CHAPTER SEVEN Intelligence

The Big Bang Theory “Who’s Smarter, Sheldon or Leonard?”

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZUVqyrctI4

Describe an Intelligent Person

• Form a group consisting of 3 or 4 students.

• Imagine your group is looking for one more member who will give your group the best chance at winning an intelligence competition.

• Create a list of the characteristics you are looking for in your new member.

Intelligence Test: Build a bridge over the creek with the materials provided

Intelligence Test: Make a profit at the PCC flea market

Intelligence Test: Survive 3 days in the desert

Defining Intelligence Intelligence in Everyday Life

• Intelligence involves more than just a particular fixed set of characteristics.

• Laypersons and experts agree on three clusters of intelligence: – Problem-solving ability – Verbal ability – Social competence

Defining Intelligence A Life-Span View of Intelligence includes

four concepts: 1. Multidimensionality : There are many domains of intellectual abilities

Defining Intelligence

2. Multidirectionality : Abilities change over life span, but the pattern of change depends on each ability

Defining Intelligence

3. Plasticity : The ability to modify cognitive functioning and skills over time 4. Interindividual variability : Adults differ in the direction of their intellectual development

Research Approaches to Intelligence

• The psychometric approach – Measuring intelligence as a score on a standardized test • Focus is on getting correct answers .

• The cognitive-structural approach – Ways in which people conceptualize and solve problems emphasizing developmental changes in modes and styles of thinking

Psychometric Measurement of Intelligence

• Primary mental abilities - intellectual abilities and their interrelationships that are focused on in the psychometric approach: – Numerical facility—basic math skills and reasoning – Word fluency—production of verbal descriptions – Verbal Meanings—vocabulary – Inductive reasoning—extrapolating from facts to general concepts – Spatial orientation—ability to reason 3-dimensionally – Perceptual Speed—rapid visual processing – Verbal memory—ability to recall language

Age-Related Changes in Primary Abilities

• Data from Schaie’s Seattle Longitudinal Study of more than 5,000 individuals from 1956 to 1998 in six testing cycles: – People tend to improve on primary abilities until late 30s or early 40s.

– Scores stabilize until mid-50s and early 60s.

– By late 60s consistent declines are seen.

– Nearly everyone shows a decline in one ability, but few show decline on four or five abilities.

Secondary Mental Abilities

• Secondary Mental Abilities : broad-ranging skills composed of several primary abilities • Fluid Intelligence: Abilities that make you a flexible and adaptive thinker, to draw inferences, and relationships between concepts independent of knowledge and experience • Crystallized Intelligence: The knowledge acquired through life experience and education in a particular culture

Moderators of Intellectual Change

• Information processing – Perceptual speed may account for age-related decline.

– Working memory decline may account for poor performance of older adults if coordination between old and new information is required.

Moderators of Intellectual Change

• Social and lifestyle variables – Slower rates in intellectual decline are related to: • Gaining skills needed in different occupations • Higher education and socioeconomic status • A cognitively engaging lifestyle • Personality – High levels of fluid abilities and a high sense of internal control lead to positive changes in people’s perception of their abilities.

Moderators of Intellectual Change

• Health – A connection between disease and intelligence has been established in general and in cardiovascular disease in particular.

– The participants in the Seattle Longitudinal Study who declined in inductive reasoning had significantly more illness diagnoses and visits to physicians for cardiovascular disease.

– Hypertension is not as clear. Severe HT may indicate decline whereas mild HT may have positive effects on intellectual functioning.

Modifying primary abilities

• Project ADEPT and Project ACTIVE – Seven year follow-up to the original Project ADEPT showed significant training effects.

• 64% of trained group’s performance was above the pre training level compared to 33% of the control group.

– Project ACTIVE training slows declines and has reversed 14-year declines in some abilities

Piaget’s Theory: A Cognitive-Structural Approach

• Basic concepts – Assimilation • Use of currently available information to make sense out of incoming information (e.g. zebra=horse with stripes) – Accommodation • Changing one’s thoughts to make a better approximation of the world of experience (e.g. zebra=new category of animal)

Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor Period – Object permanence : objects exist even when they are out of sight

Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

• Preoperational Period – Egocentrism : the inability to view the world from another person’s perspective

Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

• Concrete Operations Period – Classification, conservation, mental reversing

Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

• Formal Operations Period – Abstract thought

Going Beyond Piaget

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Postformal Thought — thinking that is characterized by the recognition that:

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truth varies from situation to situation

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solutions must be realistic to be reasonable ambiguity and contradiction are the rule rather than the

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exception emotion and subjective factors usually play a role in thinking

Wisdom

• Involves practical knowledge • Is given altruistically • Involves psychological insights • Based on life experience • Implicit conceptions of wisdom are widely shared within a culture and include: – Exceptional level of functioning – A dynamic balance between intellect, emotion, and motivation – A high degree of personal and interpersonal competence – Good intentions