Psych Reading for Week of April 1st Pages 316 330 Intelligence and IQ Testing Child Prodigy An individual who displays astounding intellectual achievements at an early age What is Intelligence Definitional Confusion Intelligence as Sensory Capacity Out of Sight Out of Mind Sir Francis Galton Intelligence is the by product of sensory capacity intelligence comes through the senses especially vision and hearing Intelligence as Abstract Thinking Intelligence Test A diagnostic tool designed to measure overall thinking ability Higher Mental Processes Included reasoning understanding and judgment Abstract Thinking The capacity to understand hypothetical concepts rather than concepts in the here and now In 1921 a panel of 14 American experts generated a list of definitions of intelligence and came up with the following Reason abstractly learn to adapt to novel environmental circumstances acquire knowledge benefit from experience Intelligence as General vs Specific Abilities General Intelligence Single shared factor across all aspects that accounted for the overall differences in intellect among people Specific Abilities How well we perform on a given mental task depends not only on our general smarts but also on our particular skills in narrow domain s Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence Fluid Intelligence The capacity to learn new ways of solving problems Crystallized Intelligence The accumulated knowledge of the world we acquire over time Fluid abilities are more likely to decline with age than are crystallized abilities Multiple Intelligences Different Ways of Being Smart Frames of Mind are different ways of thinking about the world Multiple Intelligences Entirely different domains of intellectual skills Gardner proposed eight different intelligences Linguistic Speak and write well Logicomathematical Use logic and mathematical skills to solve problems such as scientific questions Spatial Think and reason about objects in three dimensional space Musical Perform understand and enjoy music Bodily Kinesthetic Manipulate the body in sports dance or other physical endeavors Interpersonal Understand and interact effectively with others Intrapersonal Understand and possess insight into self Naturalistic Recognize identify and understand animals plants and Triarchic Model Posits the existence of three largely distinct other living things intelligences Analytical Intelligence The ability to reason logically Practical Intelligence Tacit intelligence the ability to solve real world problems especially those involving other people Creative Intelligence Creativity our ability to come up with novel and effective answers to questions Intelligence Testing The Good the Bad and the Ugly Double Curse of Incompetence People with poor cognitive skills are especially likely to overestimate their intellectual abilities How We Calculate IQ Stanford Binet IQ Test Consists of a wide variety of tasks like those Binet and Simon used such as tests of vocabulary memory for pictures naming of familiar objects repeating sentences and following commands Intelligence Quotient IQ Divide mental age by chronological age and multiply the resulting number by 100 Mental Age The age corresponding to the average person s performance on an intelligence test Deviation IQ Using a statistical measure of variability the deviation IQ expresses each person s IQ relative to the norms for his or her age group The Eugenics Movement Misuses and Abuses of IQ Testing Eugenics The effort to improve a population s genetic stock by encouraging people with good genes to reproduce positive eugenics and by discouraging people with bad genes from reproducing negative eugenics Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale WAIS IQ test based more on verbal abilities Yields five major scores Overall IQ verbal comprehension perceptual reasoning working memory and processing speed Culture fair IQ Tests Consist of abstract reasoning items that don t depend on language Pages 334 349 A Tale of Two Tails From Mental Retardation to Genius IQ scores are distributed in a bell curve across a range of possible IQ scores The bulk of the scores fall toward the middle with progressively fewer scores toward the tails or extremes forming the shape of a bell A blip at the beginning of the bell curve may be the results of assortative mating the tendency of individuals with similar genes to have children Two tails of the IQ score distribution mental retardation and genius Mental Retardation intellectual disability has three criteria all which must be present Onset prior to adulthood IQ below approximately 70 Inadequate adaptive functioning as assessed by difficulties with dressing and feeding oneself communicating with others and other basic life skills Gullibility The susceptibility to being duped by others The more severe mental retardation the less likely it is to run in families Mental retardation is classified into four categories Mild Educable Moderate Trainable Severe Profound Two most common genetic conditions associated with mental retardation Fragile X Syndrome Produced by a mutation in the X chromosome are Down Syndrome The result of an extra chromosome 21 Mosaics Individuals with Down syndrome who have relatively normal IQs Genius and Exceptional Intelligence IQs above 134 Genetic and Environmental Influences on IQ Exploring Genetic Influences on IQ Family Studies Allow us to examine the extent to which a trait runs or goes together in intact families those in which all family members live together in the same home Proportion of relatives who achieved intellectual greateness declined steadily with increasing biological distance Studies of intact families don t allow us to distinquish the effects of genes from those of the environment Twin Studies Compare correlations in a trait in two types of twins identical and fraternal Studies of twins reared together have offered evidence of considerably higher identical than fraternal twin correlations for IQ The higher identical than fraternal twin correlations tell us that IQ is influenced by genetic factors Twin findings provide even more convincing evidence for environmental influences on IQ because the identical twin correlations for IQ are less than perfect Identical twins reared separately had similar IQ correlation as identical twins raised together Adoption Studies Examine the extent to which children adopted into new homes resemble their adoptive versus biological parents Adopted children who come from extremely