Intelligence and

Psychological Testing

Who Is the Most Intelligent?

Serena Williams

• Age 22 won a record-setting three Grand Slam tennis titles in a row for an unheard-of 6 Grand Slams

• Won the 2003 Wimbledon title

• First woman tennis player to earn $4 million in a single year

Bill Gates• At age 48 he became

the richest man in the US- worth $61 billion

• He began writing computer programs in 8th grade

• Wrote one of the first operating systems to run a computer

• In his 20s he founded Microsoft

Kim Ung-Yong

• Scored a 210 IQ on the Stanford-Binet test and made the Guinness Book of World Records

• By age 3 he learned differential calculus

• By age 4 he could read & write 4 languages

• He received his Ph.D in physics at age 15 and then began work for NASA

Midori• Age 3 she began playing

the violin• She could memorize

and flawlessly perform long and complicated pieces of classical music

• By age 10 she was considered a musical prodigy and played with the NY Philharmonic Orchestra

So, who is more intelligence?

• It depends how you define intelligence

• Psychometrics- area of psych concerned with developing intelligence tests & other individual abilities (I.E- skills, beliefs, personality traits)

Psychological Tests

Mental Ability Tests Personality Tests

Intelligence Aptitude Achievement

Intelligence- measures general mental ability– Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory: g (general

intelligence) & s (specific mental abilities)

Aptitude- assess specific types of mental abilities (ex: numerical, abstract reasoning)

Achievement- knowledge of various subjects (ex: history, literature, psychology)

History of Intelligence Testing

• Galton’s Study of Hereditary Genius (late 1800s)• Alfred Binet (1904)- 1st intelligence test

– But NOT first IQ test– Mental Age

• Standford-Binet Test (1916)– Revised by Lewis Terman– New scoring based on “intelligent quotient” (IQ)

IQ = MENTAL AGE x 100 Chronological AGE

History of Intelligence Testing (cont.)

• David Wechsler’s WAIS (1939)– Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale– Less dependent on verbal ability (p. 240)– New scoring based on a normal distribution– Raw scores translated into deviation IQ scores

and then into percentile scores (p.241)– Extremes (Gifted & Retarded)- 2 SDs from

mean

Reliability-

• To determine reliability you must compute the correlation coefficient between the two sets of scores

• Most IQ test range into the .90s• From .7 to 1.0 are considered acceptable

reliability coefficients• Low motivation or high anxiety could drag

a person’s score down

consistency of a test (similar results upon repetition)

Validity- ability of the test to measure what it was designed to

• Are IQ tests valid?• They measure the kind of intelligence that’s

necessary to do well in academic work (abstract reasoning & verbal fluency)

• Positive correlations have been found between IQ scores and school grades (.5-.6)

• The IQ test cannot assess intelligence in a broader sense (practical problem solving, social competence, creativity, etc)

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Contexual

Experimental Componential

Contexual- behaviors considered intelligent by a given culture

Experimental- relationship between experience and intelligence

Componential- types of mental processes that intelligent thought depends on (practical, analytical, & creative)

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

• TAKE THE TEST!

Creativity & Intelligence

• RAT Test- based on the assumption that creative people see unusual relationships between items

• No correlation between creativity & intelligence

• Correlation between creativity & mental disorders

– General population: 15% has a mood disorder

– Writers & artists: 50%

– Composers: 45%

Hereditary v. Environment

• Twin & Adoption Studies (p.245)• Heritability Ratio• Cumulative Deprivation Hypothesis• Reaction Range (p.247)• Flynn Effect: James Flynn

– Average IQ scores in every industrialized country on the planet had been increasing steadily for decades.

– Despite concerns about the dumbing-down of society - the failing schools, the garbage on TV, the decline of reading - the overall population was getting smarter. Our brains are getting better at problem-solving.

Flynn Effect

• Intelligence test performance

has been rising

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

105

1910 1930 1950 1970 1990

Year

IQ scores

Cultural Differences in IQ

• Jensen’s Heritability Explanation & the controversial “Bell Curve”

• Stereotype Vulnerability

• Cultural Bias on IQ Tests (take the cultural bias test)

Ninety-five percent of all people fall within 30 points

of 100

Number of

scores

55 70 85 100 115 130 145 Wechsler intelligence score

Sixty-eight percentof people score within 15 points

above or below 100

Fluid v. Crystallized Intelligence

Fluid • Involves reasoning

ability, memory capacity, & speed of information processing

Crystallized• Ability to apply

acquired knowledge and skills to problem solving

Review Questions

1) When we check to see whether a test will yield the same results over time, we are assessing its

a. reliabilityb. validityc. normalityd. objectivitye. subjectivity

2) All of the following are components of ethical testing except:

A. validity

B. reliability

C. objectivity

D. Instinct

E. item analysis

3) One of Binet’s great ideas was that of mental age, which was defined as:

A. The average age at which people achieve a particular score on an intelligence test

B. An individual’s biological age plus the score he or she achieves on a mental test

C. An individual’s level of emotional maturity, as judged by the examiner

D. The vaiability in scores seen when an individual is tested repeatedly.

E. A means of measuring performance on a test against a specific learning goal.

4) You have tested a 12-year-old child and found that she has a mental age of 15. Using the original IQ formula, what is her IQ?:

A. 50

B. 75

C. 100

D. 115

E. 125

5) If intelligence is a normally distributed characteristic, then you would expect to find it

A. to be different abilities in different people

B. To be spread throughout the population, but with most people clustered near the middle of the range

C. To a significant degree only in people whose IQ scores are above 100

D. To be determined entirely by hereditary factors

E. To be determined entirely by environmental factors.