channels.” These include logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, musical-rhythmic, verbal-linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic intelligence.
What are the 8 common intelligences that Gardner identified?
- logic-math
- visual-spatial
- music-rhythm
- verbal-linguistic
- bodily-kinesthetic
- interpersonal
- intrapersonal
- naturalistic
What is emotional intelligence, and how is it related to job performance?
Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to understand, identify, and use emotions, both in oneself and others. It is linked to job performance, as studies show it helps with stress management, mood regulation, and workplace success, similar to cognitive intelligence, especially in managerial and technical roles.
How does Carol Dweck’s research on mindset relate to intelligence and performance?
Dweck’s research shows that children with a “growth mindset”—believing intelligence can evolve—perform better and handle failure more effectively. In contrast, those with a fixed mindset, believing intelligence is static, tend to underperform.
Do genetics play a role in intelligence?
Research shows that intelligence is largely, though not entirely, inherited. While having a growth mindset and a healthy attitude can improve performance, genetic factors also contribute to an individual’s intellectual potential.
What controversial issue does Carol Dweck’s research on mindset highlight in intelligence research?
Dweck’s research brings attention to the issue of group differences in intelligence, particularly the under-representation of women in certain fields, such as engineering, where they made up just 1% of faculty members in 1976.
What factors do researchers like Ceci and colleagues (2009) suggest contribute to sex differences in intellectual abilities, particularly in math-intensive fields?
Researchers argue that societal factors, such as gendered socialization, childcare responsibilities, educational inequalities, and test-taking strategies, contribute more to sex differences in intellectual abilities than biological or genetic differences.
What are some observed cognitive differences between men and women, according to research by Halpern (1997)?
Women tend to outperform men in fine motor skills, acquired knowledge, reading comprehension, and non-verbal expression, while men tend to excel in fluid reasoning related to math and science, perceptual tasks, and mental rotations.
Men are also more likely to be represented on the low end of cognitive functioning, including intellectual disabilities and disorders like dyslexia and ADHD.
What is stereotype threat?
The phenomenon in which people are concerned that they will conform to a stereotype or that their performance does conform to that stereotype, especially in instances in which the stereotype is brought to their conscious awareness.
What is stereotype threat, and how has research shown its impact on performance?
Stereotype threat occurs when individuals perform worse due to the mental awareness of a stereotype about their group.
For example, women informed that they tend to do poorly on math exams performed worse than a control group (Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999).
A self-affirmation exercise, such as writing about personal qualities, helped reduce this effect for women, but had little effect for men (Martens et al., 2006).
Which factor, proposed by psychologist Charles Spearman, refers to a larger set of intellectual skills that is sometimes considered synonymous with one’s overall intelligence?
“g”
Orlando has not been doing well in school lately, but he believes that he can do better. He thinks that his intelligence is changeable, and handles failure better than some of his classmates. According to Carol Dweck, Orlando has a(n) ______mindset.
growth
What are the three essential determinants for effective performance and accomplishments, and how are they historically rooted?
The three determinants are intelligence, interests, and mastery, forming a foundation for learning, occupational performance, and innovation. These align with Plato’s triarchic view of the psyche, where intellect (cognition), affect (interests), and will (mastery) are interconnected. Hilgard (1980) referred to this as “The Trilogy of Mind,” emphasizing the need for cognitive, affective, and conative factors for comprehensive human development.
What are under-determined or misspecified causal models?
Psychological frameworks that miss or neglect to include one or more of the critical determinants of the phenomenon under analysis.
What is the Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA) and its relevance to performance in learning and work settings?
The TWA (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984) links individual differences (abilities and interests) to corresponding environmental features (ability requirements and reward structures).
Satisfactoriness occurs when abilities match requirements (competence), while satisfaction arises when interests align with rewards (fulfillment). When both occur, individuals and environments maintain a positive relationship; misalignment motivates departure or dismissal.
What is satisfaction?
Correspondence between an individual’s needs or preferences and the rewards offered by the environment.
What is satisfactoriness?
Correspondence between an individual’s abilities and the ability requirements of the environment.
What does the talent development model emphasize, and how is it applied in psychology?
The talent development model emphasizes assessing both the individual (abilities and interests) and the environment (response requirements and reward structures).
It aligns individual competencies and motivations with performance standards and rewards to foster psychological growth.
This framework is used in education, counseling, and industrial psychology to optimize personal and organizational development by focusing on what individuals like most and do best.
What does the radex model represent in cognitive abilities research?
The radex model represents the hierarchical organization of cognitive abilities, showing how cognitive ability tests covary based on content and complexity. Tests closer together in the radex share similar content and complexity.
Complexity decreases outward from the center (“g”), while test content varies around circular bands, shifting from spatial/mechanical to verbal/linguistic to quantitative/numerical.
This model helps organize diverse cognitive ability tests.
What does it mean for a test to covary in the radex model for cognitive abilites?
In the context of the radex model for cognitive abilities, tests that “covary” highly are those that tend to give similar scores for the same person.
The more that two tests share complexity and content, the more they covary and the closer they are to one another as points within the radex.
For example, if someone scores well on a verbal reasoning test, they might also score well on a related test, such as reading comprehension, because these tests measure similar underlying abilities.
What did Piaget mean by saying, “Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do”?
He referred to intelligence as the ability to solve novel problems and adapt to unfamiliar situations, encompassing sophisticated thought for both familiar and new tasks.
What are the three chief specific abilities in intelligence, and how are they applied?
Mathematical reasoning: Solving problems with numbers and quantitative methods.
Spatial reasoning: Understanding and manipulating visual and spatial information.
Verbal reasoning: Using language to reason and solve problems.
Why are specific ability tests (e.g., mathematical, spatial, verbal) positively correlated?
Despite measuring different modalities of thought, they all reflect an underlying general property of intellectual thought, known as “general intelligence” or “g.”
What is general mental ability?
The general factor common to all cognitive ability measures, “a very general mental capacity that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—‘catching on,’ ‘making sense of things,’ or ‘figuring out’ what to do” (Gottfredson, 1997, p. 13).
What is general mental ability (g)?
General mental ability (g) refers to the overall complexity and sophistication of a person’s intellectual repertoire, underlying all cognitive reasoning processes (Spearman, 1904; Jensen, 1998).
How does the complexity of a test relate to measuring g?
The more complex a test is, regardless of its content, the better it measures g, as complexity reflects the level of intellectual sophistication (Jensen, 1998; Lubinski & Dawis, 1992).
How do specific ability tests relate to g?
Any test assessing a specific ability also measures g to some extent, as g underlies all cognitive reasoning processes (Lubinski, 2004).
