Culture and the Individual

Intelligence

Psychological Approaches: Intelligence

Spearman’s General Intelligence “g” = positively intercorrelated set of cognitive abilities that allow an individual to see relationships between things and to manipulate those relationships to solve problems.

Derived from giving people a lot of different achievement tests and finding that the scores were highly correlated, indicating that the abilities being tested were related to one another

Psychological Approaches: Intelligence

Cattell’s Dual Intelligence Model

Agrees with Spearman’s general definition of intelligenceArgued that g was actually made up of two types of abilities

Fluid Intelligence: The power to reason and use informationPeaks at around age 20 and then remains fairly constant until old age, when it declines

Crystalized Intelligence: Acquired skills and knowledge

including knowledge about the best approaches for solving problems and the application of knowledge to specific domains. Continues to increase as we grow older.

Psychological Approaches: Intelligence

Gardiner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Intelligence = the ability to do things that other people value.

Seven Independent Types of Intelligence

LinguisticLogical-MathematicalMusicalBody/KinestheticSpatialInterpersonalIntrapersonal

Individuals may be very good at some of these skills while not at others.

Psychological Approaches: Intelligence

Vernon’s Vertical Levels of Intelligence Factors

Intelligence A = genetic potential for “g”

Intelligence B = phenotypic* demonstration of “g”

Intelligence C = performance on a specific test

Question: Is Intelligence C a predictor of

Intelligence A?

*The actual expression of genetic potential in individual traits and abilities.

Psychological Approaches to Cognition

Tests for Intelligence C

May not target important factors of Intelligence B

May be affected by cultural biases such as:

Language

Item content and format

Motivation

Speed

Testing context

Intelligence Testing

Stanford/Binet Test:Alfred Binet in France.

The problem: to come up with a test that would distinguish between normal kids who were not doing well in school and those who were mentally retarded

Adapted in the United States by Lewis Terman at Stanford University.

Testing vocabulary knowledge, comprehension, recognition of absurdities, the ability to reproduce visual patterns etc.

Normed by age (as are all intelligence tests). give the test to large numbers of students of different ages determine at which age a typical student could answer itIQ stands for intelligence quotient = 100 X Mental Age/Actual AgeSo someone performing just at the level of the typical person of their age

has an IQ of 100.Designed to predict school performance.

Intelligence Tests

Wechsler Intelligence Tests Three main types Wechsler Pre-school and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) - 3-7 years

Wechsler Intelligence scale for Children (WISC) - 7-16 years Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) - 16 years and over

First version was in 1939, revised in 1955, 1981, 1997. Standardised (1997) on a sample of 1,800 U.S. subjects,

ranging from 16 to 74 years of age, 9 different age groups, equal numbers of men and womenwhite and non white subjects in line with census figures. four geographic U.S. regionssix occupational categories. balance of urban and rural subjects.

The mean I.Q. for each age group on this test is 100 There are different adaptations of the scale by country, eg. Australian

adaptation of WAIS-R (1989). 

Content of the WeschlerVerbal WAIS scales (6 subtests) • 1. Information: 29 questions - a measure of general

knowledge.• 2. Subjects are given sets of digits to repeat initially

forwards then backwards. • 3. Vocabulary: Define 35 words. It correlates very

highly with Full Scale IQ• 4. Arithmetic: 14 mental arithmetic brief story type

problems. • 5. Comprehension: 16 questions which focus on

issues of social awareness.• 6. Similarities: Subjects are asked to say how two

seemingly dissimilar items might in fact be similar.

Content of the Weschler

Performance WAIS scales (5 subtests) • 7. Picture Completion: 20 small pictures that all

have one vital detail missing. • 8. Picture Arrangement: 10 sets of small pictures

to be arrange them into a logical sequence.

• 9. Block Design: putting sets of blocks together to match patterns on cards.

• 10. Digit Symbol: Involves copying a coding pattern.

• 11. Object Assembly: Four small jig-saw type puzzles.

Kinds of Intelligence Tests• Culture Bound – this is most tests

EG. 1. Prologue is to epilogue as soup is to __________. 2. When you go to the store for bread and the grocer

says they are out, what do you do next?• Culture Fair – do not allow for comparison

Intelligence should be measured by how well people solve problems in their own environments

EG. Micronesian seamen can navigate extremely accurately using only stars and sea currents

• Culture Free – is this possible?

• In the 1960’s & 70’s Alternate Racial IQ The Chitling Intelligence TestNative American Intelligence Test http://www.understandingprejudice.org/nativeiq/The Original Australian Test of Intelligence

Racist Use of IQ Tests

• Racial differences in brain size• Forced sterilization of women with “low IQ’s”

until 1972 in California• Jensen, Hernstein, Murray, Rushton

– Use ethnic differences in IQ scores to argue that people from different races have different intelligence potentials

– The belief that IQ is 80% hereditary– Rushton Ranks Races (Asian, European, African )– Hernstein and Murray - The Bell Curve

• Underprivileged are so because of lower IQ’s which are genetically determined

• IQ is going down in the U.S. because of higher birth rates among individuals with lower IQ’s

– Social Darwinism

Rejection of Racist IQ Theories

• Within group differences genetically determined, but between group differences environmentally determined

• IQ is more affected by environmental factors in some groups than others

• Environmental factors that depress IQ are more prevalent in groups with lower IQ’s

• Negatively biased items apply to those who score lower IQ’s

• Interindividual differences in genetics are larger than intergroup differences in genetics

Rejection of Racist IQ Theories

Clearly environmental factors are extremely influential.

Deficiency vs. Difference

• Deficiencies cause the failure of intellectual development to meet some kind of external standard (eg. IQ scores, school achievement, middle class values and standards)

• Kinds of deficiences:Genetic potentialNutrition and physiological developmentFamily structure/supportStandard language formsExposure to stimulation, problem-solvingSchoolingSocial disruption

Focus on performance and content rather than competence and process

Theories about Deficiencies

Amounts and types of mothering

Types of play

The Culture of Poverty (Oscar Lewis)

Blaming the victims

Perpetuating powerlessness and dependence by making outside standards the goal

Deficiency Interventions

What do you do about deficiencies?The missing things must be provided from outside

the group.Programs to correct deficiencies

Head Start ProgramsSchool nutrition programsSocial service programsSchool programs

Attempt to get children middle class experiences so that they will not be “deficient” in those areas

Homogenizing diversity

Deficiency Interventions

In the U.S.:25% of Children below the poverty line25-30% of children in single parent

households below the poverty linePrograms that last 2-3 years are less

effective in long term change than those lasting 6-7 years

Most effective are strong educational emphasis, trained teachers, low student-teacher ratio.

Differences

Differences do not imply better or worseDifferent experiences result in different kinds of

abilitiesPerceptual experiencesKinesthetic experiencesMagical beliefsLinguistic/Conceptual experiences

EGs. 1. Hawaiian children learn better in groups 2. Black English is a full language with its

own grammar

Traditional Ethnotheories about Intelligence

Cross Cultural Studies point to two kinds of intelligence1. Technical intelligence

Performance on individualized tasks2. Social intelligence

Ability to get along with othersKinds of contributions that are made to

the groupSense of responsibility and self-motivated

social contributionsInformation learned at school is only intelligent if it

is practically useful in a group setting

Culture-Specific Definitions of Intelligence

Lakkal, West AfricaGiven by God at birthShows itself at 7 or when can count to 10Understands many thingsHas a good memoryIs obedientDoes what is expectedDisplays respect for elders

Obugeze, West AfricaWisdomSocial SkillsSlownessStabilityCautiousnessFriendlieness

Swiss Alps (Traditional Rural)Same as above but add modesty