CHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER 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

• Postformal Thought—thinking that is characterized by the recognition that:– truth varies from situation to situation– solutions must be realistic to be reasonable– ambiguity and contradiction are the rule rather than the

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