Week 5: Intelligence Flashcards
Alfred Binet
- Hired by French Govewrnment to devise test to identify children with special education needs
- Definition
o To find and maintain a definite direction or purpose
o To make necessary adaptions to achieve the direction or purpose
o To engage in self-criticism so that adjustments in strategies can be made
- Hence, he aimed to test reasoning, judgement and attentions
Criteria for selecting an item
- Item has to relate to ‘common sense’
- Item has to be part of daily life
- Item must separate dull from bright children
- Item must be practical and easy to administer
- In developing his tests he used trial and error and hypothesis testing
1905-First Binet-Simon test of intelligence
- Looked for tasks that could be achieved by 66.67% - 75% of children of a particular age
- Contained 30 items presenting in ascending difficulty level
3 levels of intellectual disability: Idiot
o Most severe form of intellectual disability
o Item 6 was upper limit in this range for adults – to follow simple directions and imitate gestures
3 levels of intellectual disability: Imbecile
o Moderate form
o Item 16 upper limit – stating difference between 2 common objects
3 levels of intellectual disability: Moron
o Mildest form
1905-First Binet-Simon test of intelligence: Problems
- Little evidence of validity
- Normed with only 50 children based on average school performance
- Idiot, moron etc hardly adequate classification system
1908 Binet-Simon
- 1908 Binet tested 203 school children
- dropped simplest items
- added more difficult so now had 58
- it was an age scale rather than increasing difficulty
1908 Binet-Simon: Calculated Mental Age
- Pass 5 tests at 5 year old level so basal mental age = 5
- Pass 2 tests at 6 year old level so mental age= basal mental age (5) + 2/5 = 5.4 years
- Passes 0 tests at 5 year level
- Passes 5 tests at 3 year level
- Passes 1 test at year 4 level
- Mental age= 3.2 years
Spearman’s 2 Factor Theory
- correlation and factor analysis of different intellectual tasks
- all tasks intercorrelated > underlying g or general intelligence
- some groups of tasks intercorrelate more strongly > underlying s or specific ability- binet’s test involved different tasks but…
o specific factors averaged out
o account for a small proportion of measured intelligence
o binet’s test predominantly a measure of g. - later test developers maximised the amount of g in their tests
Spearman g factor
General ability for complex mental work
Spearman s factor
Series of specific abilities such as math and verbal
Louis Terman – 1916 iteration
- 1916 revised Binet and called it the Stanford-Binet
- Revised items that didn’t perform as expected
- Normed on many more people but all white children native to California
- Added adult items
- Introduced use of the Intelligence Quotient
Stern’s Terman’s IQ
Case 1 (C.A. 5 years)
- Mental age 5 and 2/5 (5.4)
- Chronological age 5
- I.Q. = 5.4/5X 100
- I.Q. = 108
- Allows direct comparison between children of different ages
- I.Q. = Mental Age/Chronological Age x 100