Intelligence Do Now Snowball: How intelligent are you? How do you know? Intelligence -Ability to learn, remember, comprehend, and manipulate information -Galton (late 1800s) -Intelligence -Is quantifiable -Is normally distributed -Has a genetic component Binet and Simon (early 1900s) Purpose: Identify dull children who would benefit from alternative teaching Method: From large pool of questions, identified those which best discriminated by age Calculated mental age (MA) For example, pass all 5-year questions, no 6- year ones, MA=5 If pass all 5-year and half of 6-year ones, MA = 5.5 Stanford-Binet (Terman, 1916) Extension of Binet & Simon measure Intelligence Quotient (IQ): MA/CA*100 So...if MA of 4, CA of 5, IQ = 4/5*100=80 Current version has four scales verbal reasoning quantitative reasoning abstract/visual reasoning short-term memory IQ is normally distributed Wechsler scales Why developed? Original Stanford-Binet items leaned too heavily on verbal skills, even on other scales, so biased against reading/hearing disordered and English as second language Current ones are WAIS-R (for adults), WISC- III (for 6-17), and WPPSI-R (for 4-6.5) Verbal and Performance subscales Each subscale has 6 smaller subtests Sample WAIS Items Information: a series of questions designed to tap general knowledge about common events, objects, places, and people. How many wings does a bird have? How many nickels make a dime? What is steam made of? Who wrote Tom Sawyer? What is pepper? Comprehension: questions designed to measure practical knowledge and understanding of social rules and concepts. What should you do if you see someone forget his book when he leaves a restaurant? What is the advantage of keeping money in a bank? Why is copper often used in electrical wires? Sample WAIS items Arithmetic: requires solving a series of arithmetic problems. The examinee must solve the problems mentally, without the use of pencil or paper, and respond orally within a time limit. The test measures elementary knowledge of arithmetic. Sam had three pieces of candy and Joe gave him four more. How many pieces of candy did Sam have altogether? Three women divided 18 golf balls equally among themselves. How many golf balls did each person receive? If two buttons cost 15 cents, what will be the cost of a dozen buttons? Similarities: presents two words that represent common objects or concepts. The examinee is asked to state how the objects or concepts are similar. The task is designed to measure logical or abstract thinking and the ability to categorize and generalize. In what way are a lion and a tiger alike? In what way are a saw and a hammer alike? In what way are an hour and a week alike? In what way are a circle and a triangle alike? Sample WAIS items Vocabulary: the examinee is asked to orally define words covering a wide range of difficulty. The test is designed to measure knowledge of words, which correlates with general mental ability. What does retain mean? What does robust mean? What does sojourn mean? What does harass mean? 5. What does desultory mean? What does inclement mean? Digit Span: the examinee to repeat strings of numbers that the examiner reads aloud, either in the same order as spoken or in reverse. The test is designed to measure attention span and working memory, which holds information in storage temporarily. Digits forward Correct response Digits backward Correct response Two general rules regarding stability Stability increases with age 3-year intervals at various ages: 2yr-5yrr = yr-8yrr = yr-12yrr = yr-15yrr = 0.8/0.9 18yr-21yrr > 0.9 Measurements closer in age are more similar than those farther apart in age Varied intervals: 4yr-5yrr = yr-6yr r = yr-18yrr = 0.42 Validity of I.Q. School performance Correlations typically around.50 Occupational success and psychological adjustment - were more often in leadership roles - physically healthy - majority went to college, grad school - low incidence of maladjustment Spearmans Definition for Intelligence G and S g factor: Concept: all intelligence tests positively correlate A general ability, proposed by Spearman as the main factor underlying all intelligent mental activity s factor: A specific ability that pertained to a particular mental activity Blue: sOrange: g Cattells Definition for Intelligence Fluid (innate abilities that make people flexible and adaptive thinkers and that underlie the acquisition of knowledge and experience) processing speed, s-t memory, etc. Crystallized (knowledge acquired through life experience and education; culturally influenced) verbal comprehension, arithmetic, etc. Gardner's 8 intelligences 1) movement 2) spatial 3) musical 4) verbal 5) logical-mathematical 6) insight regarding self 7) insight regarding others 8) naturalist Gardner's criteria for an "intelligence" 1) must be definable 2) must be experimental evidence 3) must be a developmental course 4) must have evolutionary history 5) may be isolated by brain damage 6) exceptional talents exist IQ is Partially Rooted in Heredity IQ Develops within an Environment Race and IQ According to the controversial book, The Bell Curve, there are genetic differences in intelligence between white and black people. This claim is not supported by the evidence Sample: Black children adopted by middle-class white parents I.V.: Two conditions: One group of children born to 2 black parents One group of children born to 1 black, 1 white parent D.V. Stanford-Binet IQ Scores Results: No significant differences between groups (both black group slightly higher) Also, average I.Q. of both groups was about 15 points above national African-American average Race and IQ -Developmental evidence shows that differences are related to the environment, not heredity -Gap between blacks and whites increases (so blacks fall further behind) over years of school (greater differences in 12th grade than 6th grade), but not after this -Stereotype threat. -African American students do worse on a test if it is labeled as an intelligence test than if not. Gender and IQ Women often feel a stereotype threat concerning performance in mathematics D.V.: Scores on advanced math GRE items I.V.s: Sex Condition: Told that test generally results in either clear gender differences or no gender differences Stereotype Threat: Gender and IQ Presence of males induces stereotype threat for females regarding math D.V.s: Performance on math and verbal items from SAT I.V.: Three-person groups of either 3 female subjects or 1 female and 2 male confederates Other results from study support Steeles contention that it is anxiety over disproving the stereotype that leads to distraction and poor cognitive interference - finds that women attempt more problems, but succeed on fewer (suggests anxiety) - post-test anxiety levels (but not pre-test expectancies) significantly correlated with performance Stereotypes and IQ Disidentification If stereotype threat is consistent (and consistently impairs performance), individual will dis-identify their self-concept from that domain (no longer consider that skill valuable for them) Combating Stereotype threats When Asian women took math exams, they did worse if the instructions emphasized their gender (which would activate its corresponding stereotypes) and better if it talked about race. The presence of role models tends to decrease Stereotype Threat, as does having a critical mass of people who share the same background or traits. The Question of Validity: Flynn Effect