Psych 1101 Chapter 10 Intelligence David Wechsler psychologist who have spent years researching concept of intelligence and developing today s widely used intelligence test WAIS Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and WISC Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Intelligence is the global capacity of a person to act purposefully to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment What is intelligence Intelligence is a socially constructed concept varies from culture to culture Does intelligence vary among people or does expression of intelligence vary Most psychologists now define intelligence as the ability to learn from experience solve problems and use knowledge to adapt to new situations Intelligence tests assess individuals mental abilities and compares them with others using numerical scores Intelligence IQ Is intelligence one general mental ability general intelligence g proposed by Charles Spearman according to Spearman g is responsible for performance on ability tests Intelligence as a single score Factor analysis has identified several clusters of mental abilities VCI verbal comprehension index PRI perceptual reasoning index WMI working memory index PSI processing speed index Wechsler scales factor analysis is statistical procedure by which these cluster of activities have been identified FSIQ full scale IQ Gardner proposed a theory of multiple intelligences based on evidence that brain damage may diminish one ability but not others as well as studies of savant syndrome linguistic logical mathematical musical spatial using shapes and distance in space bodily kinesthetic physical movement fine motor control intrapersonal within self interpersonal between two people and naturalistic Sternberg proposed a triarchic theory of multiple intelligences in which he distinguishes among analytical academic problem solving practical common sense the ability to solve everyday problems and creative intelligences Creativity Generally people with high IQ scores do well on creativity tests Five components of creativity expertise imaginative thinking skills a venturesome personality intrinsic motivation they don t do it for rewards they do it or internal satisfaction and a creative environment Convergent thinking when we use different sources of info or data and try to fit pieces together to find a single answer requiring a single correct answer Divergent thinking creativity looking at all the options or alternatives Emotional Intelligence EQ EQ an aspect of social intelligence 4 components 1 perceive emotions to recognize them in faces music and stories 2 to understand emotions to predict them and how they change and blend 3 to manage emotions to know how to express them in varied situations and 4 to use emotions to enable adaptive or creative thinking Intelligence and Neuroanatomy Positive correlation 33 between brain size and IQ IQ is correlated with greater activity in specific areas esp frontal and parietal lobes Higher IQs also associated with the ability to retrieve information from memory more quickly PSI Neural processing speed those who perceive quickly are especially likely to score higher on tests of verbal ability Those who require the least inspection time to quickly perceive a simple stimulus tend to score somewhat higher on intelligence tests and tests of verbal ability Assessing Intelligence The intelligence testing movement started at the turn of the 20th century when French psychologist Alfred Binet began assessing intellectual abilities Binet developed an intelligence test containing questions that assessed mental age and helped predict children s aptitude in Parisian schools The test s original purpose was to identify children needing special attention Terman believed that intelligence was inherited Like Binet he believed that his test the Stanford Binet could help guide people toward appropriate opportunities William Stern derived the intelligence quotient or IQ for Terman s test IQ originally defined simply as a person s mental age divided by chronological age actual age multiplied by 100 Aptitude vs Achievement Tests Aptitude refers to the capacity to learn and thus aptitude tests are those designed to predict a person s future performance Achievement tests are designed to assess what a person has learned Striking differences between these scores can provide clues to cognitive strengths that a teacher or therapist might build on Standardization and Normal Distribution Scores become meaningful only when they can be compared with others performances they must be defined relative to a pretested group a process called standardization The group on which a test is standardized must be representative of those who will be taking the test in the future Standardized test results typically form a normal distribution a bell shaped pattern of scores that forms the normal curve Most scores cluster around the average and increasingly fewer are distributed at the extremes Intelligence tests scores form such a curve but in the past several decades the average score has risen a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect Reliability and Validity validity of a test is the extent to which that test measures what we are intending to measure Reliability refers to the extent to which a test yields consistent scores a test can be reliable but not valid consistency may be assessed by comparing scores on two halves of the test split half on alternative forms or on retesting test retest Intelligence Over the Lifespan crystallized intelligence our accumulated knowledge increases with age fluid intelligence our ability to reason speedily and abstractly decreases beginning in the twenties and thirties