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CHAPTER 8: INTELLIGENCE
What is intelligence?
The ability to solve problems and to adapt to and learn from life’s everyday experiences The ability to solve problems The capacity to adapt and learn from experiences Includes characteristics such as creativity and interpersonal skills 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
As you think about what intelligence is, you should ask the following questions: To what extent is intelligence genetic? To what extent is intelligence stable? How do cognitive abilities interact with other aspects of functioning? Are there true sex differences? Is intelligence a global capacity (similar to “good health”) or can it be differentiated into various dimensions (called “factors” or “aptitudes”)? Are there a number of “intelligences”?
How do you measure intelligence?
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) : Measure of intelligence that takes into account a child’s mental and chronological age
IQ Score = MA / CA x 100
Mental age (MA) : the typical intelligence level found for people at a given chronological age Chronological age (CA) : the actual age of the child taking the intelligence test
People whose mental age is equal to their chronological age will always have an IQ of 100. If the chronological age exceeds mental age – below-average intelligence (below 100). If the mental age exceed the chronological age – above-average intelligence (above 100).
The normal distribution: most of the population falls in the middle range of scores between 84 and 116.
- Very Superior Intelligence ( gifted ) - Above 130
- Superior Intelligence - 120 to 129
- High Average Intelligence - 110 to 119
- Average Intelligence - 90 to 109
- Low Average Intelligence - 80 to 89
- Borderline Intellectual Functioning - 71 to 79
- Mild Mental Retardation - 55 to 70
- Moderate Retardation - 40 to 54
- Severe Mental Retardation - 25 to 39
- Profound Mental Retardation - Below 25
Intelligence tests were developed for the practical function of selecting students for admission or placement in schools. Originally these tests were not based on any theory of intelligence. They defined intelligence as the ability to do well in school.
Stanford-Binet This test was developed to identify children who had serious intellectual difficulties -- such that they would not succeed in the public school system and who should not be placed in the same classes with other students. This test measured things that were necessary for school success such as understanding and using language, computational skills, memory, and the ability to follow instructions.
Individual responses in four content areas - Verbal reasoning Quantitative reasoning Abstract/visual reasoning Short-term memory
Wechsler Scales Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III): Used with people 17 and older Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III): Used with children 6 to 16
Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner) Gardner thinks there are eight types of intelligence. He believes each of us have all of the eight types of intelligence to varying degrees. These multiple intelligences are related to how an individual prefers to learn and process information.
Verbal skills: The ability to think in words and use language to express meaning o Sensitivity to the meanings and sounds of words, mastery of syntax, appreciation of the ways language can be used (authors, journalists, speakers, poets, teachers) Mathematical skills: The ability to carry out mathematical operations o Understanding of objects and symbols and of actions that be performed on them and of the relations between these actions, ability for abstraction, ability to identify problems and seek explanations (scientists, engineers, accountants) Spatial skills: The ability to think three-dimensionally o 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, sensitivity to tension, balance, and composition, ability to detect similar patterns (architects, artists, sailors, chess masters) Bodily-kinesthetic skills: The ability to manipulate objects and be physically adept o Use of one’s body in highly skilled ways for expressive or goal-directed purposes, capacity to handle objects skillfully (surgeons, craftspeople, dancers, athletes, actors)
Infant IQ Tests: Infant IQ tests are much less verbal than IQ tests for older children
Developmental Quotient (DQ): An overall developmental score that combines subscores on motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social domains in the Gesell assessment of infants
Bayley Scales of Infant Development: Scales that assess infant development – current version has three parts: a mental scale, a motor scale, and the infant behavior profile
Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence: A test that focuses on the infant’s ability to process information in such ways as encoding the attributes of objects, detecting similarities and differences between objects, forming mental representations, and retrieving these mental representations
The scores on the Gesell and Bayley tests DO NOT correlate highly with other IQ tests. The components of an infant IQ test are not the same as the components of other IQ tests. Unlike the other tests, the Fagan test is correlated with measures of IQ in older children (habituation and dishabituation in infancy predicts intelligence in childhood and adolescence - quicker habituation and greater amounts of looking in dishabituation reflect more efficient processing).
Intelligence through adolescence:
There is a strong relationship between IQ scores obtained at ages 6, 8, and 9 and IQ scores obtained at
There is still a strong relationship between IQ scores obtained in preadolescent years and those obtained at age 18. However, individual intelligence scores can fluctuate dramatically over childhood and adolescence
Intelligence in adulthood:
Intellectual Development (John Horn):
Crystallized intelligence: accumulated information and verbal skills, which increase with age
Fluid intelligence: the ability to reason abstractly, which steadily declines from middle adulthood
Cognitive mechanics versus Cognitive pragmatics (Paul Bates): Cognitive mechanics decline during aging whereas cognitive pragmatics do not.
Cognitive mechanic (hardware of the mind; speed and accuracy of processing; attention; visual and
motor memory; discrimination; comparison; categorization) have a biological/genetic foundation
Cognitive pragmatics (culture-based software; reading and writing skills; language comprehension;
educational qualifications; professional skills; knowledge of the self and coping skills) have an
experimental/cultural foundation
Factors Influencing Intelligence
The Child’s Influence: Genetics Genotype–Environment Interaction Gender o 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 o Girls as a group: Tend to be stronger in verbal fluency, in writing, in perceptual speed (starting as early as the toddler years) o 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)
The Immediate Environment’s Influence Family Environment School Environment o 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 o What about during summer break? During the academic year -- schools provide children of all backgrounds with the same stimulating intellectual environment. Over the summer, children from low-SES families are less likely to have the kinds of experiences that would maintain their academic achievement.
The Society’s Influence Poverty o 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 o 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 o Chronic inadequate diet can disrupt brain development Chronic or short-term inadequate diet at any point in life can impair immediate intellectual functioning o Reduced access to health service, poor parenting, and insufficient stimulation and emotional support can impair intellectual growth Race/Ethnicity o Overall, differences in IQ scores of children from different racial and ethnic groups describe children’s performance ONLY in the environments in which the children live. These findings do not indicate potential, nor do they tell us what these children would do if they live someplace else. The current group differences in IQ are due to environmental differences -- as discrimination and inequality decrease -- IQ differences decrease. 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
