Psych Chapter 10 Intelligence Intelligence Not a concrete thing more of a concept o Reification the viewing of an abstract immaterial idea as a concrete thing Measured by an intelligence test o A method of assessment of an individual s mental aptitudes and comparing them to those of others using numerical scores to determine an intelligence quotient Intelligence the ability to learn from experience and solve tasks and use knowledge to adapt to new situations Is intelligence one general ability or several specific abilities o Charles Spearman Believed in general intelligence A general intelligence factors that according to spearman and others underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test Developed a factor analysis A statistical procedure that indentifies clusters of related items called factors on a test used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a persons total score A common skill set g underlies all intellectual behavior Gave people 56 different tests and mathematically clustered primary mental abilities into 7 o LL Thurstone categories Word fluency verbal comprehension spatial ability perceptual speed numerical ability inductive reasoning and memory No single scale of general intelligence People who scored well on some tended to score better on other proving some sort of g factor o Some argue that general intelligence is a development of the need to solve new problems Theories of multiple intelligences o Gardner s eight intelligences Views intelligence as multiple abilities that come in clusters This explains why damage to one region of the brain leaves brilliance in another Savant syndrome a condition in which a person with otherwise limited mental ability has an exceptional and specific skill such as drawing or computation We do not have one intelligence we have multiple intelligences Linguistic poet Logical mathematical scientist Musical musician Spatial artist Bodily kinesthetic dancer Intrapersonal self psychiatrist Interpersonal other people leader Naturalist charles Darwin naturalist o Sternberg s 3 intelligences Agrees with Gardner but proposes a triarchic theory of 3 Analytical intelligence o An intelligence tests with questions and 1 well defined answer Creative intelligence Practical intelligence o Reacting adaptively in new situation o Everyday tasks a somewhat vague description o Has multiple solutions Intelligence and creativity o Creativity the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas o Intelligence tests require a convergent answer one right answer which proves that a test alone cannot measure creativity o Creativity tests require divergent thinking multiple answers o Components of creativity as defined by Sternberg and Lubart Expertise A well developed base of knowledge furnishes the ideas images and phrases we use as mental building blocks The more blocks we have the easier it is to combine them in novel ways Imaginative thinking skills connections Ability to see a problem in novel ways to recognize patterns and to make Having mastered a problem s basic elements we redefine and explore them in a new way Ex Copernicus studied the sun and the stars and after gaining much knowledge said the earth revolved around the sun not the sun around the earth A venturesome personality Seeks new experiences tolerates ambiguity and risk and preserves in overcoming obstacles Ex Edison and the light bulb Intrinsic motivation Being driven by interest satisfaction and challenge than by external pressures Creative people focus on extrinsic motivators impressing employer etc than on the pleasure of work itself A creative environment Emotional intelligence Sparks supports and refines creative ideas Ex If mentored and supported by employees etc o Social intelligence the ability to comprehend social relationships o Emotional intelligence the ability to perceive understand manage and use emotions Tests detect those 4 characteristics o People who exhibit high emotional intelligence generally hold high self esteem values higher quality relationships with friends and are able to delay immediate gratifcation in pursuit of long range goals Is intelligence neurologically measurable o Brain size and complexity It is not the size and weight in general but the size and development of certain brain regions More intelligent people develop more brain synapses like the rat study discussed earlier Differ in neural plasticity the ability to adapt and grow neural connections in childhood The most intelligent children had thinner cortexes until development around 11 to 13 Meaning they were able to adapt more agile brains influence agile minds Intelligence is linked with more gray matter in the memory attention and language regions and adolescence o Brain Function Perceptual speed More intelligent people can retrieve information faster Ex the masking test where a three sided rectangle is shown for a very brief 2 s amount of time One has a longer side than the other After the flash an image where the left and right side are equal is shown mask The subject is asked which side appeared to be longer Neurological speed Register a simple stimulus with more complexity and agility Although simple tasks are somewhat removed from complex intelligent test answers it reveals something about core processing speed Faster cognitive processing may allow more information to be required Assessing Intelligence The origins of intelligence testing o Alfred Binet predicting school achievement Happened at the turn of the century 20th when France declared all children to attend school Children were in need of classes that strayed from the normal curriculum and did not trust the teachers judgments of the students abilities Assumed that children were not less intelligent but passed through different stages of develop at different times so wanted to determine the child s mental age Mental age the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance Thus a child of 8 years has a mental age of 8 Theorizes that general mental capacity shows up in various ways This test only determined the child s need for help not measurement of intelligence o Lewis Terman the IQ test Adapted Binet s test to measure inborn intelligence and developed the Stanford Binet test Developed the intelligence quotient a person s mental age divided by chronological age and multiplied by 100 Only good for children IQ for adults compared to others
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