Introduction to Psychology

1
Understanding Intelligence
Psychologists define intelligence as the ability
to understand and adapt to the environment using
a combination of inherited abilities and learned
experiences. Problem with reification-viewing
an abstract, immaterial concept s if it were a
concrete thing.
I believe the answer to the problem is . . .
2
Francis Galton
Started the Eugenics movement Galton (1883)
wanted to breed superior people and create a
master race.
3
What is Intelligence?

• Factor Analysis
• statistical procedure that identifies clusters of
  related items (called factors) on a test
• used to identify different dimensions of
  performance that underlie ones total score
• General Intelligence (g)
• factor that Spearman and others believed
  underlies specific mental abilities
• measured by every task on an intelligence test

4

• Charles Spearman was the spearhead in the
  development of intelligence theories with factor
  analysis and his g general intelligence theory.

5
Theories of Intelligence

• Charles Spearmang factor
• Louis Thurstoneintelligence as a persons
  pattern of mental abilities
• ( 7 clustersword fluency, verbal
  comprehension, spatial
• ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability,
  inductive reasoning, memory)
• Howard Gardnermultiple intelligences
• Sternbergtriarchic theory

6
Theories of Intelligence

• Charles Spearmang factor
• Louis Thurstoneintelligence as a persons
  pattern of mental abilities
• Howard Gardnermultiple intelligences
• Sternbergtriarchic theory
• Cantor, Kihlstrom-social intelligence
• Slovey, Mayer, Goleman-emotional intelligence

7

• Are Gifted People Easily Identified?
• You have been asked to select a student, based
  on the three biographies below, to enroll in a
  new program for gifted students. Look over the
  three biographies and decide which student you
  would choose.
• Candidate 1 Candidate 2 Candidate 3
• Name Bill Brown Alvin Lane Allen Erickson
• Appearance Average Plain Homely
• I.Q. 180 112 82
• School Behavior Aloof, Organizer Well-liked Unso
  ciable, disturbed
• Physical Health Excellent Large for age Sickly
• Emotional Health Excellent Easygoing, poor
  self-concept Had emotional breakdown
• Interests Chess, Math Sports,
  reading, telling jokes Withdraws to fantasy
  world
• Career Goals None mentioned Work in a retail
  store None mentioned
• Personal Goals None mentioned Businessman Indepen
  dence from family
• Talents Photographic Good debater Plays
  violin, likes to read memory, published
  alone.
• original math formula
• at age 10
• Which student did you select and why?

8
Gardners 8 Intelligences

• Linguistic
• Logical-mathematical
• Musical
• Spatial
• Bodily-kinesthetic
• Intrapersonal (self)
• Interpersonal (other people)
• Naturalist
• (p. 434 chart in text)

9
Howard Gardners Multiple Intelligences
10
Robert Sternberg

• Creative intelligence ability to deal with novel
  situations by drawing on existing skills and
  knowledge
• Analytic intelligence mental processes used in
  learning how to solve problems
• Practical intelligence ability to adapt to the
  environment (street smarts)
• THINKING CAP

11
Are There Multiple Intelligences?

• Social Intelligence
• the know-how involved in comprehending social
  situations and managing oneself successfully
• Emotional Intelligence
• ability to perceive, express, understand, and
  regulate emotions

12
Daniel Golemans Theory of Emotional Intelligence
The ability to feel, deal with, and recognize
emotions makes up its own kind of intelligence.
Aspects of this theory include

• Emotional self-awareness knowing what we are
  feeling and why
• Managing and harnessing emotions knowing how
  to control and respond to feelings appropriately
• Empathy knowing what another person is feeling

13
Creativity
Intelligence and creativity are somewhat, but not
closely, related. People who are creative tend to
excel in one area. One measure of creativity is
the ability to break set, or think about
something in an entirely new way to problem solve.
14
Intelligence and Creativity

• Creativity
• the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
• expertise
• imaginative thinking skills
• venturesome personality
• intrinsic motivation
• creative environment

15
Origins of Intelligence Testing

• Stanford-Binet
• the widely used American revision of Binets
  original intelligence test
• revised by Lewis Terman at Stanford University

16
Origins of Intelligence Testing

• Intelligence Test
• a method of assessing an individuals mental
  aptitudes and comparing them to those of others,
  using numerical scores

17
Origins of Intelligence Testing

• Alfred Binet (18571911)
• Intelligencecollection of higher-order mental
  abilities loosely related to one another
• Intelligence is nurtured
• Binet-Simon Test developed in France, 1905

18
Origins of Intelligence Testing

• Mental Age
• a measure of intelligence test performance
  devised by Binet
• chronological age that most typically corresponds
  to a given level of performance
• child who does as well as the average 8-year-old
  is said to have a mental age of 8

19
The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test
Constructed in the early 1900s by Alfred Binet
Described four elements of intelligence
?
Direction the ability to work toward a goal
Adaptability making necessary adjustments to
solve a problem
?
?
Comprehension understanding the basic problem
Self-evaluation knowing if the problem has been
solved correctly
?
20
Items Used in the Stanford-Binet Test
21
Calculating I.Q.
Mental Age
I.Q.
X 100
I.Q.
Chronological Age
7
100
X 100
Examples
7
8
114
X 100
7
What is the I.Q. of a 16-year-old girl with a
mental age of 20?
22
Calculating I.Q.
Mental Age
I.Q.
X 100
I.Q.
Chronological Age
7
100
X 100
Examples
7
8
114
X 100
7
What is the I.Q. of a 16-year-old girl with a
mental age of 20?
23
Are There Multiple Intelligences?

• Savant Syndrome
• condition in which a person otherwise limited in
  mental ability has an exceptional specific skill
• computation
• drawing

24
Is Intelligence Neurologically Measurable?

• There is a positive correlation between
  intelligence and the brains neural processing
  speed. College students with unusually high
  levels of verbal intelligence are most likely to
  retrieve information from memory at an unusually
  rapid speed.

25
Brain Size and Complexity

• Francis Galton-- phrenology. There is a slight
  correlation between head size (relative to body
  size) and intelligence score.

26
Brain Function and intelligence

• Highly intelligent people also tend to take in
  information more quickly and to show faster brain
  wave responses to simple stimuli such as a
  flashing of light. Continuous debate about the
  extent to which nature and nurture affect the
  brains structure and functioning.

27
Processing Speed

• Earl Hunt found that verbal intelligence scores
  are predictable from the speed with which people
  retrieve information from memory.

28
Perceptual Speed

• The correlation between intelligence score and
  the speed of taking in perceptual information
  tends to be about .4 to .5. Those who perceive
  quickly tend to score somewhat higher on
  intelligence tests, particularly tests based on
  perceptual rather than verbal problem solving.

29
Neurological Speed

• Repeated studies have found that highly
  intelligent peoples brain waves register a
  simple stimulus more quickly and with greater
  complexity.
• (New testing being done)

30
Brain Function and Intelligence

• People who can perceive the stimulus very quickly
  tend to score somewhat higher on intelligence
  tests

31
Assessing Intelligence

• Aptitude Test
• a test designed to predict a persons future
  performance
• aptitude is the capacity to learn
• Achievement Test
• a test designed to assess what a person has
  learned

32
Assessing Intelligence

• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
• most widely used intelligence test
• subtests
• verbal
• performance (nonverbal)

33
Modern Intelligence Tests

• The Wechsler tests
• used more widely now than Stanford-Binet
• modeled after Binets, also made adult test
• WISC-III for children
• WAIS-III for adults

34
The Wechsler Intelligence Test
David Wechsler (WEX-ler) devised a different
intelligence test to measure real world
intelligence.
The first part of the test included verbal items
like the Binet test.
The second part was a nonverbal I.Q. test called
a performance scale.
35
Assessing Intelligence Sample Items from the WAIS
36
Assessing Intelligence

• Standardization
• defining meaningful scores by comparison with the
  performance of a pretested standardization
  group
• Normal Curve
• the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes
  the distribution of many physical and
  psychological attributes
• most scores fall near the average, and fewer and
  fewer scores lie near the extremes

37
The Normal Curve
38
Getting Smarter?
Flynn Effect
39
Assessing Intelligence

• Reliability
• the extent to which a test yields consistent
  results
• assessed by consistency of scores on
• two halves of the test
• alternate forms of the test
• retesting
• Validity
• the extent to which a test measures or predicts
  what it is supposed to

40
Assessing Intelligence

• Content Validity
• the extent to which a test samples the behavior
  that is of interest
• driving test that samples driving tasks
• Criterion
• behavior (such as college grades) that a test
  (such as the SAT) is designed to predict
• the measure used in defining whether the test has
  predictive validity

41
Assessing Intelligence

• Predictive Validity
• success with which a test predicts the behavior
  it is designed to predict
• assessed by computing the correlation between
  test scores and the criterion behavior
• also called criterion-related validity

42
Assessing Intelligence

• As the range of data under consideration narrows,
  its predictive power diminishes

43
The Dynamics of Intelligence

• Stability or Change? If a 6 month old seems to
  developing more slowly and is not as playful as
  other infants her age this does not predict her
  late intelligence score. Intelligence scores are
  most likely to be stable over a 1-yr period for a
  10th grade student whose intelligence test score
  is 95. After age 7, intelligence scores become
  more stable. Consistency of scores increase with
  the age of the child.

44
The Dynamics of Intelligence

• Mental Retardation
• a condition of limited mental ability
• indicated by an intelligence score below 70
• produces difficulty in adapting to the demands of
  life
• varies from mild to profound
• Down Syndrome
• retardation and associated physical disorders
  caused by an extra chromosome in ones genetic
  makeup

45
The Dynamics of Intelligence
46
Nature vs. Nurture in IQGenetic Influences

• Are differences between people due to
  environmental or genetic differences?
• Misunderstanding the question
• Is a persons intelligence due more to genes or
  to environment?
• both genes intelligence crucial for any trait

47
Genetic Influences

• The most genetically similar people have the most
  similar scores

48
Genetic Influences

• Heritability
• the proportion of variation among individuals
  that we can attribute to genes
• variability depends on range of populations and
  environments studied

49
Group Differences

• Group differences and environmental impact

50
Within and Between Group Differences

• Each corn field planted from same package of
  genetically diverse seeds
• One field is quite fertile, the other is not
• Within each field, differences due to genetics
• Between each field, differences due to
  environment (fertility)

51
Genetic Influences
52
Environmental Influences

• Early Intervention Effects

If children are disadvantaged, malnutritioned,
sensory deprived, or socially isolated, early
intervention with responsive caregiving can help.
However, if you are trying to give your baby
extra instruction to create a superbaby, you
are most likely wasting your time. Research
indicates that Head Start programs are most
beneficial to participants from disadvantaged
home environments.
53
Environmental Influences

• The Schooling Effect

Schooling itself is an intervention that pays
dividends reflected in intelligence scores.
Schooling and intelligence contribute to each
other (and both enhance later income). High
intelligence is conducive to prolonged schooling.
Intelligence scores tend to rise during the
school year and drop over the summer months. They
decline when students schooling is discontinued.
54
Other Influences on IQ Scores

• Cross cultural studies show that average IQ of
  groups subject to social discrimination are often
  lower than socially dominant group even if there
  is no racial difference
• Tests reflect the culture in which they are
  developed cultural factors also influence test
  taking behavior (culture bias)

55
Issues in Intelligence Testing
Individual vs. group testing Group I.Q. testing
can give fairly accurate results, but relies on
verbal testing only. The average range of error
in I.Q. scores is about seven points. The
Supreme Court has ruled that I.Q. test results
cannot determine placement of children in
schools. Cultural bias in the creation of test
questions may discriminate against minority
populations.
56
Group Differences

• Intelligence tests have effectively reduced
  discrimination in the sense that they have helped
  limit reliance on educators subjectively biased
  judgments of students academic potential.

57
Group Differences

• Ethnic Similarities and Differences
• Racial groups differ in their average scores on
  intelligence tests. High-scoring people and
  groups are more likely to attain high levels of
• education and income.

58
Gender Differences

• Three people were hiking through a forest when
  they came upon a large, raging violent river.
• Needing to get on the other side, the first man
  prayed, "God, please give me the strength to
  cross the river."
• Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs and
  he was able to swim across in about 2 hours,
  having almost drowned twice.
• After witnessing that, the second man prayed,
  "God, please give me strength and the tools to
  cross the river."
• Poof! God gave him a rowboat and strong arms and
  strong legs and he was able to row across in
  about an hour after almost capsizing once.
• Seeing what happened to the first two men, the
  third man prayed, "God, please give me the
  strength, the tools and the intelligence to
  cross river."
• Poof! He was turned into a woman. She checked
  the map, hiked one hundred yards up stream and
  walked across the bridge.

59
Group Differences

• Gender Similarities Differences
• Girls are better spellers at the high end of
  high school, only 30 of males spell better than
  the average female. Boys outnumber girls at the
  low extremes. Boys tend to talk later and stutter
  more often. In remedial reading classes, boys
  outnumber girls three to one. In high school,
  underachieving boys outnumber girls by two to
  one.

60
Group Differences

• Math Spatial Aptitudes
• In math grades, the average girl typically
  equals or surpasses the average boy. And on math
  tests given to 3 million people, males and
  females obtained nearly identical scores.
  Although females have an edge in math
  computation, males in various cultures score high
  in math problem solving. Traditionally, math and
  science have been considered masculine subjects.
  Females are pushed more toward English.

61
Group Differences

• Emotional-Detecting Ability
• Women are better at detecting emotions than men.
  
• The Question of Bias
• Most experts would agree that intelligence tests
  are biased in the sense that test performance
  is influenced by cultural experiences.

62
Racial Difference in IQ

• Racial difference in average IQ among different
  racial groups can be measured
• More variation in IQ scores within a particular
  group than between groups

63
Group Differences

• Stereotype Threat
• A self-confirming concern that one will be
  evaluated based on a negative stereotype