PSYC 102

Introduction to Psychology II

Intelligence
 Learning outcomes
• How did the study of mental abilities begin?
• How have the psychometric and cognitive process
approaches contributed to our understanding of the
nature of intelligence and its effects on behaviour?
• How are individual differences in intelligence
measured?
• What are the standards of a good IQ measure?
• How do nature and nurture influence development
and changes in intelligence?
• Are there group differences in intelligence?
• How are extremes of intelligence manifested in
behaviour?
 Intelligence
 Intelligence: the ability to acquire
knowledge, to think and reason
effectively, and to deal adaptively with
the environment.
 Historical Perspective
 Sir Francis Galton: studied family trees and
hereditary genius
 Believed that some people had “inherited mental
constitutions” that made them more fit for
thinking
 Created an interest in the measurement of mental
abilities
 Historical Perspective
 Alfred Binet: commissioned by France’s
Ministry of Public Education to develop an
objective intelligence test in 1905
 Two assumptions:
 Mental abilities develop with age
 The rate at which people gain mental competence
is a characteristic of the person and is fairly
consistent over time
 Historical Perspective
 Mental Age: the age at which a child is
performing on mental tasks
 Intelligence Quotient (IQ): the ratio of mental age
to chronological age, multiplied by 100
IQ = (mental age/chronological age) x 100
 If CA = 6, MA = 6, then MA/CA x 100 = 100
 If CA = 6, MA = 3, then 50
 If CA = 2, MA = 3, then 150
 Average IQ = 100
 Current tests no longer use mental age
 Now based on person’s standing in a normative group
of the same age
 Historical Perspective
 Stanford-Binet: gold standard for measuring
intelligence in the 1920’s
 Based on Binet’s test; revised by Lewis Terman
 Contained mostly verbal items
 Early group-administered intelligence tests were
used by the Army for recruitment during World
War I
 Army Alpha
 Army Beta
 The Army Alpha was designed as a written test, while the Army Beta
was a pictorial test that was administered orally in cases where
recruits were unable to read.
 Historical Perspective
 David Wechsler challenged Stanford-Binet
intelligence test
 Felt it relied too much on verbal skills

 Wechsler created intelligence tests that

measure both verbal and nonverbal abilities
 Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and Wechsler
Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) are now the
most popular intelligence tests.
 The Nature of Intelligence
 Two major approaches:
 Psychometric Approach: measures or quantifies
cognitive abilities or factors that are thought to be
involved in intellectual performance; emphasizes
how well people perform on standardized tests.
 Cognitive Processes Approach: emphasizes
several kinds of intelligence and the strategies
people use to solve problems, not merely whether
they get the answer right.
 The Psychometric Approach
 The ‘g’ Factor
 Charles Spearman (1923) concluded that
intellectual performance is determined partly by a
general intelligence factor
 Also determined partly by whatever special abilities
might be required to perform a particular task

 ‘g’ constitutes the core of intelligence

 Important predictor of both academic and job
performance
Spearman’s two-factor
theory of intelligence.
 The Psychometric Approach
 Thurstone’s Primary Mental Abilities:
 Proposed that human mental performance
depends on seven distinct abilities
 The Psychometric Approach
 Cattell’s Crystallized and Fluid intelligences

 Crystallized Intelligence: the ability to apply

previously acquired knowledge to current
problems
 Examples: vocabulary tests, information tests
 Based on the ability to retrieve previously learned
information from long-term memory
 The Psychometric Approach
 Fluid Intelligence: the ability to deal with
novel problem-solving situations for which
personal experience does not provide a
solution
 Involves inductive reasoning and creativity
 Requires the abilities to reason abstractly, think
logically, and manage information in working
memory
 e.g. sudoku
 The Psychometric Approach
 Performance on crystallized intelligence tests
tends to improve during adulthood and
remain stable into late adulthood.

 Performance on fluid intelligence tests begins

to decline as people enter late adulthood.
 The Psychometric Approach
 Carroll’s Three-Stratum (Hierarchical) Model
of intelligence:
 Establishes three levels of mental skills arranged
in a hierarchical model
 General: g factor
 Broad: includes crystallized and fluid intelligence plus 6
other basic cognitive functions
 Narrow: nearly 70 specific skills
The Psychometric Approach
 The Cognitive Process Approach
I - Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence: addresses
both the psychological process involved in intelligent
behavior and the diverse forms that intelligence can
take.
He proposes three different classes of adaptive problem
solving:
Analytical Intelligence: the kinds of academically-oriented problem-
solving skills measured by traditional intelligence tests
Practical Intelligence: the skills needed to cope with everyday
demands and to manage oneself and other people effectively
Creative Intelligence: the mental skills needed to deal adaptively with
novel problems
 The Cognitive Process Approach
II - Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences: proposes
eight distinct varieties of adaptive abilities

 Linguistic: the ability to use language well

 Logical-Mathematical: the ability to reason
mathematically and logically
 Visuospatial: the ability to solve spatial problems
or to succeed in a field such as architecture
 The Cognitive Process Approach
 Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (cont.):
 Musical: the ability to perceive pitch and rhythm
and to understand and produce music
 Bodily-Kinesthetic: the ability to control body
movements and skillfully manipulate objects
 Interpersonal: the ability to understand and relate
well to others
 Intrapersonal: the ability to understand oneself
 Naturalistic: the ability to detect and understand
phenomena in the natural world
 Broader concepts
• Gardener’s theory has prompted researchers to
begin examining other nontraditional aspects of
intelligence

• The best known is emotional intelligence (EQ)

 Perceiving Emotions
 Using Emotions to Facilitate Thought
 Understanding Emotions
 Managing Emotions
 Measured with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)
 Current Measurement of
Intelligence
 E.g. Wechsler Tests:
 Series of subtests that fall into the two classes of
verbal and performance

 Test yields three summary scores:

 Verbal IQ
 Performance IQ
 Full-scale IQ (Verbal + Performance)

 Also offers various separate scores for a number of

specific skills
 The Measurement of Intelligence
• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-V, to
be completed soon)
• Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of
Intelligence (WPPSI – IV, 2012)
• Wechsler Intelligence Scale Children (WISC –
V, 2014)
 Psychometric Standards
 Psychological Test: a method for measuring
individual differences related to some
psychological concept, based on a sample of
relevant behavior in a scientifically designed
and controlled situation
 Key measurement concepts:
 Reliability
 Validity
 Standardization
 Psychometric Standards
 Reliability: consistency of measurement
 Test-Retest Reliability: consistency of
measurement over time
 Assessed by administering the measure to the
same group of participants on two or more
separate occasions and correlating the sets of
scores
 If the construct being measured is stable,
scores should be consistent over time
 Psychometric Standards
 Reliability:
 Internal Consistency: consistency of measurement
within the test itself
 All the items on a test should measure the same thing
 Items should correlate highly with each other

 Interjudge (interrater) Reliability: consistency of

measurement when different people observe the
same event or score the same test
 Psychometric Standards
 Validity: how well a test actually measures
what it is designed to measure
 Construct Validity: a test successfully measures
the psychological construct it is designed to
measure
 Assessed by looking at the relationship between test
scores and other behaviors that it should be related to
 Psychometric Standards
 Validity:
 Content Validity: whether the items on a test
measure all the knowledge or skills that are
assumed to underlie the construct of interest

 Criterion-Related Validity: the ability of test scores

to correlate with meaningful criterion measures
 Test should predict present or future outcomes that
are influenced by the construct being measured
 Psychometric Standards
 Standardization: involves the development of
norms and rigorously controlled testing
procedures
 Norms: test scores derived from a large sample
that represents particular age segments of the
population
 Provide a basis for interpreting individual scores
 Normal Distribution: a bell-shaped curve with
most scores clustering around the center of the
curve
Psychometric Standards
 Psychometric Standards
 The Flynn Effect: a “rising curve”
phenomenon, suggesting that much of the
world’s population is scoring progressively
higher on intelligence tests
 IQ increase of 28 points since 1910 in the U.S.;
similar effect in Great Britain
 May be due to nutrition, more complex learning
environments, or advances in technology
 Heredity and Environment
 Genetic factors can influence the effects
produced by the environment
 Accounts for 1/2 to 2/3 of the variation in IQ
 No single “intelligence gene”

 Environment can influence how genes express

themselves
 Accounts for 1/3 to 1/2 of the variation in IQ
 Both shared and unshared environmental factors are
involved
 Educational experiences are very important
Group Differences in Intelligence
 Arthur Jensen (1969) Harvard Educational Review
article
 suggested that white children were more intelligent
than black children, and Asian children were more
intelligent than either. He claimed that such
differences were largely due to genetic factors
 Hernstein & Murray (1994) “The Bell Curve”
 suggesting a difference of one standard deviation
between mean IQ scores of Blacks (mean = 85) and
Whites (mean = 100) in USA
 Group Differences in Intelligence
 APA investigation:
 Genetics
 Environment
 Test bias

 What factors underlie the racial differences?

 Shrinking IQ difference between African-American
and White Americans in the last 25 years
 Possibly due to environmental factors
 Better nutrition and educational opportunities
 Group Differences in Intelligence
 Gender differences in performance on certain
types of intellectual tasks, not general
intelligence
 Men generally outperform women on spatial
tasks, tests of target-directed skills, and
mathematical reasoning
 Women generally outperform men on tests of
perceptual speed, verbal fluency,
mathematical calculation, and precise manual
tasks
 Group Differences in Intelligence
 Gender differences are small but consistent
 Explanations:
 Socialization experiences
 Evolutionary sex role specialization
 Effects of sex hormones on brain development
 Beliefs about our own abilities
 Extremes of Intelligence
 The Intellectually Gifted:
 An IQ of 130 or higher places in the top 1% of the
population
 Many individuals are enormously talented in one
area but average in others
 Achieving eminence:
 Highly developed mental abilities specifically related to
one’s chosen field
 Ability to engage in creative problem solving
 Motivation and dedication
 Extremes of Intelligence
 Intellectual disability (mental retardation):
 Affects 3 to 5 percent of the U.S. population
 Four-level classification system based on IQ scores
 Mild
 Moderate
 Severe
 Profound
Extremes of Intelligence
 Lecture summary
 The historical development of intelligence
 The nature of intelligence
 The measurement of intelligence
 Heredity, environment and intelligence
 Group differences in intelligence
 Extremes of intelligence