Ch 10 Flashcards
(25 cards)
Intelligence
The ability to solve novel problems and learn from experience (ability to discern true and important information from false and non-important information)
Self-enhancement bias
Tendency to judge one’s performance as better than the average without any evidence of expertise or training
Aristotle
Believed there were 2 dimensions of behavioral flexibility:
Practical wisdom: application of knowledge (reasoning)
Theoretical wisdom: understanding objective truth (science)
Williams
Intelligence allows us to adapt to changes and learn from experience
Sir Francis Galton
- Influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution (people will get more intelligent over time)
- mental abilities are inherited
- those who are “elite” have higher intelligence (and genetics) and those who are “lower class” have inferior intelligence (and genetics)
-created the idea of eugenties (eliminating certain traits by selectively breeding or only encouraging reproduction in certain classes)
Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon
- Developed to first intelligence test (standardized)
→ designed to quantify mental ability in order to identify children that needed alternative education - measured aptitude (natural ability to do something) separately from prior educational achievement
- certain abilities should be seen at certain ages
William Stern
- Developed the concept of “mental age” to see if a child was developing normally
(worked well for children but not for adults because adults of different ages don’t have remarkable different intellectual capacities) - ratio IQ: dividing a person’s mental age by their physical age , and multiplying it by 100 (a score of 100 means the mental and physical age match up; a score higher than 100 means the mental age is above the physical age)
- deviation IQ: divide a person’s test score by the average test score of people in the same age group then multiply by 100 (comparing individual to offers in the same category)
David Wechsler
- Intelligence is a set of verbal AND non-verbal (performance) tests
What do intelligence test scores correlate to?
- Health and longevity
- income
- occupational status and job performance
- academic performance
- susceptible to confounding variables *
Charles Spearmen
- Looked for correlations between different cognitive tasks (different components of intelligence)
-If intelligence is a single ability (general) then there should be a strong correlation (not perfect) between people’s performances on many different kinds of tests - a person’s performance on a test is due to a combination of general cognitive ability and specific abilities that are unique to the test
Spearmen’s two factor theory:
→ results from many intelligence tests are best explained with a three-level hierarchy
→ general intelligence at the top (g), middle-level abilities in the middle; group factors (m; Thurstone’s concept), specific abilities at the bottom (s)
→ hierarchy suggests that intelligence is a general ability that is composed of middle-level abilities that enable a large number of specific abilities
Factor analysis
- A statistical technique
- reduces a large number of measures into a smaller number of clusters or factors
→ each cluster contains variables that correlate with one another but less correlated with variables in other clusters (clusters are independent of eachother)
-A factor allows us to infer the underlying characteristic that presumably accounts for the links among the variables in the cluster
Louis Thurstone
- Opposed to Spearmen’s work
- disregarded the probability of having a “g factor” (overarching component of intelligence)
→ believed there were clusters of mental abilities instead (independent of one another) - argued that a few stable and independent primary mental abilities should be the only concern; looking at one level instead of a hierarchy with multiple levels
The Flynn effect
- Intelligence quotients (IQ) seem to increase over time
Most likely due to:
→ improvement in nutrition and health care (brains developing to full potential)
→improvements in education (better ability to reason and problem solve)
→ increased environmental complexity (technology and its interconnected nature)
Middle-level abilities
Data based approach:
- connect intelligence test scores to clusters (factor analysis)
- start with data and compute correlations b/w people’s performances on a large number of tests and observing the patterns the correlations create
- crystallized intelligence: apply previously learned knowledge to current problems
-fluid intelligence: deal with novel situations without previous knowledge (see abstract relationships and draw logical inferences)
Theory based approach:
- look at human abilities that are believed to be related to aspects of intelligence and then figure out which intelligence tests measure those abilities (or design new ones if they don’t exist)
- triarchic theory of intelligence:
→ analytic intelligence: ability to problem solve
→ creative/synthetic intelligence: ability to create novel solutions using existing skills and information
→ practical intelligence: ability to adapt to everyday settings
Emotional intelligence
Involves the abilities to:
- read other’s emotions accurately and respond to them appropriately
-to motivate oneself
-to be aware of one’s own emotions
- to regulate and control one’s own emotional responses
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT):
- specific tasks to measure each branch
- perceiving emotions is measured through a person’s ability/accuracy in:
→ judging emotional expressions in facial photographs
→ the emotional tones conveyed by different landscapes and designs
Psychometric standards
Methods for measuring individual differences related to some psychological concept:
→ achievement tests: designed to discover how much someone knows
→ aptitude tests: designed to measure potential for future learning and performance
Nature or nurture
Intelligence comes from innate characteristics (genes) and unique experiences (environment)
Heredity: predisposition
Natural selection: those whose genes provide them with more adaptive traits are more likely to survive and reproduce
Heritability: percentage of the variation in a characteristic attributed to genetic factors
Non-genetic component
Shared environment: environmental factors that all relevant members of a household experience
Nonshared environment: environmental factors that all relevant members of a household do not experience
Intelligence across cultures
Different cultures have different views
→ different concepts of intelligence
→ differences in language
→ differences in kinds of problems considered important
- all cultures value the ability to solve survival-linked problems
Psychometric standards for intelligence tests
Standardization
1. Developing norms
→ provide basis for interpreting individual score (give it meaning)
2. Controlled procedures
→ control for extraneous factors
→ explicit instructions and procedures
Assessing intelligence in non-western cultures
- Use problems not tied to knowledge base of culture (ability to analyze stimulus patterns)
- create measures tailored to knowledge valued in a particular culture
Sex differences in cognitive abilities
Females:
- perceptual speed
- verbal fluency
- mathematical calculation
- fine motor coordination
Males:
- spatial tasks
-throwing, catching objects
- mathematical reasoning
Outcome bias
Extend to which a test underestimates a person’s true intellectual ability
