UNIT 11 NOTES:

1) In studies, intelligence has been defined as whatever intelligence tests measure

2) Intelligence does not have the same meaning to everyone worldwide
a. People assign this term to the qualities that enable success in their own time and culture
b. Culture plays a huge role in how we define intelligence
3) Intelligence – the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to
new situations
a. Some people have talents in science, others excel in the humanities and others are gifted
in athletics, art, music, or dance
4) Intelligence is a concept and not a thing
5) We also cannot think of intelligence as a trait
a. An error called reification
i. Reification – viewing an abstract immaterial concept as if it were a concrete
thing
6) Two controversies about intelligence remain
7) Is intelligence a single overall ability or is it several specific abilities?
a. General intelligence or “g’ - underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by
every task on an intelligence test.
i. General intelligence is at the heart of all our intelligent behavior
ii. Created by Charles Spearman
iii. Spearman also believed that people often have special outstanding abilities
1. Typically score higher than average in certain/other areas
8) Factor analysis – a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on
a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score
a. Charles Spearman used this to create his theory of “g” and “s”
9) However, L.L Thurstone gave 56 different tests to people and mathematically identified seven
clusters of primary mental abilities
a. Word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability,
inductive reasoning, and memory
b. Early opponent to Charles Spearman
c. However, when other investigators studied these profiles, they detected a persistent
tendency
i. Those who excelled in one of the seven clusters generally scored well on the
others
ii. There was still some evidence of a “g” factor
10) However, Gardner identified eight relatively independent intelligences
a. Included verbal and mathematical aptitudes assessed by aptitude tests
b. Linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal,
intrapersonal.
i. The additional two are naturalistic and existential
ii. Interpersonal – ability to interact with other people
iii. Intrapersonal – ability to understand yourself
1. Moral code, what you think is right and wrong, etc.
11) Savant syndrome – a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an
exceptional specific skill, such as computation or drawing.
a. have an island of brilliance but often score low on intelligence test and may have limited
or no language ability
12) Triarchic theory – theory created by Sternberg that proposes three, not nine, intelligence
 a. Analytical, creative, and practical intelligence
13) General intelligence does correlate with certain things
a. Higher childhood intelligence test scores predict higher adult income
14) Grit – the passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals
15) Emotional intelligence – the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions
a. Social intelligence is a big part of this
i. Social intelligence – the know-how involved in understanding social situations
and managing ourselves successfully
b. Perceiving emotions – recognizing them in faces, music, and stories, and identifying
one’s one emotions.
c. Understanding emotions – predicting them and how they may change and blend.
d. Managing emotions – knowing how to express them in varied situations, and how to
manage others’ emotions
e. Emotionally intelligent people more often succeed in relationship, career, and parenting
situations
16) Intelligence test – a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them
with those of others, using numerical scores
a. Two types: achievement and aptitude tests
i. Achievement tests – reflect what you have already learned.
1. Ex) AP Exam
ii. Aptitude tests – predict your ability to learn a new skill.
1. Ex) Armed Services Aptitude test
b. Research shows that there is a strong correlation between SAT scores and intelligence
scores
17) Scientist Francis Galton was interested in studying human mental ability
a. Devised methods to measure “intellectual strengths”
i. Based on things such as reaction time, sensory acuity, muscular power, and body
proportions
b. The measurements he gathered did not correlate with intelligence
c. Still influential
i. Introduced new statistical techniques
ii. Named the nature-nurture issue
18) Psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to design fair and
unbiased intelligence test to administer to French schoolchildren.
a. With his student, Theodor Simon, he assumed that all children follow the same course of
intellectual development but that some develop more rapidly
b. They were measuring something known as “mental age”
i. For average children, the mental age is the same as their actual age
ii. Kids would then be placed in those age groups for learning purposes
c. Tested this using reasoning and problem-solving questions
d. When it was taken out of France, the questions had to be changed to make sense
19) Lewis Terman modifies Binet’s test
a. Adapted certain ideas, added others, and established new age norms
b. Expanded it to include teenagers
c. Named the Stanford-Binet test
i. First main intelligence test in the United States
d. Terman was also controversial, because he said intelligence was something that you were
born with
20) Intelligence quotient was created by William Stern
 a. Originally used the calculate of: (IQ= mental age/chronological age x 100)
b. This calculation is no longer used because it calculates a person’s IQ as decreasing as
they get older.
21) When the Stanford-Binet test was first created, it came at a time of increased immigration and at
the start of WWI
a. The Army created tests for illiterate or non-English speaking recruits
i. Measure verbal and numerical abilities, following directions and general
knowledge
b. Those who were not of Anglo-Saxon heritage could not score well on these tests
i. Comes now to things like language and education
22) Psychologist David Wechsler created what is now the most widely used individual intelligence
test called the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
a. Wechsler recognized that language could be a problem
i. Has verbal and non-verbal aspects of the test
b. Subtests:
i. Recognizing similarities
ii. Vocabulary
iii. Letter-number sequencing
iv. Block design
c. Does not just give just a general number
i. Provides individual scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual organization,
working memory, and processing speed
ii. Can provide clues to cognitive strengths or weaknesses
23) What criteria does an intelligence test have to meet to be accepted
a. Standardized – to make scores meaningful they are compared to a pretested sample
population
i. If a graph is constructed of test-takers' scores, the scores typically follow the bell
curve, or the normal curve
ii. Normal curve – the bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many
physical and psychological aspects
iii. To keep the average score near 100, the Stanford-Binet and Wechsler scales are
periodically restandardized
1. Flynn effect – average intelligence test performance has improved
2. 24-point difference (determined by James Flynn)
b. Reliable – the test gives consistent scores no matter who takes it or when they take it
i. The extent to which a test yields consistent results
ii. Three methods of assessment:
1. Split-half: scores on two halves of the test (even items vs. odd items) are
compared
a. Doing first and second half does not always work because of
testing fatigue
2. Alternative form: varying versions of the test are given, and results are
compared
a. Need to counter-balance this
b.
3. Test-retest: the same test is readministered, and results are compared.
a. In between the two times, there would be a wash out period
iii. The higher the correlation between the two scores, the greater the test’s reliability
c. Valid – the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to
 i. Two types:
1. Content validity – the extent to which a test samples the hevaior that is of
interest
2. Predictive validity – the success with which a test predicts the behavior it
is designed to predict.
24) Older people tend to give fewer correct answers on intelligence tests than do younger adults
a. Researchers studied the same cohort over a long period of time
i. Found that until late in life, intelligence remained stable
25) Psychometric measures of intelligence
a. Crystallized intelligence – our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tend to increase
with age
i. May be called wisdom
b. Fluid intelligence – our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with
age, especially during late adulthood
i. Peaks in earlier adulthood
26) Cross-sectional research compares people of different ages at the same point in time
a. This method showed declining intelligence scores with age
b. Considerations: older people tend to be less educated, nutrition, etc.
27) Longitudinal studies follow and retest the same people overtime
a. Shows a slight rise in scores well into adulthood
b. Considerations:
i. Many different confounding variables can exist
ii. A lot of time people drop out or pass away
28) Aging has different effects
a. Aging adults lose recall of memory and processing speed but gain vocabulary and
knowledge.
b. Fluid intelligence may decline, but older adults’ social reasoning skills increase, as shown
by an ability to take multiple perspectives, etc.
c. Vocab and knowledge (crystalized intelligence) increases with age
29) Stability in intelligence scores begins in adolescence
a. Research conducted by Ian Deary conducted longitudinal studies of intelligence in
Scotland
i. Beginning in 1932, a cohort of children were tested every ten years up to age 80
ii. Found an extremely strong positive correlation
iii. The two scores were incredibly close
iv. Women scoring in the highest 25% tended to live longer than those who scored
in the lowest 25%
30) Intellectual disability
a. Two parts
i. Low IQ test score
ii. Difficulty adapting to independence
b. Down syndrome
i. In Chile, many children with down syndrome attended special schools
31) Gifted children
a. Many obtain patents
b. 4% of gifted children earn doctorates
c. Most adjust to society just fine
d. The criticism of gifted programs is that you are exposing certain children to enrichment
when others may benefit
32) The most genetically similar people (nature) have the most similar intelligence scores
a. Identical twins raised together have the highest similarities in intelligence scores
b. The more combined our nature and nurture are, the more correlated they are to
intelligence
c. The scores on intelligence tests for identical twins is almost the same as the scores if a
person was to take the test twice
i. Identical twins also exhibit substantial similarity in specific talents, such as
music, math, and sports.
ii. Heredity accounts for more than half the variation in the nation on math and
science tests
d. Intelligence is polygenetic
i. Involved many different gene variations
e. Environment factors also contribute to this
i. Ex) Children adopted into wealthier families with more educated parents had IQ
scores averaging 4.4 points higher than their not-adopted biological siblings
f. Adopted parents still tend to have more correlation in verbal ability scores with their birth
parents than their adopted parents.
33) Heritability – the proportion of variation among individuals in a group that we can attribute to
genes
34) 50% of the variation in intelligence can be attributed to genetics
a. Not personal intelligence, instead variation across society
35) Minimal interaction with caregivers as a child can stun their development
36) Schooling can also help improve intelligence
37) Mindset can also affect an outcome
a. Fixed mindset – things are the way that they are, and they are never going to change
b. Growth mindset – a focus on learning and growing
c. The brain is like a muscle, growing stronger with use as neuron connections grow
38) Intelligence is mainly consistent across gender
a. Society tends to focus more on the differences
b. Girls tend to be better in spelling, verbal fluency, locating objects, etc.
c. Boys tend to be better in spatial ability and complex math problems, etc.
39) There are many racial and ethnic group differences in average intelligence test scores
a. Often the result of culture and education
b. Within group variations are often greater than in-between group variations
40) Differences also exist across generations
41) Stereotype threat – a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative
stereotype