Ch.

7: Intelligence

Intelligence is the ability to direct ones thinking, adapt to ones

circumstances and learn from ones experience

Goddard administered intelligence tests to immigrants on Ellis Island

and concluded that the majority of Jews, Hungarians, Italians and
Russians were feebleminded

He also tested Americans and determined they were feebleminded and

were responsible for the governments social problems and suggested
that these people be segregated and not be able to procreate.

The United States subsequently passed laws restricting immigration of

people from Southern and Eastern Europe and 27 states passed laws
requiring the sterilization of mental defectives

We begin with the assumption that there is a property called

intelligence that leads people to experience a wide variety of
consequences like getting good grades in school, becoming a great
leader and earning a high income.
 Today - the most widely used intelligence tests are the Stanford-Binet and the
Wechsler Adult intelligence Scale

The Wechsler has 13 subtests involving seeing similarities and differences, making
inferences, working out and applying rules, remembering and manipulating material,
constructing shapes, recalling general knowledge, explaining practical problems in
daily life.

The correlation between a persons score on a standard intelligence test and his/her
academic performance is roughly r=.5 (.7 and above is considered high)

And test score is also the best predictor of the number of years of education a
person will receive

Intelligence test scores are also among the best predictors of how well employees
perform in their jobs and job performance correlates more highly with intelligence.

Psychologist Howard Gardner believes standard intelligence tests fail to measure

some important human abilities.

He believes there are eight distinct kinds of intelligence linguistic,

logical/mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal,
intrapersonal and naturalistic
 How different cultures describe intelligence:

The Confucist people emphasize the ability to behave properly and Taoist
tradition emphasizes humility and self-knowledge

Buddhists emphasize determination and mental effort.

Westerners think intelligent people speak quickly and often, have large
vocabularies.

African and Asian societies see intelligence as including social responsibility

and cooperativeness.

Studies show that the intelligence test scores of identical twins are strongly
correlated: r= .86 when the twins are raised in the same household and
when raised in different households the correlation is r=.78

This means that people who share all their genes have similar intelligence
scores regardless of whether they share their environments.

Genes play an important role in determining intelligence.

 Intelligence is generally stable over time so those who were most

intelligent at age 11 are likely to be the most intelligent at age 80

The other kind of intelligence is called absolute intelligence which

can change considerably over time; it tends to increase between
adolescence and middle-age and decline thereafter.

The sharpest decline occurs in old age and is due to slowing of the
brains processing speed.

Age related declines are more evident in some domains:

On tests that measure vocabulary, general information and verbal

reasoning people show small changes from ages 18-70

On tests that are timed: have abstract material, involve making new
memories or require reasoning about spatial relationships, most
people show marked declines in performance after middle age.
 Economics:

One of the best predictors of a person's intelligence is the material wealth of
the family that he or she was raised in; we call this SES: socio-economics
status.

Studies show that being raised in a high SES family rather than a low SES
family is worth between 12 and 18 IQ points

Low SES families children have poor nutrition, medical care, experience
greater daily stress and they're more likely to be exposed to environmental
toxins like air pollution and lead which impairs brain development.

Low SES children are less likely to be breast-fed and breast-feeding is known
to enhance IQ by about six points

Children who grow up in more intellectually stimulating environments seem

to be more intelligent

Intellectual stimulation matters because in high SES families, parents are

more likely to provide books and they read to their children.
 Are Some Groups More Intelligent Than Others?

Stanford Prof. Lewis Terman administered IQ tests and he concluded

that whites perform much better than nonwhites

The question is when whites perform better than nonwhites are the
inferior races really inferior or are they merely unfortunate in their
lack of opportunities to learn

Terman concluded that their dullness seems to be racial or at least

inherent in the family stocks from which they come and he said the
children in this group should be segregated into separate classes
because they cannot master abstractions

He concluded that a persons intelligence is a product of his or her

genes despite how repugnant these conclusions may be

Some studies conclude that some groups routinely outscore others on

intelligence tests; whites routinely outscore Latinos who routinely
outscore blacks
 Women routinely outscore men on tests that require rapid access to and use
of semantic information production and comprehension of complex prose,
fine motor skills and perceptual speed of verbal intelligence

Men routinely outscore women on tests that require transformations in

visual or spatial memory, certain motor skills and fluid reasoning and
abstract mathematical and scientific domains

Group Differences in Intelligence

Scientists agree that environment plays a major role in intelligence.

African-American children may have lower birth weights, poor diets, higher
rates of chronic illness poor medical care and attend poorer schools

African-American children are three times more likely to live in single parent
households

Given the big difference socioeconomic status between European

Americans and African-Americans it's not surprising that African-Americans
score on average 10 points lower on IQ tests.