What is intelligence

1. What is
Intelligence?

2. Is it the ability to use reason and logic?
Is it the ability to write and speak clearly?
Is it limited to one’s performance in
school?
Is it behavior in social situations?
How about knowing when you’re wrong?
Not that simple, right?
There are many psychological theories
about intelligence that we will examine in
this module

3. How do we know intelligence
even exists?
Psychometricians specialize in measuring
psychological characteristics for intelligence
and personality. By using patterns of test
scores, they have found evidence for general
intelligence as well as for specific abilities

4. What is Intelligence?
Intelligence is an inferred process that
humans use to explain the different
degrees of adaptive success in people’s
behavior
‐ The mental abilities that enable one to adapt to,
shape, or select one’s environment
‐ The ability to judge, comprehend, and reason
‐ The ability to understand and deal with people,
objects, and symbols
‐ The ability to act purposefully, think rationally,
and deal effectively with the environment

5. Spearman’s Psychometric Approach
- Intelligence as a Single Trait
Psychometric Approach
‐ The measurement (metric) of individual
differences in behaviors and abilities
George Spearman reported findings supporting
the idea that performance on any test of mental
ability was based on a single general ability
factor that he termed “g”
Spearman also believed that performance on
any test of mental ability required the use of a
specific ability factor that he termed “s”

6. g
Logical
Mechanical
Arithmetical
Spatial
s
s s
s

7. Cattell’s View of Intelligence -
Intelligence as a Few Basic Abilities
Fluid Intelligence
‐ The ability to think on the spot and solve novel
problems
‐ The ability to perceive relationships
‐ The ability to gain new types of knowledge
Crystallized Intelligence
‐ Factual knowledge about the world
‐ The skills already learned and practiced
‐ Examples
‐ Arithmetic facts
‐ Knowledge of the meaning of words
‐ State capitals

8. Intelligence Tests and
Basic Abilities
Fluid intelligence on tests is measured by:
‐ The ability to assemble novel puzzles
‐ The ability to determine the next entry in a series of
numbers
‐ The ability to identify which one of four objects is
related to the others
Children who do well on one test of fluid
intelligence usually do well on other tests of fluid
intelligence
‐ They may no necessarily perform well on tests of
crystallized intelligence

10. What Do These Intelligences
Examine?
Linguistics - sensitivity to the meanings and
sounds of words, mastery of syntax,
appreciation of the ways language can be used
Logical-Mathematical - Understanding of
objects and symbols and of actions that be
performed on them and of the relations
between these actions, ability to identify
problems and seek explanations
Spatial - capacity to perceive the visual world
accurately, to perform transformations upon
perceptions and to re-create aspects of visual
experience in the absence of physical stimuli

11. Gardener’s Theory of Multiple
Intelligence
Gardener’s remaining 6 distinct
intelligences are unique to Gardner’s
theory:
‐ Musical
‐ Bodily-kinesthetic
‐ Interpersonal
‐ Intrapersonal
‐ Naturalistic
‐ Existential intelligence

12. What are these Intelligences?
Musical - Sensitivity to individual tones and phrases of music, an
understanding of ways to combine tones and phrases into larger
musical rhythms and structures, awareness of emotional aspects of
music
Bodily-Kinesthetic - Use of one’s body in highly skilled ways for
expressive or goal-directed purposes, capacity to handle objects
skillfully
Interpersonal - Ability to notice and make distinctions among the
moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions of other people
and potentially to act on this knowledge
Intrapersonal - access to one’s own feelings, ability to draw on one’s
emotions to guide and understand one’s behavior, recognition of
personal strengths and weaknesses
Naturalistic -- sensitivity and understanding of plants, animals, and
other aspects of nature
Existential - sensitivity to issues related to the meaning of life, death,
and other aspects of the human condition

13. How is Intelligence
Measured?

14. The first Intelligence test was
created by Binet and Simon
using simple tasks to distinguish
children who would do well in
school from those who wouldn’t
Binet and Simon used Mental age
to distinguish “bright” from “dull”
children

15. What is IQ?
Lewis Terman revised Simon and Binet’s
test and published a version known as
the Stanford-Binet Test in 1916.
Performance was described as an
intelligence quotient (IQ) which was imply
the ratio of mental age to chronological
age multiplied by 100:
‐ IQ=MA/CA x 100

17. Another test used frequently are
the Wechsler Intelligence Scale
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-
Third Edition (WISC-III)
‐ Used with children 6 to 16
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third
Edition (WAIS-III)
‐ Used with people 17 and older

18. WISC-III
Provides a profile of someone’s strengths and
weaknesses
Each test is made of 12 parts
‐ Each part begins with the simplest questions
and progresses to increasingly difficult ones
‐ Performance Scale (6 parts)
‐ Spatial and perceptual abilities
‐ Measures fluid intelligence
‐ Verbal Scale (6 parts)
‐ General knowledge of the world and skill in
using language
‐ Measures crystallized intelligence

19. Verbal IQ is based on:
‐ Information
‐ Measures a child's range of factual information
‐ Example: What day of the year is Independence Day?
‐ Similarities
‐ Measures a child's ability to categorize
‐ Example: In what way are wool and cotton alike?
‐ Arithmetic
‐ Measures the ability to solve computational math problems
‐ Example: If I buy 6 cents worth of candy and give the
clerk 25 cents, I would get _________ back in change?
‐ Vocabulary
‐ Measures the ability to define words
‐ Example: What does “telephone” mean?
‐ Comprehension
‐ Measures the ability to answer common sense questions
‐ Example: Why do people buy fire insurance?
‐ Digit Span
‐ Measures short-term auditory memory

20. Performance IQ is based on:
‐ Coding
‐ Copying marks from a code; visual rote learning
‐ Picture Completion
‐ Telling what's missing in various pictures
‐ Example: Children are shown a picture, such as a car with
no wheels, and are asked: What part of the picture is
missing?
‐ Picture Arrangement
‐ Arranging pictures to tell a story

21. ‐ Block Design
‐ Arranging multi-colored blocks to match printed design
‐ Example: Using the four blocks, make one just like this
‐ Object Assembly
‐ Putting puzzles together - measures nonverbal fluid
reasoning
‐ Example: If these pieces are put together correctly, they will
make something. Go ahead and put them together as quickly
as you can.

22. Factors that Influence
Intelligence

23. Factors Influencing Intelligence
The Child’s Influence
‐ Genetics
‐ Genotype–Environment Interaction
‐ Gender
The Immediate Environment’s Influence
‐ Family Environment
‐ School Environment
The Society’s Influence
‐ Poverty
‐ Race/Ethnicity

24. Gender
Boys and girls tend to be equivalent in most aspects of
intelligence
‐ The average IQ scores of boys and girls is virtually
identical
‐ The extremes (both low and high ends) are over-
represented by boys
Girls as a group:
‐ Tend to be stronger in verbal fluency, in writing, in
perceptual speed (starting as early as the toddler
years)
Boys as a group:
‐ Tend to be stronger in visual-spatial processing, in
science, and in mathematical problem solving
(starting as early as age 3)

25. Schooling
Attending school makes children smarter
‐ Children from families of low SES and those from
families of high SES make comparable gains in
school achievement during the school year
What about during summer break?
‐ Children from families of low SES have a drop in
achievement scores
‐ Children from families of high SES have
achievement scores that stay constant or rise
slightly

26. Poverty
The more years children spend in poverty, the
lower their IQs tend to be
‐ Children from lower- and working-class homes
average 10-15 points below their middle-class age
mates on IQ tests
In many countries, children from wealthier
homes score better on IQ test than children
from poorer homes
‐ The greater the gap in wealth in a country the
greater the difference in IQ scores

27. Poverty Continued…
Chronic inadequate diet can disrupt brain
development
‐ Chronic or short-term inadequate diet at any
point in life can impair immediate intellectual
functioning
Reduced access to health service, poor
parenting, and insufficient stimulation and
emotional support can impair intellectual
growth

28. Race and Ethnicity
The average IQ score of Euro-American
children is 10-15 points higher than that
of African-American children
The average IQ score of Latino and
American-Indian children fall somewhere
in between those of Euro-American and
African-American children
The average IQ score of Asian-American
children tend to be higher than any other
group in the US

29. Race and Ethnicity Continued…
American-Indian children:
‐ Better on the performance part than the verbal part
of an IQ test
Latino children:
‐ Better on the performance part than the verbal part
of an IQ test
Asian-American children:
‐ Better on the performance part than the verbal part
of an IQ test
African-American children:
‐ Better on the verbal part than the performance part
of an IQ test
Overall - differences in IQ scores of children from
different racial and ethnic groups describes children’s
performance ONLY in the environments in which the
children live

30. Culture-Fair Intelligence Tests
Raven’s Progressive Matrices
‐ A “culture-fair” or culture-reduced test that would
make minimal use of language and not ask for any
specific facts
‐ These matrices progress from easy to difficult items
-- measures abstract reasoning
Even on culture-fair tests, Euro-American and
African-American children still differ
‐ One reason - culture can influence a child’s
familiarity with the entire testing situation