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Theories of Intelligence Explained

The document discusses theories of intelligence that have evolved over time. It describes four influential paradigms: psychometrics, cognitive psychology, cognitivism/contextualism, and biological science. Early psychometric theories from Spearman and Thurstone viewed intelligence as consisting of general and specific factors. Later theorists like Vernon and Cattell argued intelligence has a hierarchical structure with a general factor at the top and more specific abilities below. Sternberg's triarchic theory views intelligence as having analytical, creative, and practical components that involve adapting to, changing, or selecting environments.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
58 views14 pages

Theories of Intelligence Explained

The document discusses theories of intelligence that have evolved over time. It describes four influential paradigms: psychometrics, cognitive psychology, cognitivism/contextualism, and biological science. Early psychometric theories from Spearman and Thurstone viewed intelligence as consisting of general and specific factors. Later theorists like Vernon and Cattell argued intelligence has a hierarchical structure with a general factor at the top and more specific abilities below. Sternberg's triarchic theory views intelligence as having analytical, creative, and practical components that involve adapting to, changing, or selecting environments.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

earn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts,

and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.

Much of the excitement among investigators in the field of intelligence derives from their
attempts to determine exactly what intelligence is. Different investigators have emphasized
different aspects of intelligence in their definitions. For example, in a 1921 symposium the
American psychologists Lewis M. Terman and Edward L. Thorndike differed over the
definition of intelligence, Terman stressing the ability to think abstractly and Thorndike
emphasizing learning and the ability to give good responses to questions. More recently,
however, psychologists have generally agreed that adaptation to the environment is the key
to understanding both what intelligence is and what it does. Such adaptation may occur in a
variety of settings: a student in school learns the material he needs to know in order to do
well in a course; a physician treating a patient with unfamiliar symptoms learns about the
underlying disease; or an artist reworks a painting to convey a more coherent impression.
For the most part, adaptation involves making a change in oneself in order to cope more
effectively with the environment, but it can also mean changing the environment or finding
an entirely new one.

Effective adaptation draws upon a number of cognitive processes, such as perception,


learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. The main emphasis in a definition of
intelligence, then, is that it is not a cognitive or mental process per se but rather a selective
combination of these processes that is purposively directed toward effective adaptation.
Thus, the physician who learns about a new disease adapts by perceiving material on the
disease in medical literature, learning what the material contains, remembering the crucial
aspects that are needed to treat the patient, and then utilizing reason to solve the problem
of applying the information to the needs of the patient. Intelligence, in total, has come to be
regarded not as a single ability but as an effective drawing together of many abilities. This
has not always been obvious to investigators of the subject, however; indeed, much of the
history of the field revolves around arguments regarding the nature and abilities that
constitute intelligence.

Theories of intelligence

Theories of intelligence, as is the case with most scientific theories, have evolved through a
succession of models. Four of the most influential paradigms have been psychological
measurement, also known as psychometrics; cognitive psychology, which concerns itself
with the processes by which the mind functions; cognitivism and contextualism, a combined
approach that studies the interaction between the environment and mental processes; and
biological science, which considers the neural bases of intelligence. What follows is a
discussion of developments within these four areas.

One of the earliest of the psychometric theories came from the British psychologist Charles
E. Spearman (1863–1945), who published his first major article on intelligence in 1904. He

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noticed what may seem obvious now—that people who did well on one mental-ability test
tended to do well on others, while people who performed poorly on one of them also
tended to perform poorly on others. To identify the underlying sources of these
performance differences, Spearman devised factor analysis, a statistical technique that
examines patterns of individual differences in test scores. He concluded that just two kinds
of factors underlie all individual differences in test scores. The first and more important
factor, which he labeled the “general factor,” or g, pervades performance on all tasks
requiring intelligence. In other words, regardless of the task, if it requires intelligence, it
requires g. The second factor is specifically related to each particular test. For example,
when someone takes a test of arithmetical reasoning, his performance on the test requires a
general factor that is common to all tests (g) and a specific factor that is related to whatever
mental operations are required for mathematical reasoning as distinct from other kinds of
thinking. But what, exactly, is g? After all, giving something a name is not the same as
understanding what it is. Spearman did not know exactly what the general factor was, but
he proposed in 1927 that it might be something like “mental energy.”

The American psychologist L.L. Thurstone disagreed with Spearman’s theory, arguing
instead that there were seven factors, which he identified as the “primary mental abilities.”
These seven abilities, according to Thurstone, were verbal comprehension (as involved in
the knowledge of vocabulary and in reading), verbal fluency (as involved in writing and in
producing words), number (as involved in solving fairly simple numerical computation and
arithmetical reasoning problems), spatial visualization (as involved in visualizing and
manipulating objects, such as fitting a set of suitcases into an automobile trunk), inductive
reasoning (as involved in completing a number series or in predicting the future on the basis
of past experience), memory (as involved in recalling people’s names or faces, and
perceptual speed (as involved in rapid proofreading to discover typographical errors in a
text).

Although the debate between Spearman and Thurstone has remained unresolved, other
psychologists—such as Canadian Philip E. Vernon and American Raymond B. Cattell—have
suggested that both were right in some respects. Vernon and Cattell viewed intellectual
abilities as hierarchical, with g, or general ability, located at the top of the hierarchy. But
below g are levels of gradually narrowing abilities, ending with the specific abilities
identified by Spearman. Cattell, for example, suggested in Abilities: Their Structure, Growth,
and Action (1971) that general ability can be subdivided into two further kinds, “fluid” and
“crystallized.” Fluid abilities are the reasoning and problem-solving abilities measured by
tests such as analogies, classifications, and series completions. Crystallized abilities, which
are thought to derive from fluid abilities, include vocabulary, general information, and
knowledge about specific fields. The American psychologist John L. Horn suggested that
crystallized abilities more or less increase over a person’s life span, whereas fluid abilities

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Sternberg’s Views on triarchic intelligence

Sternberg defines of intelligence as “Intelligent behavior involves adapting to your


environment, changing your environment, or selecting a better environment.”

If we look at his early work on reconceptualizing what intelligence is we can see that there is
a close link to that of Aristotle’s ancient premise that intelligence is composed of three
aspects theoretical, practical, and productive intelligence. In Sternberg’s view intelligence
revolves around the interchange of analytical, practical, and creative aspects of the mind. He
notes on many occasions that what most IQ tests measure is only the
componential/analytical component in intelligence.

He contends that what makes the difference in determining if one is smart depends on how
folks use and balance their mental aptitudes. Early on, in describing these aptitudes
Sternberg keyed in on our methods of mental self-government, as well as how we balance
and use them situational. Thus in his view measuring intelligence not only entails assessing
how much of a certain ability we each have, but also how we use and/or combine our
abilities to solve problems or adapt to certain environments. In contrast to others’
descriptions of intelligence, the governmental model leads to the assessment of how
intelligence is used, directed, or exploited. Two individuals of equal intelligence might use or
combine metacomponents quite differently. It then might be the recombination, use or
directed application of the metacomponents that could make one seem more intelligent or
more successful than the other in tackling certain tasks.

Metacomponent subtheories:

1. Analytical intelligence: Sternberg associated the componential sub theory with


analytical giftedness. This is one of three types of giftedness that Sternberg
recognizes. Analytical giftedness is influential in being able to take apart problems
and being able to see solutions not often seen. Unfortunately, individuals with only
this type are not as adept at creating unique ideas of their own. This form of
giftedness is the type that is tested most often. This is the traditional notion of
intelligence and includes:
● Abstract thinking & logical reasoning
● Verbal & mathematical skills

2. Creative intelligence: Sternberg’s 2nd stage of his theory is his experiential sub
theory. This stage deals mainly with how well a task is performed with regard to how
familiar it is. Sternberg splits the role of experience into two parts: novelty and
automation. A novel situation is one that you have never experienced before. People
that are adept at managing a novel situation can take the task and find new ways of
solving it that the majority of people would not notice. A process that has been
automated has been performed multiple times and can now be done with little or no

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extra thought. Once a process is automatized, it can be run in parallel with the same
or other processes. The problem with novelty and automation is that being skilled in
one component does not ensure that you are skilled in the other. This is creative
thinking which uses:

● Divergent thinking (generating new ideas)


● Ability to deal with novel situations

3. Practical intelligence: Sternberg’s third sub theory of intelligence, called practical or


contextual, “deals with the mental activity involved in attaining fit to context”.
Through the three processes of adaptation, shaping, and selection, individuals
create an ideal fit between themselves and their environment. This type of
intelligence is often referred to as "street smarts."
Adaptation occurs when one makes a change within oneself in order to better adjust
to one’s surroundings. For example, when the weather changes and temperatures
drop, people adapt by wearing extra layers of clothing to remain warm.

Shaping occurs when one changes their environment to better suit one’s needs. A
teacher may invoke the new rule of raising hands to speak to ensure that the lesson
is taught with least possible disruption.

The process of selection is undertaken when a completely new alternate


environment is found to replace the previous, unsatisfying environment to meet the
individual’s goal. For instance, immigrants leave their lives in their homeland
countries where they endure economic and social hardships and go to other
countries in search of a better and less strained life.
It embraces:

● Ability to apply knowledge to the real world


● Ability to shape one’s environment; choose an environment

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence

Harvard professor Howard Gardner has identified eight different types of intelligences that
each individual has the capacity to possess. The idea of multiple intelligences is important
because it allows for educators to identify differing strengths and weaknesses in students
and also contradicts the idea that intelligence can be measured through IQ. In researching
about genius, we found that Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences provides a
great alternative to the popular measurable IQ method. The theory of multiple intelligences
is a theory of intelligence that differentiates it into specific (primarily sensory) "modalities",
rather than seeing intelligence as dominated by a single general ability. This model was

4
proposed by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple
Intelligences. Gardner articulated eight criteria for a behaviour to be considered
intelligence. These were that the intelligences showed: potential for brain isolation by brain
damage, place in evolutionary history, presence of core operations, susceptibility to
encoding (symbolic expression), a distinct developmental progression, the existence of
savants, prodigies and other exceptional people, and support from experimental psychology
and psychometric findings.

Summaries of eight intelligences:

● Visual/Spatial - Involves visual perception of the environment, the ability to create


and manipulate mental images, and the orientation of the body in space.
● Verbal/Linguistic - Involves reading, writing, speaking, and conversing in one's own
or foreign languages.
● Logical/Mathematical - Involves number and computing skills, recognizing patterns
and relationships, timeliness and order, and the ability to solve different kinds of
problems through logic.
● Bodily/Kinaesthetic - Involves physical coordination and dexterity, using fine and
gross motor skills, and expressing oneself or learning through physical activities.
● Musical - Involves understanding and expressing oneself through music and rhythmic
movements or dance, or composing, playing, or conducting music.
● Interpersonal - Involves understanding how to communicate with and understand
other people and how to work collaboratively.
● Intrapersonal - Involves understanding one's inner world of emotions and thoughts,
and growing in the ability to control them and work with them consciously.
● Naturalist - Involves understanding the natural world of plants and animals, noticing
their characteristics, and categorizing them; it generally involves keen observation
and the ability to classify other things as well.
Howard Gardener refers …"Multiple intelligences is a psychological theory about the mind.
It's a critique of the notion that there's a single intelligence which we're born with, which
can't be changed, and which psychologists can measure. It's based on a lot of scientific
research in fields ranging from psychology to anthropology to biology. It's not based upon
based on test correlations, which most other intelligence theories are based on. The claim is
that there are at least eight different human intelligences. Most intelligence tests look at
language or logic or both - those are just two of the intelligences. The other six are musical,
spatial, bodily/kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. I make two claims.
The first claim is that all human beings have all of these intelligences. It's part of our species
definition. The second claim is that, both because of our genetics and our environment, no
two people have exactly the same profile of intelligences, not even identical twins, because
their experiences are different."

Guilford’s Theory

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Joy Paul Guilford (March 7, 1897 – November 26, 1987) was an American psychologist, one
of the leading American exponents of factor analysis in the assessment of personality. He is
well remembered for his psychometric studies of human intelligence and creativity. Guilford
was an early proponent of the idea that intelligence is not a unitary concept. Based on his
interest in individual differences, he explored the multidimensional aspects of the human
mind, describing the structure of the human intellect based on a number of different
abilities. His work emphasized that scores on intelligence tests cannot be taken as a
unidimensional ranking that some researchers have argued indicates the superiority of
some people, or groups of people, over others. In particular, Guilford showed that the most
creative people may score lower on a standard IQ test due to their approach to the
problems, which generates a larger number of possible solutions, some of which are
original. Guilford's work, thus, allows for greater appreciation of the diversity of human
thinking and abilities, without attributing different value to different people.

Divergent thinking

Guilford first proposed the concept of "divergent thinking" in the 1950s, when he noticed
that creative people tend to exhibit this type of thinking more than others. He thus
associated divergent thinking with creativity, appointing it several characteristics:

● fluency (the ability to produce great number of ideas or problem solutions in a short
period of time);
● flexibility (the ability to simultaneously propose a variety of approaches to a specific
problem);
● originality (the ability to produce new, original ideas);
● elaboration (the ability to systematize and organize the details of an idea in a head
and carry it out).
Guilford believed that standard intelligence tests do not favor divergent thinking, working
better for convergent thinkers:

“ordinary IQ scales assess only a limited number of . . . [one's abilities], usually those most
important for learning in school . . . [and one] may be high in some, medium in others, and
low in still others.”

During his tenure at the University of Southern California, Guilford devised several tests to
measure the intellectual ability of creative people. Many of his divergent thinking tests have
been adapted for use in schools and other educational settings to measure the ability of
gifted students in placing them in special programs.

Structure of the intellect

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Building upon the views of L. L. Thurstone, Guilford rejected Charles Spearman's view that
intelligence could be characterized by a single numerical parameter ("general intelligence
factor" or g). He argued that intelligence consists of numerous intellectual abilities. He first
proposed a model with 120, then 150, and finally 180 independently operating factors in
intelligence.

Guilford proposed a three-dimensional cubical model to explain his theory of the structure
of the intellect. According to this theory, an individual's performance on an intelligence test
can be traced back to the underlying mental abilities, or "factors" of intelligence. These
factors (abilities) were then organized along three dimensions: operations, content, and
products.

The Operation Dimension

This consists of five (later six when memory was separated into recording and retention)
kinds of operations or general intellectual processes:

Cognition - The ability to understand, comprehend, discover, and become aware.

Memory - The ability to encode information and recall information. Later divided into

Memory Recording - The ability to encode information.

Memory Retention - The ability to recall information.

Divergent Production - The process of generating multiple solutions to a problem

Convergent Production - The process of deducing a single solution to a problem.

Evaluation - The process of judging whether an answer is accurate, consistent, or valid.

Cognition—The ability to understand, comprehend, discover, and become aware of


information.

The Content Dimension

This dimension includes the broad areas of information in which operations are applied. It
was divided into four categories, later five when auditory and visual were separated:

Figural - Information that is non-verbal or pictorial. Later divided into

Auditory - Information perceived through hearing.

Visual - Information perceived through seeing.

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Symbolic - Information perceived as symbols or signs that have no meaning by themselves;
for example, Arabic numerals or the letters of an alphabet.

Semantic - Information perceived in words or sentences, whether oral, written, or silently in


one's mind.

Behavioral - Information perceived as acts of an individual or individuals.

The Product Dimension

As the name suggests, this dimension contains results of applying particular operations to
specific contents. There are six kinds of products, they are:

● Unit - Represents a single item of information.


● Class - A set of items that share some attributes.
● Relation - Represents a connection between items or variables; may be linked as
opposites or in associations, sequences, or analogies.
● System - An organization of items or networks with interacting parts.
● Transformation - Changes perspectives, conversions, or mutations to knowledge;
such as reversing the order of letters in a word.
● Implication - Predictions, inferences, consequences, or anticipations of knowledge.
Therefore, according to Guilford there are 6 x 5 x 6 = 180 intellectual abilities or factors.
Each ability stands for a particular operation in a particular content area and results in a
specific product, such as Comprehension of Figural Units or Evaluation of Semantic
Implications.

Guilford's original model was composed of 120 components because he had not separated
Figural Content into separate Auditory and Visual contents, nor had he separated Memory
into Memory Recording and Memory Retention. When he separated Figural into Auditory
and Visual contents, his model increased to 5 x 5 x 6 = 150 categories. When Guilford
separated the Memory functions, his model finally increased to the final 180 factors
(Guilford 1980).

Legacy

Guilford was one of the first psychologists, together with L. L. Thurstone, who perceived
intelligence not as a unitary concept, which could be captured in a single score, but as a set
of possibly independent factors. Research from different fields, such as developmental
psychology, artificial intelligence, and neurology, shows that the mind consists of several
independent (albeit interdependent) modules or "intelligences."

Although his theory of intelligence factors has been superseded by more developed theories
of multiple intelligence (most notably by those of Robert Sternberg and Howard Gardner),

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Guilford left a significant mark on research into intelligence. Many tests that are still used in
modern intelligence testing were modified and developed under his guidance.

Cattell’s Fluid And Crystallised Intelligence

Intelligence was once thought of as a single concept, until psychologist Raymond Cattell
introduced the notions of fluid and crystallized intelligence in his research for the two types
of intelligences are governed by separate entities within the brain and serve different
functions.

What is Fluid Intelligence?

Abbreviated as Gf, fluid intelligence is one of the discrete factors of general intelligence,
according to psychologist Charles Spearman. It is defined as the innate and inherent learning
capacity of all individuals. Such acumen does not depend on one’s education, learning and
experience.

Also known as a person’s on-the-spot reasoning capability, fluid intelligence is the mind’s
information processing system. As an individual’s native mental ability, Gf pertains to one’s
capacity to think and reason out. It also governs memory capacity, attention and
information analysis. Fluid intelligence is overseen by the anterior cingulate cortex,
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and other regions that affect short-term memory and
attention. Activities that utilize fluid intelligence include learning, problem solving and
pattern recognition.

Similar to crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence peaks during childhood and


adolescence. However, it peaks during the late 20s and starts to decline. The decline in Gf is
attributed to the age-related degeneration of the right cerebellum.

Lack of practice is another factor that can lead to lower marks of Gf. Other researches point
to brain trauma and injury as additional causes for the deterioration of one’s fluid
intelligence. Reduction in fluid intelligence is commonly seen in people with Autism and
Asperger’s Syndrome, although they demonstrate better results in some aspects of Gf
measurement tests.

What is Crystallized Intelligence?

Tagged by Cattell as Gc, crystallized intelligence is expertise resulting from the lifelong
process of learning and skill accumulation. It covers capacities that a person has acquired
through knowledge and expertise.

To summarize, crystallized intelligence is a lifetime’s worth of information, amassed through


schooling and everyday activities. It is the things that you ‘know.’ It also covers the
application of such information and developed skills to problem solving.

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Because of these abilities, it is said that crystallized intelligence is governed by the
hippocampus, alongside other brain regions that affect the storage and utilization of long-
term memories.

Similar to fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence develops during the childhood and
adolescent years. Although stellar improvement is seen during periods, the peak age of
crystallized intelligence remains to be unknown. Compared to Gf, Gc continues to improve
until late adulthood. It is usually maintained throughout the years, until it starts to decline
by age 65.

While crystallized intelligence is a compendium of an individual’s lifelong learning process, it


can be modified and altered as well. Every new thing that a person learns can be added to
crystallized intelligence. To wit, a person can add, deduce or enhance the knowledge in his
or her head as deem fit.

Relationship of Both Intelligences

While both intelligences are dependent with each other, they are related in different ways.
Crystallized intelligence does not affect an individual’s fluid intelligence, however, an
enhanced Gf can alter one’s Gc. In fact, those with better Gf rates acquire more knowledge
at a faster rate. With these results, it follows that having a bigger capacity for learning can
have a positive impact on an individual learning ability.

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Spearman’s Two Factor Theory

Intelligence is defined as the ability to obtain and use knowledge in a productive way. For
thousands of years before Spearman, intellectuals and philosophers worked to understand
the concept. Although Spearman loved philosophy, like many others of his generation, he
wanted to do more than just talk. To accomplish this, he brought the scientific method to
intelligence testing.

For Spearman, understanding why some people grew up to be great thinkers and learners
and why other people struggled to grasp even the simplest thing had both practical and
philosophical implications. By observing and measuring intelligence in a systematic way,
Spearman believed, researchers would be able to define all the variables that influenced the
differing levels and types of intellectual ability people have. More importantly, research
would discover how these variables fit together.

Statistical Analysis and Tests of Mental Variables

When Spearman became involved, the psychological testing movement was already
underway. Many tests had been developed that looked at different types of intellectual
variables, such as math learning or reasoning skills. When psychologists attempted to
correlate the results of these tests to one another, they didn't have much luck. So while
Spearman believed that there was an underlying general factor of intelligence that should
predict what level of specific mental abilities individuals would show on tests, his colleagues
were not finding those relationships in their data. Spearman began to wonder if there was
something wrong with the methods his colleagues were using to determine whether
relationships existed or not.

At the time, a test called the Pearson Product Moment Correlation was one of the main
statistical techniques in use. The Pearson Correlation was named for its inventor, another
British academic, Karl Pearson. He based his technique on the concept of correlation first
proposed by the great British thinker, Francis Galton.

Galton was very interested in heredity, kinship, and the differences between people on a
variety of characteristics. His theory was that individual specific characteristics are related to
each other, and this 'co-relation' would be apparent in the way in which certain
characteristics either appeared with others, or changed with others.

Imagine that you are interested in the correlation of health and intelligence. If so, you might
ask, 'Does evidence of intellectual ability increase as overall health increases?' Or if you
were interested in the relationships of reason to emotion, you might ask, 'Are less
emotional people more logical?' By asking these types of questions, you signal that you

11
believe these aspects of human ability and/or behavior are linked and might vary together
in some lawful way.

The Pearson Correlation test was a step forward in the analysis of correlation. It was
designed to show whether one aspect of human ability was related to another by
mathematically plotting the results from one test against the results of another test. Before
Pearson's test was available, researchers checked the amount to which one set of results
was correlated to another set by using other types of less sensitive statistical analyses, or by
manually plotting individual scores from the two tests on a graph like the ones shown here.

To make this a little clearer, if the results from Test A plotted along the x-axis of a graph
clustered closely to results from Test B, plotted along the y-axis as the first graph shows, a
researcher could say that there was a strong correlation between the two sets of results.
Another way of looking at that relationship is to say that when there is a strong correlation
between two tests, you would expect that almost everybody who had a high score on Test A
also had a high score on Test B, and vice versa.

If the results from Test A were weakly correlated to the results from Test B, the researcher
would see a graph like the middle image. With that kind of graph, you might find that more
of your participants who got a high score on Test A also got a high score on Test B, but not
that many more. Finally, if Test A results and Test B results had no correlation to one
another whatsoever, plotting them on the graph would yield something like the third image,
in which the test results are all over the place and don't cluster together at all. In that case,
you wouldn't be able to make any prediction about what the scores would be on Test B just
by looking at the scores on Test A.

Graph of correlations

The genius of Pearson's Correlation test was that it allowed researchers to list the two sets
of results and then use a statistical formula to determine the level of correlation between
the results without having to sit down and plot each individual test result on a graph.

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Thurstone’s Factor Analysis

Louis Leon Thurstone (29 May 1887 – 30 September 1955) was a U.S. pioneer in the fields of
psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as
the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his contributions to factor analysis.

Factor analysis and work on intelligence

Thurstone was responsible for the standardized mean and standard deviation of IQ scores
used today, as opposed to the Intelligence Test system originally used by Alfred Binet. He is
also known for the development of the Thurstone scale.

Thurstone's work in factor analysis led him to formulate a model of intelligence center
around "Primary Mental Abilities" (PMAs), which were independent group factors of
intelligence that different individuals possessed in varying degrees. He opposed the notion
of a singular general intelligence that factored into the scores of all psychometric tests and
was expressed as a mental age. In 1935 Thurstone, together with EL Thorndike and JP
Guilford founded the journal Psychometrika and also the Psychometric Society, going on to
become the society's first President in 1936. Thurstone's contributions to methods of factor
analysis have proved invaluable in establishing and verifying later psychometric factor
structures, and has influenced the hierarchical models of intelligence in use in intelligence
tests such as WAIS and the modern Stanford-Binet IQ test.

The seven primary mental abilities in Thurstone's model were verbal comprehension, word
fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed and
reasoning.

Contributions to measurement

Despite his contributions to factor analysis, Thurstone (1959, p. 267) cautioned: "When a
problem is so involved that no rational formulation is available, then some quantification is
still possible by the coefficients of correlation of contingency and the like. But such statistical
procedures constitute an acknowledgement of failure to rationalize the problem and to
establish functions that underlie the data. We want to measure the separation between the
two opinions on the attitude continuum and we want to test the validity of the assumed
continuum by means of its internal consistency". Thurstone's approach to measurement
was termed the law of comparative judgment. He applied the approach in psychophysics,
and later to the measurement of psychological values. The so-called 'Law', which can be
regarded as a measurement model, involves subjects making a comparison between each of
a number of pairs of stimuli with respect to magnitude of a property, attribute, or attitude.
Methods based on the approach to measurement can be used to estimate such scale values.

Thurstone's Law of comparative judgment has important links to modern approaches to


social and psychological measurement. In particular, the approach bears a close conceptual

13
relation to the Rasch model (Andrich, 1978), although Thurstone typically employed the
normal distribution in applications of the Law of comparative judgment whereas the Rasch
model is a simple logistic function. Thurstone anticipated a key epistemological requirement
of measurement later articulated by Rasch, which is that relative scale locations must
'transcend' the group measured; i.e. scale locations must be invariant to (or independent of)
the particular group of persons instrumental to comparisons between the stimuli. Thurstone
(1929) also articulated what he referred to as the additivity criterion for scale differences, a
criterion which must be satisfied in order to obtain interval-level measurements.

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