My Lectures

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My Lectures

• Lecture 1 (Today)
• Intelligence
• Lecture 2 (Tue 30th Jan)
• Psychodynamic I (Freud / Lacan Darwin)
• Lecture 3 (Tue 06th Feb)
• Psychodynamic II (Jung / Adler)
• Lecture 4 (Tue 13th Feb)
• Learning Paradigm (Skinner / Bandura)

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Intelligence

• Personality and Individual Differences

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Definitions of intelligence

• Theoretical
• Placing intelligence within the larger
  Psychological Context
• Psychometric
• Deciding which behaviours an intelligence test
  will measure

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Psychometrics
The ability to test those things we are studying
is central to Psychologys claim to be a Science.
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Reliability

• How consistently does it measure the same thing
  in the same way?
• Test-retest reliability
• Multi-trait multi-method
• compare score on things that are supposed to be
  the same or opposite
• compare different methods of measuring the same
  thing

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Validity

• Is it measuring what it supposed to be measuring?
• Predictive validity
• Construct validity

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The Development of Intelligence

• Theoretical
• Spearman (1927) General intelligence (g)
• Single measure of performance across variety of
  tests. Rather simplistic.
• Gardner (1980) Multiple intelligences
• There are many, at least 8 forms of
  intelligences popular with teachers, little
  empirical backing.
• Stenberg (1985) Triarchic theory
• Multiple intelligences. No correlations between
  them. Are they all intelligence?
• Goleman (1995) Emotional Intelligence
• Handling others and social situations.
• However there were already mesures of
  interpersonal intelligence. Whats new?

• Psychometric
• Binet Simon (1911) / Stanford - Binet (1917)
  IQ
• Single measure. Psychometric definition. Binet
  not looking at intelligence originally.
• Wechsler (1939) WAIS
• Performance IQ and Verbal IQ. Useful in clinical
  settings, different conditions/injuries impair
  different kinds of intell.
• WAIS-R (1981)

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Emotional intelligence (EI)

• Salovey and Mayer (1990), Goleman (1995) EI
  psychometrically different from IQ
• EI correlates with well-being and health, but not
  with academic achievement
• After 15 years of research, still little
  agreement
• Many different tests, disputes about validity
• EI show weak construct validity (Mayer et al)

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Is intelligence genetic?

• Some evidence of heritability from twin studies
• But
• Flaws in twin-study methodology
• Danger of eugenics
• Social/Environmental Evidence
• The Flynn effect- IQ scores have been rising
  steadily over the decades (In the UK, 27 points
  up since 1942)
• Early intervention programmes
• Diet (vitamin supplements)

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Intelligence and culture

• Culture affects what is considered as intelligent
• Africa (Kenya) Harmonious inter- and
  intra-group relationships
• China (Taiwan) doing what is right, humility,
  benevolence
• USA practical problem solving, verbal ability,
  social competence

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Three important lessons

• All measures and definitions of intelligence
  should be considered context dependent tools that
  do a job, not universal measures of worth.
• The concept of intelligence is heavily influenced
  by culture, as such all tests suffer from
  cultural bias and nurture outweighs nature as a
  determinant.
• The limitations and uncertainties that are so
  obvious in relation to intelligence exist in all
  sciences at all levels. This doesnt prevent
  those sciences from providing valuable
  information and useful tools. As such we should
  not dismiss intelligence tests for being
  imperfect.

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Further Reading

• E-Books available in NetLibrary
• The General Factor of Intelligence How General
  Is It? - Sternberg, Robert J Grigorenko, Elena.
• IQ and the Wealth of Nations - Lynn, Richard.
  Vanhanen, Tatu.
• Emotional Intelligence Science and Myth by
  Matthews, Gerald. Zeidner, Moshe. Roberts,
  Richard D.
• Higher Expectations Promoting Social Emotional
  Learning and Academic Achievement in Your School
  - Pasi, Raymond J.
• Race and Intelligence Separating Science From
  Myth - Fish, Jefferson M.

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Next Week

• Sigmund Freud
• The First Second Topologies
• Conscious, Preconscious Unconscious
• Id, Ego Superego
• The Psychosexual Stages Personality Types
• Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent Genital
• Ego Defence Mechanisms
• Strengths and Weaknesses