Child Development - Chapter 10.pdf - po ang - Januszek66

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CHAPTER 10

Intelligence

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?

Psychometric Approaches

Information-Processing Approaches

MEASURING INTELLIGENCE

A TYPICAL D EVELOPMENT : Exceptional Intelligence

Standardized Tests of Intelligence

Stability and Prediction

R ESEARCH A PPLIED TO E DUCATION : Interpreting IQ Test Scores

FACTORS RELATED TO INTELLIGENCE

Group Differences in IQ Scores

The Role of Early Experiences

E XAMINING R ESEARCH M ETHODS : Using Correlations to Test

Models of Causality

The Child’s Sociocultural Environment

CHAPTER RECAP

Summary of Developmental Themes

Summary of Topics

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Key Themes in Intelligence

Nature/Nurture What roles do nature and nur-

ture play in the development of intelligence?

Continuity/Discontinuity Is the development

of intelligence continuous or discontinuous?

■

Sociocultural Influence How does the socio-

cultural context influence the development of

intelligence?

Individual Differences How prominent are indi-

vidual differences in the development of intelligence?

■

Interaction Among Domains How does the

development of intelligence interact with develop-

ment in other domains?

■

Child’s Active Role How does the child play an

active role in the development of intelligence?

■

S on Van Nguyen stared intently at the school psychologist’s desk. Son was embar-

rassed to be stuck and especially embarrassed about the nature of the questions he

was having trouble with. After three years in America, this ten-year-old was proud of the

English he had learned. But he had been having serious problems with his reading and

just couldn’t stay focused on his work. The teacher had recommended to his parents that

he be tested, but he really didn’t understand what the test was for. He was relieved when

the school psychologist announced that the test was done.

At lunchtime he approached Manuela Gomez, whom he considered to be an “expert”

on American life because her family had lived in the States four years longer than his

family had. “What does inscription mean?” he asked her.

“Oh, that’s easy. It’s words you write or carve on something, like a tombstone.”

Son was impressed but suspicious. “How did you know that?”

“It’s the same as in Spanish: inscripción.”

Manuela was acting so superior that he almost didn’t want to confess his ignorance.

When he asked her another question from the test, she hooted with laughter. “Are you

ever dumb! Don’t you know anything? Everybody knows Christopher Columbus discov-

ered America. We all knew that back in Chihuahua before we even moved here.”

Son’s worst fears about himself had just been confirmed. Although the teacher and the

school psychologist had tried to explain to him about the test he was to take, he had not

really understood. Now he did. And at that moment the truth seemed all too plain to

Son: compared to Manuela, he was not intelligent.

P sychologists who have tested large numbers of children and adults on intelli-

gence tests have found noticeable differences in individual performance, such as

those that presumably existed between Son and his classmate. What do these differ-

ences mean? In contrast to cognitive psychologists, who are interested in identifying

common processes in children’s and adults’ thinking, some researchers focus on iden-

tifying and explaining individual differences in mental capabilities. Researchers look

for these differences in participants’ responses on tests of word meanings, general

knowledge, and visual-spatial performance and describe the results as a measure of

intelligence.

But what is intelligence? To the layperson, the term usually includes the abilities to

reason logically, speak fluently, solve problems, learn efficiently, and display an inter-

est in the world at large (Siegler & Richards, 1982; Sternberg et al., 1981). Most of us

probably have a sense that the abilities to profit from experience and adapt to the en-

vironment are also part of intelligent human functioning. We might even postulate

that intelligent behavior is defined by different kinds of skills at different ages, as did

the college-age participants in one study of popular notions of intelligence (see Table

10.1). Yet despite the average person’s ability to give what sounds like a reasonable

description of intelligent behavior, in the field of psychology the formal definition of

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Chapter 10

Intelligence

6-Month-Olds

2-Year-Olds

10-Year-Olds

Adults

Recognition of people

Verbal ability

Reasoning

and objects

Motor coordination

Learning ability

Learning ability; problem

Verbal ability

solving; reasoning

(all three tied)

Alertness

Awareness of people

Problem solving

and environment

Awareness of environment

Motor coordination

Learning ability

Verbalization

Curiosity

Creativity

Source: Adapted from Siegler & Richards, 1982

intelligence has proven surprisingly elusive. Although the concept has been the sub-

ject of research and theorizing for more than a century, no single definition has been

commonly agreed on, and no one measurement tool assesses intelligence to every-

one’s satisfaction.

Despite the lack of consensus on how to define and measure intelligence, we now

have many tests designed to measure it in children as well as adults. Most of the com-

monly used tests assess the kinds of thinking people do in academic settings as op-

posed to common sense or “practical intelligence” (Sternberg, 1995). These tests are

routinely used in schools, as well as in medical, mental health, and employment set-

tings, to make decisions about educational strategies, therapeutic interventions, or

job placements. Given this use of intelligence tests in many different contexts, it is

vital that we closely examine the concept of intelligence and how it is measured.

Our objective in this chapter is to present both historical and contemporary ideas

about intelligence—what it is, how we measure it, and the factors that influence it—

while keeping in mind that many of the long-standing controversies surrounding

this topic are still unresolved. Particularly contentious is the age-old debate over na-

ture versus nurture, that is, the degree to which intellectual ability is shaped by

heredity or by experience. Although virtually all modern-day researchers acknowl-

edge that genes and environment interact to produce intelligence, some experts place

greater emphasis on biological concepts of heritability, whereas others focus on how

intelligence is shaped by the particular context in which the individual grows up.

This controversy highlights the importance of applying sound scientific principles

and open-mindedness to a topic that has important implications for the ways indi-

viduals think about themselves and for social policy.

TABLE 10.1

Popular Notions of

Age-Specific Intelligence

This table shows the five most

important traits that charac-

terize intelligence at different

ages according to one survey

of college students.The stu-

dents identified perceptual

and motor abilities as most

important for infants.They

saw problem solving and rea-

soning as abilities that become

increasingly important later in

development.

What Is Intelligence?

A mong the many attempts to define intelligence, one prominent issue has been

and continues to be whether intelligence is a unitary phenomenon or whether

it consists of various separate skills and abilities. In the first view, an intelligent per-

son has a global ability to reason and acquire knowledge that manifests itself in all

sorts of ways, such as memorizing a long poem or solving a maze. Intelligence by this

definition is a general characteristic that shows up in the multiple and varied observ-

able behaviors and activities of any one person. In the second view, an intelligent per-

son may possess specific talents in some areas but not in others and so, for instance,

may be able to compose a sonata but unable to solve a verbal reasoning problem. The

various component skills of intelligence are seen as essentially independent, and each

individual may have areas of strength and weakness.

A second major issue has been the best way to conceptualize intelligence. Should it

be defined in terms of the products individuals generate, such as correct solutions to a

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What Is Intelligence?

series of mathematics problems or giving the precise definitions of words? Or should

it be defined in terms of the processes people use to solve problems, such as the ability

to integrate different pieces of information or to apply knowledge to new situations?

The earliest theories about intelligence came from the psychometric tradition, which

emphasized a product approach, quantifying individual differences in test scores to

establish a rank order of capabilities among the participants tested. More recently,

psychologists have put forth alternative ideas about the nature of intelligence based

on theories about the cognitive processes people employ to acquire knowledge.

Throughout this discussion, you should notice that few theories explicitly describe

the development of intelligence. Most models of intelligence are derived from data

gathered from adults and provide few suggestions about the way intelligence changes

from early childhood through adulthood. This state of affairs may surprise you given

the rich theories of cognitive development—those of Piaget and Vygotsky—that we

discussed in the chapters on cognition. The task of bringing our knowledge of the

development of thinking to explaining individual differences in intellectual perform-

ance remains to be accomplished.

Psychometric Approaches

The notion that human beings may differ from one another in certain skills origi-

nated in the late nineteenth century with the work of Sir Francis Galton. Galton

(1883) believed people differ in their ability to discriminate among varying physical

stimuli, such as auditory tones of different pitch, and in their speed of reaction to

sensory stimuli. Such differences, according to Galton, are largely innate. Expanding

on these ideas, James McKeen Cattell (1890) devised a series of psychophysical tests

that assessed a person’s ability to sense physical stimuli or perform different motor

actions. It was Cattell who coined the term mental test .Based on subsequent empiri-

cal studies, the idea that intelligence is functionally equivalent to psychophysical skill

was temporarily shelved, but the notion of testing individuals to compare their levels

of performance remained alive.

The first formal intelligence test was created in 1905 by Alfred Binet and

Théophilius Simon. Commissioned by the minister of public instruction in Paris to

devise an instrument that would identify children who could not profit from the reg-

ular curriculum in the public schools due to lower mental abilities, Binet and Simon

(1905) designed a test that assessed children’s ability to reason verbally, solve simple

problems, and think logically. With the Binet-Simon test, the mental testing move-

ment was born, and psychometrics became firmly entrenched as a model for under-

standing intelligence.

Psychometric models of intelligence are based on the testing of large groups of

individuals to quantify differences in abilities. The basic assumption is that some

people will perform better than others and that those who perform below some av-

erage or normative level are less intelligent, whereas those who perform above that

level are more intelligent. Within the general psychometric framework, however, the-

orists have taken contrasting positions on the exact nature of intelligence.

KEY THEME

Individual Differences

● Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory Charles Spearman (1904) believed that intel-

ligence consists of two parts: g, a general intelligence factor that he equated with

“mental energy,” and s ’s,specific knowledge and abilities such as verbal reasoning or

spatial problem solving that are evident only in certain tasks. According to Spear-

man, g is a central aspect of any task requiring cognitive activity and accounts for

commonalities in levels of performance that people typically demonstrate in various

kinds of intellectual tasks. Thus the influence of g might enable a person to obtain a

high score on a verbal test, as well as on a test of visual-spatial skill.

Spearman (1923, 1927) claimed to find high correlations among tests of various

mental abilities, concluding that they were caused by the presence of the single factor g .

Not all researchers agree that intelligence is a unitary phenomenon. However, this view

psychometric model Theo-

retical perspective that quantifies

individual differences in test

scores to establish a rank order

of abilities.

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Chapter 10

Intelligence

continues to be a part of many contemporary ideas about intelligence (Thorndike,

1994).

● Thurstone’s Primary Mental Abilities In contrast to Spearman, Louis Thur-

stone (1938) believed that intelligence is composed of several distinct fundamental

capabilities that are completely independent of one another. After analyzing the intel-

ligence test scores of many college students, Thurstone concluded that there was little

evidence for g .Instead, he proposed that the following seven primary mental abilities

are components of intelligence: visual comprehension, as measured by vocabulary and

reading comprehension tests; word fluency, the ability to generate a number of words

(for example, those beginning with b ) in a short period of time; number facility, the

ability to solve arithmetic problems; spatial visualization, the mental manipulation of

geometric forms or symbols; memory, the ability to recall lists of words, sentences, or

pictures; reasoning, the ability to solve analogies or other problems involving formal

relations; and perceptual speed, the ability to recognize symbols rapidly.

Subsequent studies found that the correlations among Thurstone’s seven skill ar-

eas were higher than he initially thought, but Thurstone continued to maintain that

any underlying general skill is secondary in importance to the separate skill areas

themselves (Thurstone, 1947). In Thurstone’s conception of intelligence, individuals

possess areas of strength and weakness rather than the global entity of intelligence.

● Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence According to Raymond Cattell and John

Horn,a distinction can be made between two types of intelligence, each with a unique

developmental course (Cattell, 1971; Horn, 1968; Horn & Cattell, 1967). Fluid intelli-

gence consists of biologically based mental abilities that are relatively free of cultural

influence, such as the ability to remember a list of words or to group abstract figures

together. Crystallized intelligence consists of skills one acquires as a result of living in

a specific culture, such as knowledge of vocabulary, reading comprehension, or gen-

eral information about the world. Cattell and Horn believed that fluid intelligence is

tied to physiological maturation and that it increases until adolescence, when it levels

off, and then declines in later adulthood. On the other hand, they hypothesized that

crystallized intelligence increases over much of the life span because individuals con-

tinually acquire knowledge from the cultural groups in which they live.

Researchers have found that fluid intelligence does eventually decline with age, es-

pecially after ages seventy to eighty. Crystallized intelligence increases through the mid-

dle adult years but also declines with aging, although on a somewhat slower trajectory

KEY THEME

Nature/Nurture

KEY THEME

Sociocultural Influence

According to Cattell and Horn,

crystallized intelligence consists

of skills that are acquired as

the result of living in a specific

culture.These Ugandan school-

girls, for example, are learning

to make baskets, a skill that is

not likely to be acquired by

children living in highly indus-

trialized countries.

fluid intelligence Biologically

based mental abilities that are rel-

atively uninfluenced by cultural

experiences.

crystallized intelligence

Mental skills derived from cultural

experience.

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