Understanding Intelligence, IQ Testing & Different Types - Prof. Rebecca Ryan, Study notes of Psychology

Download Understanding Intelligence, IQ Testing & Different Types - Prof. Rebecca Ryan and more Study notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Chapter 9: Intelligence and IQ Testing  Karl Fredrick Gauss was the first to come up with the concept of the “bell curve.”  IQ: Intelligence Quotient- a systematic means of quantifying differences among people in their intelligence with the average around 100.  Child prodigy: an individual who displays astounding intellectual achievements at an early age. What is Intelligence? Definitional Confusion  Special Considerations in Interpreting Intelligence Research  Emotional reasoning or the affect heuristic: the tendency to judge the validity of an idea by our emotional reactions to it.  Edward Boring: Boring’s dictum- intelligence is whatever intelligence tests measures.  Intelligence as Sensory Capacity: Out of Sight, Out of Mind  Sir Francis Galton: radical hypothesis- intelligence is the by-product of sensory capacity.  Most knowledge first comes through the senses (vision and hearing). Therefore, people with superior sensory capacities should acquire more knowledge.  Intelligence as Abstract Thinking  Alfred Binet and Henri Simon developed the first intelligence test: a diagnostic tool designed to measure overall thinking ability.  Included:  Naming objects  Generating meanings of words  Drawing pictures from memory  Completing incomplete sentences  Determining the similarities between two objects  Constructing a sentence with three words  Higher mental processes:  Reasoning  Understanding  Judgment  Abstract thinking: the capacity to understand hypothetical concepts rather than concepts in the here-and-now  14 American experts compiled a list of what intelligence includes:  Ability to:  Reason abstractly  Learn to adapt to novel environmental circumstances  Acquire knowledge  Benefit from experience  American’s views of intelligence:  Capacity to reason well and reason quickly  Ability to amass large amounts of knowledge in a brief period of time  Non-Western views:  Reflecting people’s wisdom and judgment more than their intellectual brilliance  China: intelligence- those who perform actions for the greater good of the society and are humble  That Controversial Little Letter: g  Charles Spearman: g or general intelligence  A single common factor across all these aspects (verbal reasoning, spatial ability, vocabulary) that accounts for the overall differences in intellect among people  Implies that some people are just plain smarter than others  S or specific abilities: particular ability level in a narrow domain  How we perform on a given mental task depends not only on our general intelligence (g) but also on our particular skills (s).  Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence  Raymond Cattell and John Horn: distinguished between fluid and crystallized intelligence  Fluid intelligence: the capacity to learn new ways of solving problems  Crystallized intelligence: the accumulated knowledge of the world we acquire over time  Knowledge from newly learned tasks “flows” into our long-term memories, “crystallizing” into lasting knowledge.  Fluid abilities decline with age  Multiple Intelligences: Different Ways of Being Smart  Multiple intelligences: different domains of intellectual skill  Frames of Mind  Howard Gardner: there are multiple “frames of mind” (different ways of thinking about the world) and each frame of mind is a different and independent intelligence on its own.  Existential intelligence: the ability to grasp deep philosophical ideas  Gardner proposed eight different intelligences:  Linguistic: speak and write well  Logico-Mathematical: use logic and mathematical skills to solve problems  Spatial: think and reason about objects in 3D space  Musical: perform, understand, and enjoy music  Bodily-Kinesthetic: manipulate the body in sports, dance, or other physical endeavors  Interpersonal: understand and interact effectively with others  Intrapersonal: understand and possess insight into self  Naturalistic: recognize, identify, and understand animals, plants, and other living things  The Triarchic Model  Robert Sternberg: Triarchic model: positing 3 types of intelligence:  Analytical intelligence: the ability to reason logically (“book smarts”)  Closely related to g