9.1 Defining and Measuring Intelligence

Studies of creative people suggest at least five components that are likely to be important for creativity:

-Expertise. Creative people have carefully studied and know a lot about the topic that they are working in. Creativity comes with a lot of hard work -Imaginative thinking. Creative people often view a problem in a visual way, allowing them to see it from a new and different point of view. -Risk-taking. Creative people are willing to take on new but potentially risky approaches. Intrinsic interest. Creative people tend to work on projects because they love doing them, not because they are paid for them. In fact, research has found that people who are paid to be creative are often less creative than those who are not -Working in a creative environment. Creativity is in part a social phenomenon. Simonton (1992)found that most creative people were supported, aided, and challenged by other people working on similar projects.

The IQs of identical twins correlate very highly (r = .86), much higher than do the scores of fraternal twins who are less genetically similar (r = .60)

. And the correlations between the IQs of parents and their biological children (r = .42) are significantly greater than the correlation between parents and adopted children (r = .19). The role of genetics gets stronger as children get older. The intelligence of very young children (less than 3 years old) does not predict adult intelligence, but by age 7 it does, and IQ scores remain very stable in adulthood

brains of more intelligent people operate faster or more efficiently than the brains of the lessintelligent. Some evidence supporting this idea comes from data showing that people who are more intelligent frequently show less brain activity than those with lower intelligence when they work on a task.

And the brains of more intelligent people also seem to run faster than the brains of the less intelligent. Research has found that the speed with which people can perform simple tasks—such as determining which of two lines is longer or pressing, as quickly as possible, one of eight buttons that is lighted—is predictive of intelligence - Intelligence scores also correlate at about r = .5 with measures of working memory, and working memory is now used as a measure of intelligence on many tests.

Social and economic deprivation can adversely affect IQ.

Children from households in poverty have lower IQs than do children from households with more resources even when other factors such as education, race, and parenting are controlled. -Poverty may lead to diets that are undernourishing or lacking in appropriate vitamins, and poor children may also be more likely to be exposed to toxins such as lead in drinking water, dust, or paint chips (Bellinger & Needleman, 2003).Both of these factors can slow brain development and reduce intelligence.

Howard Gardner (1983, 1999)

Gardner argued that it would be evolutionarily functional for different people to have different talents and skills, and proposed that there are eight bits of intelligence that can be differentiated from each other --Gardner noted that some evidence for multiple intelligences comes from the abilities of autistic savants, people who score low on intelligence tests overall but who nevertheless may have exceptional skills in a given domain, such as math, music, art, or in being able to recite statistics in a given sport

A simple way to calculate IQ is by using the following formula:

IQ = mental age ÷ chronological age × 100.

There is at least some truth to the idea that smarter people have bigger brains.

Studies that have measured brain volume using neuroimaging techniques find that larger brain size is correlated with intelligence (McDaniel, 2005), and intelligence has also been found to be correlated with the number of neurons in the brain and with the thickness of the cortex -It is important to remember that these correlational findings do not mean that having more brain volume causes higher intelligence. It is possible that growing up in a stimulating environment that rewards thinking and learning may lead to greater brain growth, and it is also possible that a third variable, such as better nutrition, causes both brain volume and intelligence.

Intrapersonal

The ability to have insight into the self

Kinesthetic (body

The ability to move the body in sports, dance, or other physical activities

musical

The ability to perform and enjoy music

Naturalistic

The ability to recognize, identify, and understand animals, plants, and other living things

spatial

The ability to think and reason about objects in three dimensions

Interpersonal

The ability to understand and interact effectively with others

logico-mathematical

The ability to use logic and mathematical skills to solve problems

here is also evidence for the role of nurture, indicating that individuals are not born with fixed, unchangeable levels of intelligence.

Twins raised together in the same home have more similar IQs than do twins who are raised in different homes, and fraternal twins have more similar IQs than do nontwin siblings, which is likely due to the fact that they are treated more similarly than are siblings.

mental age

a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance

Specific Intelligence (s factor)

a measure of specific skills in narrow domains

convergent thinking

a type of critical thinking in which one evaluates existing possible solutions to a problem to choose the best one thinking that is directed toward finding the correct answer to a given problem

Sternberg (1985, 2003)

argued that traditional intelligence tests assess analytical intelligence, the ability to answer problems with a single right answer, but that they do not well assess creativity (the ability to adapt to new situations and create new ideas) or practicality (e.g., the ability to write good memos or to effectively delegate responsibility).

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) and Henri Simon (1872-1961)

began working in Paris to develop a measure that would differentiate students who were expected to be better learners from students who were expected to be slower learners. -The goal was to help teachers better educate these two groups of students. -Binet and Simon developed what most psychologists today regard as the first intelligence test, which consisted of a wide variety of questions that included the ability to name objects, define words, draw pictures, complete sentences, compare items, and construct sentences.

Binet and Simon (Binet, Simon, & Town, 1915; Siegler, 1992)

believed that the questions they asked their students, even though they were on the surface dissimilar, all assessed the basic abilities to understand, reason, and make judgments. -And it turned out that the correlations among these different types of measures were in fact all positive; students who got one item correct were more likely to also get other items correct, even though the questions themselves were very different.

The brain processes underlying intelligence are not completely understood, but current research has focused on four potential factors:

brain size, sensory ability, speed and efficiency of neural transmission, and working memory capacity.

Standardization

defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group Administering a test to a large number of people at different ages and computing the average score on the test at each age level.

Lewis Terman (1877-1956)

developed an American version of Binet's test that became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. --The Stanford-Binet is a measure of general intelligence made up of a wide variety of tasks including vocabulary, memory for pictures, naming of familiar objects, repeating sentences, and following commands

divergent thinking On the other hand, being creative often takes some of the basic abilities measured by g, including the abilities to learn from experience, to remember information, and to think abstractly (Bink & Marsh, 2000term-13).

expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different -the ability to generate many different ideas for or solutions to a single problem

Charles Spearman (1863-1945)

hypothesized that there must be a single underlying construct that all of these items measure. He called the construct that the different abilities and skills measured on intelligence tests have in common the general intelligence factor (g

Intelligence is

improved by education and may be hindered by environmental factors such as poverty.

Psychologists believe that there

is a construct that accounts for the overall differences in intelligence among people, known as general intelligence (g).

Intelligence

is the ability to think, to learn from experience, to solve problems, and to adapt to new situations. Intelligence is important because it has an impact on many human behaviors.

The fact that intelligence becomes more stable as we get older provides evidence that early environmental experiences matter more than later ones.

nvironmental factors also explain a greater proportion of the variance in intelligence for children from lower-class households than they do for children from upper-class households -upper-class households tend to provide a safe, nutritious, and supportive environment for children, whereas these factors are more variable in lower-class households.

Aptitude tests are specifically designed to

predict ability to learn a new skill -Most U.S. colleges and universities require students to take the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) or the American College Test (ACT), and postgraduate schools require the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), or the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). These tests are useful for selecting students because they predict success in the programs that they are designed for, particularly in the first year of the program

L. L. Thurstone (1938)

proposed that there were seven clusters of primary mental abilities, made up of word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, and memory. But even these dimensions tend to be at least somewhat correlated, showing again the importance of g.

Robert Sternberg. Sternberg has proposed a triarchic (three-part) theory of intelligence

proposes that people may display more or less analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence.

Good intelligence tests are

reliable, meaning that they are consistent over time, and also demonstrate construct validity, - meaning that they actually measure intelligence rather than something else.

The last aspect of the triarchic model, practical intelligence, refers primarily to intelligence that cannot be gained from books or formal learning. Practical intelligence represents a type of "street smarts" or "common sense" that is learned from life experiences

research has not found much evidence that practical intelligence is distinct from g or that it is predictive of success at any particular tasks (Gottfredson, 2003). Practical intelligence may include, at least in part, certain abilities that help people perform well at specific jobs, and these abilities may not always be highly correlated with general intelligence On the other hand, these abilities or skills are very specific to particular occupations and thus do not seem to represent the broader idea of intelligence.

Intelligence has both genetic and environmental causes, and these have been systematically studied through a large number of twin and adoption studies

studies have found that between 40% and 80% of the variability in IQ is due to genetics, meaning that overall genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals

linguistic

study of language The ability to speak and write well

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

the WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests -It consists of 15 different tasks, each designed to assess intelligence, including working memory, arithmetic ability, spatial ability, and general knowledge about the world -The WAIS-IV yields scores on four domains: verbal, perceptual, working memory, and processing speed. The reliability of the test is high (more than 0.95), and it shows substantial construct validity

emotional intelligence

the ability to perceive, express, understand and regulate emotions

interpersonal intelligence

the ability to read, empathize, and understand others

emotional intelligence

the ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to enhance reasoning -The ability to identify, assess, manage, and control one's emotions. refers to the ability to accurately identify, assess, and understand emotions, as well as to effectively control one's own emotions

crystallized intelligence

the ability to retain and use knowledge that was acquired through experience

fluid intelligence

the ability to see abstract relationships and draw logical inferences

cultural intelligence

the ability to understand and respond appropriately to different cultural contexts and situations

cognitive ability

the capacity to reason, remember, understand, solve problems, and make decisions

general inteliigance factor (g)

the construct that the different abilities and skills measured on intelligence tests have in common

emotion regulation

the use of cognitive and behavioral strategies to influence one's emotional experience

Personnel Selection

the use of structured tests to select people who are likely to perform well at given jobs

Flynn effect

the worldwide phenomenon that shows intelligence test performance has been increasing over the years - Although the increase varies somewhat from country to country, the average increase is about 3 IQ points every 10 years. - There are many explanations for the Flynn effect, including better nutrition, increased access to information, and more familiarity with multiple-choice tests. But whether people are actually getting smarter is debatable.

lthough intelligence is not located in a specific part of the brain, it is more prevalent in some brain areas than others.

these activated areas were primarily in the outer parts of the cortex, the area of the brain most involved in planning, executive control, and short-term memory.

Emotional intelligence refers

to the ability to identify, assess, manage, and control one's emotions. People who are better able to regulate their behaviors and emotions are also more successful in their personal and social encounters.