What is it? The Nature of Intelligence
    How it is measured or tested.
Origins of Contemporary testing
    Galton, McKeen Cattell & Binet
Uses and abuses
    Wartime, schools, & social engineering

Models of Intelligence
General Intelligence
    Spearman
Multiple Intelligences
    Gardner's modes or "frames of mind"
    Sternberg's triarchic theory
    Emotional Intelligence

The Great Debates Nature vs. Nurture
    Arguments for Nature
    Arguments for Nurture
Group & Racial Differences

Creativity & Intelligence
Cultural Variations

Other Species

How it is measured has an impact on what it is.
verbal, written, pictoral, behavioural, physiological? 

The use of standarised tests is most common where they are based upon the normal curve and past samples. 

Assessment of intelligence is most often done today using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). 
It provides an overall plus two sub scores-verbal and performance.

It demonstrates a correlation of r = .50 with later school grades and somewhat with job performance (see text).

Psychometrics - the measurement of mental abilities, traits, and processes.

Important aspects of the psychometric approach:

Standardization: A property of tests where there is a uniform procedure for giving and scoring, often with reference norms. (i.e., IQ tests)

Reliability - The amount of agreement between the scores that one person has on the same test taken twice (test-retest) or separation portions of a single test (split half).

Validity - the degree to which a test represents the categories that it is designed to measure.
Does it measure what it intends to measure?

Correlational Studies - examine how two or more variables or characteristics are regularly associated. where a correlation  is  a measure of the strength of the relationship of a collection of people's scores on two or more variables. Positive - Negative - No Correlation

This is often done in order to make a prediction  of some later performance or ability. (I.e., GRE scores and graduate school success).

Psychometric Approach also has made use of factor analysis, a statistical method for analyzing the inter-correlations among various measures or test scores.

Here - clusters of measures or test scores that are highly correlated are assumed to measure the same underlying trait, ability, or aptitude (factor).
 

Debate remains on whether or not there is one or many factors of intelligence.

General Intelligence

Spearman's (1904) 'g'
In this long running debate  Spearman considered that there is a "global intelligence" that underlies all mental abilities such as verbal , mathematical, spatial, musical, ...

g factor a general intellectual ability assumed by some theorists to underlie specific mental abilities and talents. (s-residual is left over). 
 

Louis Thurstone- one of the pioneers of factor analysis suggested that there may be as many as 56 types of intelligence that are built around 7 clusters (verbal fluency & comprehension, spatial abilities, perceptual speed, numerical ability, memory, and inductive reasoning).

Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1983, 1993) ( 7-later- 9)  domains of intelligence:

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory
1. Analytical / Componential intelligence - idea that intelligence involves the use of "mental components" within the process of answering or solving a problem.
 

2. Creative / Experiential intelligence deals with how one transfers skills to novel situations. (using insight, unique and novel solutions to situations
 

3. Practical / Contextual intelligence the ability to take in new contexts and adapt to the environment, E.g., wisdom, common sense, social competence,...

Successful intelligence makes use of all three of these types and is defined as "one’s ability to set and accomplish personally meaningful goals in one’s life, given one’s cultural context".  It also makes use of tacit knowledge.

Tacit Knowledge - Strategies for success (or knowledge of anything else) that are not explicitly taught but that instead must be inferred.

Tacit (practical) knowledge is procedural invovling how to manage oneself, how to manage tasks, and how to get along with others, based upon 'complex multi-condition rules' and is experience-based and action-oriented.

- This has shown improvement in writing, reading, test-taking ability, homework performance (Sternberg, et al., 1995). (better than IQ?)
 

Emotional Intelligence - refers to the ability to identify your own and other's emotions accurately, and to express your emotions clearly, and regulate emotions in yourself and others (Goleman, 1995).

EQ involves:
-pecption of emotions
-understanding emotions
-managing emotions
-using emotions

It is a form of "Social Intelligence" where people who are not be able to understand their own and others emotions may have challenges in school achievement (especially of boys) may feel anxious, confused or angry which inhibits their learning in school.

The Arguments for Nature
  (Bouchard & McGue, 1981):

twin studies - concordance rates (correlation between pairs)
identical reared together .86
similar to the same person taking a test twice.

identical reared apart .72

fraternal reared together .62 (same sex) .57 (opposite)
siblings reared together .47  

siblings reared apart .25

adopted siblings reared together .30

heritability estimates near .5

Longitudinal (Seattle) study (Schaie, 1983; 1993) of 5000 20-80 year olds found great stability from age 21 to 57, some small decline after 60.

Infant tests-age smile, turn head to noise show no relation to later IQ, but notice new stimulus does relate.

School age children's performance on academic achievement SAT predicts r=.86 with later GRE scores.
 

Adopted children become less similar to their adopted parents  once they become adults.

Yet, on average adopted children have IQs 10 - 20 points higher than their birth parents!

Faster neural speed- appears to have positive correlation.  Brain speed has been found to be stable over 11 year span.

Brain size and Grey matter (neural cell bodies) has also been shown to be associated with intelligence, and can be altered with experience (neural plasticity).

I.e. Einstein's was 15% larger than normals in parietal areas for math and spatial abilities.

Gene on chromosome #6 appears to be correlated with high intelligence. Genetic engineering of mice found "smarter" mice.

Gender differences in abilities and aptitudes?
Perhaps on verbal, spelling, object memory, touch & sensation, where females score better, whereas neither perform better on math computational-problem solving.

Males tend to perform better at spatial and spatial rotation and complex mathematical problems.
Due to hormones & development?  

Gender generally score same (more variation within than between), text suggests tend to men score more at higher and lower extremes. See also (Kimura, 1999).

Arguments for the Nurture side

- Plomin (1989) many environmental influences:
Poor prenatal care
Malnutrition
Exposure to toxins
Large Family Size
Stressful family circumstances

Each above risk factor reduced a child's IQ by four points! combining additively

Debate: Can Intelligence be changed?

Motivated Success and Intelligence
(1921) Terman ... Stanford project ....of most gifted found motivation was most important as many failed to achieve their potentials without it.

Assistance programmes today
Early intervention in orphanages  increases in  IQ .

Head Start programmes provide short term and possibly long term gains in IQ and practical abilities.

Best to start early and continue longer  with more intensive daily programme.  Direct educational experience, programme of maintenance and positive attitude & behaviours.

Schooling increases one's IQ during the school term with some decline following.

  Based upon reviews by James Flynn it has been found that the average  IQ rates have climbed in developing countries since 1920 !  Have people gotten that much smarter?  Why?  nutrition? education? genetics? Or does this leave us to think: "intelligence" is a questionable concept?

 The Mozart Effect

Group differences
"Racial" Differences, Nature or Nurture?
In the USA research has found that in the Chinese and Japanese children score considerably higher than American children (averages) (Eysenck, 1991; Jensen, 1992). Why? Genetics?

Or...

Beliefs about intelligence
- Americans believe you are born with it or not

Standards
- American parents had lower standards than these others,
Asians attend 30% more days of school.

Conflicts
- American students felt more conflict and stress over school < support (role models & sterotypes)

Values
- Americans did not value education as much as Asians

Cultural constructions of self and world:
ie. Similarities: Which does not fit: Bird, Sky, Cat; Dog, Carrot, Rabbit.
Asians tend to be more holistic and Euro-Americans more analytical.

Most contemporary Intelligence tests do not inquire about how one answers.

No significance for Genetics
"Black" and "White" Americans fathering children raised in Germany - no differences in average IQ
-Black and white infants score equally on preference for novel stimuli and later IQ scores

Questions of Cultural Bias -Afro-Americans score on average 15 points less than others, need to have knowledge of the dominant culture. Culture "fair" tests were developed to avoid such biases with classifying objects, patterns on blocks , the Chitlin Test

Culture Free and Culture-Fair Tests

1970s brought about greater awareness for the cultural biases and assumptions for certain tests.

"Culture free" tests were attempted but it was found that this was an impossible goal.

Instead, "Culture-fair" tests were designed to incorporate knowledge and skills common to many cultures.

This too was not fully successful, as white "middle class" ways of sorting categories and ideas did not match with other views. Some replied, e.g., the chitlin test

Performance may be affect by numerous things, diet, mood, state of health, exposure to books, ....

David Myers cites Sternberg:
Why do Intelligent People Fail?

Ultimately Intelligence is an Interaction of nature and nurture like the soil-reaction range