• Intelligence

• Intelligence is seen as central to human life in the present day. How?

• Implicit theories of intelligence
• Implicit theories are folk theories, layperson, everyday ideas that surround a
particular topic area.
• Implicit theories of intelligence drive the way in which people perceive and evaluate
their own intelligence and that of others.
• They can give rise to more formal theories of intelligence that researchers can
investigate.
• They are useful when an investigator thinks existing explicit theories are wrong and
may provide useful avenues for research.
• They can elucidate theories around psychological constructs, such as the
development of intelligence and cross-cultural aspects of intelligence
• Sternberg and his colleagues investigated individuals’ perceptions of intelligence.
• They found three dimensions of intelligence:
• practical problem solving – the ability to be practical and logical with regard to the
problems we face in various situations and relationships; the ability to analyse
situations well and engage in a decision-making process that involves reasons, the
ability to think around a situation, creating viewpoints and possible solutuions
• verbal ability - the ability to express yourself and converse with others confidently
and with some eloquence; the ability to understand the correct meaning for a word,
be able to use language confidently, be able to show comprehension when reading
written text, be able to identify what a missing word in a sentence is and talk to
others in a way that others understand
• social competence - the skills necessary to be accepted and fulfilled socially; high
levels of knowledge, understanding, competency, motivation and confidence in
terms of themselves and others; high level of self-awareness, good interpersonal
skills and a good balance between independence and interdependence
• In Western cultures, there is an emphasis on the speed of mental processing and the
ability to gather, assimilate and sort information quickly and efficiently.
• In Eastern cultures these ideas extend to social, historical and spiritual aspects of
everyday interactions, knowledge and problem solving.
• In non-Western cultures the ability to show skills in problem solving, verbal ability
and social competence would not just extend to the individual, but rather to their
ability to solve a problem within the context of
• their family and friends(through seeking advice);
 • knowledge of history (knowing how wise people have approached this
problem in the past);
• own spiritual needs (What consequences does the actions around the
problem have for the human soul?)
• One way of comparing Eastern and Western conceptions of intelligence is to
compare implicit theories of intelligence in samples at the same time.
• Implicit theories of intelligence by countries around the world
• Similarities and differences between expert implicit theories of intelligence across
academic disciplines
• Psychologists who study intelligence have mainly disagreed about three questions.
1. Is intelligence singular, or does it consist of various more or less independent
intellectual faculties?
2. Is intelligence (or are intelligences) largely inherited?
3. Are intelligence tests biased?
• 1. Is intelligence singular, or does it consist of various more or less independent
intellectual faculties?
• The purists – a single overarching ‘g’, or general intelligence
• Charles Spearman introduced one of the most influential ideas in psychology: ’g’ or
general intelligence.
• His data indicated a trend towards positive correlations between intelligence tests (a
person who does well on one intelligence test will perform equally well on a variety
of intellectual tests, be they tests concerned with vocabulary, mathematical or spatial
abilities) – ‘positive manifold’.
• From this, a 2-factor theory of intelligence emerged.
• The first factor of intelligence is specific abilities, or ‘s’ – each type of intelligence
needed for performing well on each different intelligence task (vocabulary
intelligence is a specific ability, and so is mathematical intelligence and spatial
intelligence)
• The second factor is general intelligence, or ‘g’. ‘g’ is the intelligence required for
performance of intelligence tests of all types.
• A person’s ability in one specific ability test – e.g. mathematical ability – is not only
affected by one’s specific ability to perform mathematical tasks but also by that
person’s general intelligence.
• Distributions curves of intelligence scores
• The pluralists construe intelligence as composed of some, or even many, dissociable
components
• Thurnstone - ‘g’ results from seven primary mental abilities:
1. associative memory– ability for rote (learning through routine or repetition) memory;
2. numbers– ability to accurately carry out mathematical operations
3. perceptual speed– ability to perceive details, anomalies, similarities in visual stimuli;
4. reasoning– ability in inductive and deductive reasoning
5. space (spatial visualisations) – ability to mentally transform spatial figures;
6. verbal comprehension– ability in reading, comprehension, verbal analogies;
7. word fluency– ability to generate and use effectively a large number of words or
letters (i.e., in anagrams).
• Is intelligence (or are intelligences) largely inherited?
• Studies of identical twins reared apart provide surprisingly strong support for the
heritability of psychometric intelligence.
• The scores of the biological parents (even if the child has not had appreciable contact
with them) are more likely to prove relevant than the scores of the adoptive parents.
• The IQs of identical twins are more similar than the IQs of fraternal twins.
• The IQs of biologically related people grow closer in the later years of life.
• Still, because of the intricacies of behavioral genetics and the difficulties of
conducting valid experiments with human child-rearing, a few defend the proposition
that intelligence is largely environmental rather than heritable, and some believe
that we cannot answer the question at all.
• Are intelligence tests biased?
• Some class biases are obvious – who can readily answer a question about polo?
• Others are more subtle: What should you do with money you find on the street?
• Biases that are built into the test situation itself are even more difficult to deal with
(e.g., a person’s background affects his or her reaction to being placed in an
unfamiliar locale, being instructed by someone dressed in a certain way, and having a
printed test booklet thrust into his or her hands).
• The idea of multiple intelligences
• Sternberg found that a person’s ability to adapt to diverse contexts or to deal with
novel information can be differentiated from success with standard IQ-test problems
• The most important conclusions of investigations rethinking intelligence testing are:
 • (1) intelligence is not a single entity,
• (2) it does not result from a single factor, and
• (3) it cannot be measured simply via IQ tests
• Gardner (1993), the proponent of the concept of multiple intelligences began his
research by asking two questions:
1. How did the human mind and brain evolve over millions of years?
2. How can we account for the diversity of skills and capacities that are or have been
valued in different communities around the world?
• All human beings possess at least eight intelligences:
1. Linguistic
2. Logical–mathematical
(the two most prized in school and the ones central to success on standard intelligence tests)
1. Musical
2. Spatial
3. Bodily kinesthetic
4. Naturalistic
5. Interpersonal
6. Intrapersonal
• Two complementary claims about intelligence:
• 1. Universality – we all possess these eight intelligences
• 2. Individual differences – owing to the accidents of heredity, environment and their
interactions, no two of us exhibit the same intelligences in precisely the same
proportions. Our profiles of intelligence differ from one another.
• The nature of linguistic intelligence
• One of the central topics in cognitive science
• What kind of evidence do we have to postulate the existence of such a specific type
of intelligence?
• Do children learn language using a mental organ, some of whose principles of
organization are not shared with other cognitive systems such as perception, motor
control, and reasoning?
• Or is language acquisition just another problem to be solved by general intelligence;
in this case, the problem of how to communicate with other humans over the
auditory channel?
• Humans evolved brain circuitry designed for language mostly in the left hemisphere
surrounding the sylvian fissure (how exactly our internal wiring gives rise to rules of
language is unknown)
• Language development does not depend on fully functioning general intelligence
• Consider children with Spina Bifida, people with Williams Syndrome
• The input to language acquisition consists of sounds and situations; the output is a
grammar specifying, for that language, the order and arrangement of abstract
entities like nouns, verbs, subjects, phrase structures, control, and c-command.
• The child must discover these entities to learn the language.
• Innate knowledge of grammar in itself is not sufficient – children need some way of
finding them in parents’ speech. Once the child finds, for example, nouns and verbs,
any innate knowledge would immediately be helpful – the child can deduce all kinds
of implications about how they can be used.
• Languages do not vary arbitrarily and without limit; there is a large catalogue of
language universals.
• Many universal properties of language are not specific to language but are simply
reflections of universals of human experience.
• But others might be specific to the innate design of language itself (e.g. position of
inflectional and derivational sufixes).
• Universals, which are specifically linguistic, should be captured in a theory of
Universal Grammar.
• Assignment
• The class should be divided into as many as eight groups. To each group, assign one
of Gardner's eight multiple intelligences. (Additional groups could tackle Gardner's
proposed spiritual, existential, and moral intelligences.) In your group, brainstorm
typical language classroom activities or techniques that foster your type of
intelligence. Make a list of your activities and compare it with the other lists.