Child Psychology: Chapter 8/Intelligence and Academic Achievement – Flashcards
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- French minister wanted to pick out kids that weren't learning well in new public schools - Asked Binet to make an objective test - Interpret proverbs, solve puzzles, define words, sequence cartoon panels so that jokes make sense - Successful at identifying children who had difficulty learning in a classroom and later school grades too - 1st intelligence test
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Binet Simon intelligence test
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Prevailing view: intelligence is based on simple skills (associating objects and sounds, respond quickly to stimuli, etc.); learn more quickly if good at simple skills - Binet: high level abilities (problem solving, reasoning, judgment) should be tested
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How did Binet's theory about the key components of intelligence differ from the prevailing view?
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- Emphasis on how and why of individual differences in intelligence rather than age related changes in intelligence - Established goal of intelligence testing
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Binet's importance
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It can be described at three levels of analysis: as one thing, as a few things, as many things
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Why is intelligence hard to define?
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- Single trait that influences all aspects of cognitive functioning - Evidence: performance on all intellectual tasks is positively correlated
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Intelligence as a single trait
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General intelligence - Each of possess a certain amount of g - influences our ability to think and learn on all intellectual tasks
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g
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- Overall scores on intelligence tests correlate positively with school grades and achievement test performance - Correlates with information processing speed, speed of neural transmission, and brain volume - Correlate's with people's knowledge of subjects not taught in school
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Usefulness of g
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Fluid vs. crystallized intelligence
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Intelligence as a few basic abilities
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Involves the ability to think on the spot - Drawing inferences and understanding relations between concepts that have not been encountered previously - Adaption to novel tasks - Speed of information processing - Working memory functioning - Ability to control attention
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Fluid intelligence
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Factual knowledge about the world - Reflects long term memory - Related to verbal ability
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Crystallized intelligence
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Tests of each type of intelligence correlate highly with each other than they do with tests of the other type - Different development courses - Brain areas active in the two types of intelligence differ
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Evidence for fluid and crystallized intelligence
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- increases steadily
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Development course for crystallized intelligence
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- Peaks around age 20 and slowly declines
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Development course for fluid intelligence
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Prefrontal cortex
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Brain area for fluid intellignece
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7 makeup the human intellect - Word fluency, verbal meaning, reasoning, spatial visualization, numbering, rote memory, perceptual speed - Tests of each type of intelligence correlate highly with each other than they do with tests of the other type
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Primary mental abilities
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Intelligence comprises numerous distinct processes - Remembering perceiving, attending, comprehending, encoding, etc. - Allows more precise specification of the mechanisms in intelligent behavior
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Intelligence as numerous processes
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- Integration of the three perspective on intelligence - John B. Carroll - g at the top of the hierarchy - In the middle are several moderately general abilities (fluid and crystallized intelligence and the second primary mental abilities) - At the bottom are many specific processes
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Three stratum theory of intelligence
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- When a person is intelligent, the person acts in intelligent ways --> must be based on an observable behavior - Binet: measure intelligence by observing people's actions on tasks that require a variety of types of intelligence
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Measuring intelligence
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- Requires assessing a much broader range of abilities than are assessed - Culturally biased - Reducing a person's intelligence to a number is simplistic and ethically questionable
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Why are intelligence test controversial?
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- Better than any alternative - Valuable for deciding whether children should be given special education - Evaluations would be more biased
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Arguments for intelligence tests
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- Most successful over 5 - Changed depending on age (language is not included for 4 month olds)
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Content of intelligence tests based on age
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Most widely used intelligence test for children over 5 - Consistent with Carroll's three stratum framework - Four separate scores on moderately general abilities: verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, processing speed
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Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
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IQ - Quantitative measure, typically with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, used to indicate a child's intelligence relative to that of other children of the same age
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Intelligence quotient
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East to compare IQ scores at different ages
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Benefit of using normal distributions for IQ
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Measure of the variability of scores in a distribution - 68% of scores fall within 1 SD of the mean - 95% of scores fall within 2 SDs of the mean
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Standard deviation
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- May be the most stable of all psychological traits - Continuity from 5 on; highly correlated - Scores are rarely identical
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Continuity of IQ
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- Closer in time that tests are given - More stable at older ages
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Variables that influence the degree of stability of IQ scores over time
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- Grades - Achievement test performance - Long term educational outcomes (serve as gate keepers) - Performance in intellectually demanding occupations - Those with the same job perform better, earn more money, receive better promotions
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Positive correlations with IQs
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Ability to inhibit actions, follow rules, and avoid impulsive reactions - More predictive of grades between 5th and 9th grade than IQ - IQ is more predictive of changes in achievement test scores
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Self-discipline
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- Not measured by IQ tests - Accurately reading other people's emotions and intentions - Predicts occupational success
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Practical intelligence
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- Parents' encouragement and modeling of productive careers - Self discipline - Practical intelligence - Other characteristics
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Things other than IQ that predict occupational success
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Children's lives embedded within a series of increasingly encompassing environments
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Brofenbrenner's bioecological model of development
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Genetic endowment, reactions they elicit from other people, their own choice of environments
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How does a child contribute to their own intellectual development?
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- Increasing genetic influence: some genetic processes do not exert their effects until late childhood (connections in the brain) and increasing independence to choose environments compatible with genetically based preferences
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Genetic contributions to intelligence
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Can only find mental retardation genes -Genetic contribution reflects small contributions from a very large number of genes as well as complex interactions between them
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Genes that control intelligence
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Passive, evocative, active
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Three processes involved in gene-environment relations
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Arise when raised by biological parents - Overlap between genes - Child who enjoys reading will grow up with plenty of reading - Correlations between living with biological parents
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Passive effects of genotype
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Emerge through children's eliciting of influencing other people's behavior - Child's parents aren't readers + child that doesn't like reading = no reading
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Evocative effects
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Choosing environments that they enjoy - Student choosing to obtain books regardless of being read to
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Active effects
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Home observation for measurement of the environment - Samples various aspects of children's home life - Positive correlation between IQ and achievement scores and HOME measure
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HOME
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- Type of intellectual environment is influenced by parents's genetic makeup - HOME studies focused on families in which children live with their biological parents - Parent's genes influence both the intellectual quality of the home and the children's IQs: correlation between HOME measures and IQs in adoptive homes are lower
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Do better quality home environments cause children to have higher IQs?
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- May have a greater impact on development of intelligence than shared environments - influence of non shared environments increases with age and independence
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Non shared family environments' effects on intelligence
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- Shared environment in low income families accounts for more variance in IQ scores and academic achievement than genetic - Shared environments in middle and high income families, the relative influence of shared environment and genetics is reversed
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Shared family environments' effects on intelligenec
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- Makes children smarter: a child of the same age in a higher grade does better on tests; Average IQ and achievement test scores rise during the school year but not during summer vacation - Over the summer, low SES children's IQs stay constant or drop while high SES children tend to rise
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Influences of schooling
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Average IQ scores have consistently risen over the past 80 years - Source not known: may be improvement of lives of low SES families or Increased societal emphasis on abstract problem solving and reasoning (fluid intelligence has increased more) like in video games - Greatest increase in IQ scores among the lower IQ scores and income distributions
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Flynn effect
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- chronic inadequate diet early in life - Missing meals can impair intellectual functioning - Reduced access to health services = more absences from school - Adult conflicts in the house creates emotional turmoil - Insufficient intellectual stimulation
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Ways poverty negatively affects intelligence
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- Children from wealthier homes score higher - Countries with a greater income gap have greater differences in IQ
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Relation between poverty and IQ
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- Average IQ scores of children from different races do differ - Scores only describe children's performance in the environments in which they live: do no indicate their intellectual potential, nor do they indicate what their scores would be if the children lived in different environments - Scores between white people and black people have a lessened gap since the Civil Rights Movement
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Race, ethnicity, and intelligence
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- Capture the impact of multiple influences on intelligence - 10 features of the environment that put children at risk - Score created by adding up number of risks - More risks = lower score - Showed that its not just that genes remain constant over time, their environment tends to remain constant
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Environmental risk scale
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- Substantially initially but after a few years, there was no difference in IQ scores - Half as many program participants were later assigned to special ed classes - Fewer held back - more graduated and fewer arrested by 18 - Long term effects on motivation and behavior
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Did the programs to help preschoolers in low SES black families help?
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- Racially diverse; below the poverty line - Receive medical and dental care and nutritious meals and a safe environment - Parents participate as caregivers, serve on policy councils, receive vocational and emotional help
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Project head start
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- Better pre reading and pre writing skills but not math skills - Intellectual outcomes at the end of 1st grade were the same of nonparticipants - Improved social skills and health, lower frequency of being held back, greater likelihood of graduating from high school and going to college, lower rates of drug use and delinquency
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Did Head Start work?
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-Comprehensive and successful enrichment program for children from low income families - Created lasting increases in IQ and achievement scores - Need for intervention early that last a long time - Needs for caregivers to interact with infants in positive, responsive ways
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Carolina Abecedarian Project
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Gardner's theory of intellect, based on the view that people possess at least eight types of intelligence - Encompass a wider range of human abilities than IQ tests 1) Brain damage showed that certain types of intelligence can be destroyed and the rest can be normal 2) Prodigies- musical abilities as a separate intelligence
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Multiple intelligences theory
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Emphasis of IQ tests on the type of intelligence needed to succeed in school is too narrow - envisions intelligence as the ability to achieve success in life, given one's personal standards, within one's sociocultural context - Success in life reflects people's ability to build on their strengths, to compensate for their weaknesses, and to select environments in which they an succeed - Analytic, practical and creative abilities affect success in life
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Theory of successful intelligence
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Involve the linguistic, mathematical, and spatial skills that are measured by traditional intelligence tests
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Analytic abilities
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Involve reasoning about everyday problems such as how to resolve conflicts
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Practical abilities
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Involve intellectual flexibility and innovation that allow adaptation to novel circumstances
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Creative abilties
