Module 4: Intelligence Flashcards
Intelligence
The ability to learn from experience and to adapt to changes in the environment. Ability to gain knowledge by learning and solving problems.
Self-Enhancement Bias
The avg. IQ score is 100. Half the population has below avg. intelligence BUT most people rate their scores above avg.
Flynn Effect
IQ seems to be increasing over time. The effect was most likely due to a combination of factors:
- Overall improvement in nutrition and medical care
- Improvements in education
- Increased environmental complexity via technology
Sir Francis Galton (late 1800’s)
- Psychologist and a Statistician
- Pioneered the study of intelligence
- Quantifying mental ability: believed that physiological measures predict intelligence. Theory not supported but resulted in the discovery that intelligence is normally distributed.
- Mental ability is inherited and innate.
Alfred Binet & Theodore Simon
- French Psychologists
- Started the modern intelligence-testing movement
- Mental tests (attention, memory, imagination, reasoning, common sense and abstraction)
- Tests reflected three basic abilities:
1) Direction: the ability to know what to do and how to do it
2) Adaptation: the ability to create strategies for implementing knowledge
3) Criticism: the ability to find errors in thinking - Mental Age
Lewis Terman
- Revised Binet’s Tests
- Stanford-Binet Test
Intelligence Quotient
- Ratio of mental age to chronological age
- Could be applied to people of different chronological ages
- IQ=MA/CA X 100
David Wechsler
-Intelligence is a set of verbal and non-verbal skills
WAIS, WISC, WPPSI
Deviation IQ
Administer test to many people, obtain avg. score for the test, and then score people relative to the avg. score or mean.
WAIS-IV: Verbal Comprehension Index
A measure of an individual’s ability to understand, learn and retain verbal info. and to use language to solve novel problems.
WAIS-IV: Perceptual Reasoning Index
A measure of an individual’s ability to understand visual information and to solve novel abstract visual problems.
WAIS-IV: Working Memory Index
A measure of an individual’s ability to hold verbal information in STM and to manipulate that info.
WAIS-IV: Processing Speed Index
A measure of mental speed, though the score may also be affected by other cognitive factors, such as attention, as well as ability to use pen/pencil.
Reliability
Measure of a test consistency; test has to be useful over time.
-Test-retest reliability: are scores stable over time?
- Internal consistency: are all items correlated to e/o? are they measuring the same thing?
- Interjudge reliability: do different test administrators agree on the scoring/observation?
Validity
How well a test measures what it says it measures.
-Construct validity: is the test actually measuring intelligence?
- Content validity: do the test items relate to all the aspects of intelligence?
- Criterion-related validity: Do test scores predict some present or future behaviour or outcome that should be impacted by intelligence?
Standardization
The process of administering a test to a large group of varying ages to see what kind of scores are typically obtained.
-Know the mean and the SD of scores
Eugenics
Sterilization of people that were non-white or had developmental disabilities.
Race and IQ
Moral assumptions based on racial differences in IQ are overly simplistic and should be rejected. Intelligence tests are easily influenced by situational factors and lack of familiarity w/ certain topics. Racial differences in IQ are due to environmental differences rather than genes.
Gender and IQ
Almost no difference in overall intelligence between genders. Some differences in specific abilities: Men are better at visuospatial tasks, women are better at verbal tasks.
Stereotype Threat
People in marginalized groups experience increased anxiety and divided attention during testing. Creates bias and poor performance.
Mindset
Can decrease performance if someone believes their intelligence is fixed at a low level.
Fixed Mindset
Intelligence is relatively a fixed trait, inherited and cannot be changed.
Growth Mindset
Intelligence is a malleable trait that can improve with effort.
Charles Spearman
- Grade performance across various subjects is positively correlated.
- Factor Analysis reveals grades cluster across subjects.
- Specific ability to learn a specialized subject is driven by more overarching general abilities.
