Chapter 10

Intelligence

Kaitlin Brunett
Announcement:
Agenda

• 29 What Is Intelligence?
• Theories of Intelligence
• Social Intelligence
• 30 Intelligence Assessment and
Dynamics
• Early Tests
• WAIS
• 31 Genetics and Environmental
Influences on Intelligence
• Heritability
• Growth Mindset
• Gender/Racial Differences
• Bias
Module 29
What is Intelligence?
Intelligence

• Ability to learn from experience,

solve problems, and use
knowledge to adapt to new
situations
• Several abilities seem to cluster
together
• Socially constructed concept
• Varies from culture to culture
 Early Intelligence Researchers

Charles Spearman
• General intelligence (g) that is the core of all human
intelligent behavior

L. L. Thurstone
• No ranking on single general aptitude scale
• Identified seven primary mental abilities clusters
• Word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual
speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, memory
• Raymond Cattell and John Horn
• Intelligence comprises many
abilities, abilities exist under
broader umbrella of general Cattell-Horn-
intelligence
Carroll
• Primary mental abilities into 2
factors:
Intelligence
• Fluid Intelligence (Gf) Theory
• Ability to reason speedily and
abstractly
• Crystalized Intelligence
(Gc)
• Accumulated knowledge and
verbal skills
Gardner’s Multiple
Intelligences Theory

• Howard Gardner
• 8 relatively independent
intelligences
• Later proposed a ninth
possible intelligence:
existential intelligence
• Intelligence consists of
multiple abilities
• Savant syndrome
 • Robert Sternberg
• Analytical intelligence: Traditional
Sternberg’s academic problem solving
Three • Creative intelligence: Ability to
Intelligences generate novel ideas
• Practical intelligence: Skill at
handling everyday tasks
 Social Intelligence

Know-how involved in understanding social situations and managing

yourself successfully

Emotional Intelligence: Ability to perceive, understand, manage, and

use emotions (critical for social intelligence)
• Perceiving emotions
• Recognizing emotions in faces, music, and stories, and identifying our own emotions
• Understanding emotions
• Predicting emotions and how they may change and blend
• Managing emotions
• Knowing how to express emotions in varied situations, and how to handle others’
emotions
• Using emotions
• Enabling adaptive or creative thinking
 Module 30
Intelligence Assessment and
Dynamics
Intelligence Assessments

Intelligence Aptitude test Achievement

test individual mental
Assessing Designed to predict person’s test to assess what
Designed
aptitudes and comparing future performance person has learned
them with those of others
using numerical scores
 • Francis Galton
• Believed in inheritance of genius
• Alfred Binet
• Environmental explanation for intelligence
• Tested reasoning and problem-solving
questions to see how children would do in
Early Tests of school
Mental • Mental age
Abilities • Lewis Terman
• Measured innate intelligence
• Revised Binet’s intelligence test (Stanford-
Binet Intelligence Quotient)

mental age
IQ= × 100
chronological age
David Wechsler
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
(WISC)

Yields overall intelligence score and separate scores

• Verbal Comprehension Working Memory
• Perpetual Organization Processing Speed

Available in preschool and school-age child versions

Provides clues to strengths or weaknesses

 • Three criteria for widely accepted
psychological test
• Standardization: Defined uniform
testing procedures and meaningful
scores
Principles of • Reliability: Extent to which test yields
consistent results
Test • Validity: Extent to which test
Construction measures or predicts what it is
supposed to measure or predict
• Content validity: Extent to which test
assesses behavior of interest
• Predictive validity: Success with which
test predicts behavior it is designed to
predict
 • Diagnosis of an intellectual
development disorder
The Low • Apparent before age 18
Extreme of • Low intelligence test score (70 or
Intelligence below; among other criteria)
• U.S. Supreme Court (2014)
• Recognized imprecision and
arbitrariness of fixed cutoff score of
70
 Lewis High-scoring children were
Terman healthy, well-adjusted, unusually
study successful academically

Attained higher levels of

education and accolades
The High
Extreme of Other Participants in top 1% of math
Intelligence follow- SAT at age 13 secured 681
up patents
studies
Many had achieved eminence
(often in STEM) by their 50s
 Gifted child programs

• High-scoring children in special classes,

not available to all children

Remedial programs

• Give access to resources that help them

Schools and overcome challenges
Intelligence
Concerns

• Grouping students by aptitude may

create self-fulfilling prophecy
• Implicit labeling as ungifted and denying
enrichment opportunities can widen
achievement gap
Intelligence Across the
Lifespan
• Before age 3, modestly predict
future aptitudes
• Performance by age 4 begins to
predict adolescent adult scores
• By age 11, the stability
becomes remarkable
Intelligence Across the
Lifespan

• Aging leads to losses and gains

• Recall memory and processing speed
are lost
• Vocabulary and knowledge gained
simultaneously
• Crystallized intelligence (Gc)
increases up to old age
• Fluid intelligence (Gf) may decline,
but social reasoning skills may
increase
Module 31
Genetic and Environmental
Influences on Intelligence
Heredity and
Intelligence
• Estimates of heritability of
intelligence range from 50% to
80%
• Specific genes seem to influence
variations in intelligence and
learning disorders
• Analysis of genes from 1.1 million
people accounted for about 12% of
their educational attainment
differences
 • Wide variety in environment:
environmental differences more
Environment important
• Adoption
and • Poverty  financial security = enhanced
Intelligence – intelligence tests
Adoption • Mistreated/neglect  safe household =
enhanced intelligence tests
• Mental similarities between adopted
children and their adoptive families
 Gene-Environment interactions

Adverse environmental
McVicker Hunt (1982)
conditions can depress physical Mani and colleagues (2013)
or cognitive development

If extreme conditions can slow brain development, can

enriched environments amplify it to give superior intellect?
Growth Mindset

• Growth mindset and a

disciplined effort
• Focus on learning and growing
rather than viewing abilities as fixed
• Increases resiliency
• Overemphasis of benefits may lead
to self-blame

Ability + opportunity + motivation

=
success
 Gender Differences

Women Men
• Better emotion detectors • Higher self-estimated
• More sensitive to touch, intelligence
taste, color • More variability in mental
• Higher in spelling, verbal ability scores
fluency, and location at • Higher in spatial ability
an early age and complex math at an
early age
Racial and Ethnic
Differences
• Racial and ethnic groups differ in
their average intelligence test
scores
• Generation-to-generation
differences in test scores
• Schools and culture matter
• The question of bias
• Not predictive for all test takers
• Performance differences by cultural
experience
The Question of Bias

• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
expectations can introduce bias
for test-takers
• Stereotype Threat: negative
stereotypes may undermine
people’s academic and
professional potential
• Self-fulfilling stereotype
threat: a self-confirming
concern that one will be
evaluated based on a negative
stereotype
 Don’t Forget…

Midterm grades are LearningCurve for Covering Chapter 11

available to you in modules 29-31 are next class
myUTSA due in Achieve by
tomorrow at
11:59pm