UNIT III – THE ASSESSMENT OF INTELLIGENCE

INTRODUCTION

As long as there has been a discipline of psychology, psychologists have had differing
definitions of intelligence and how best to measure it.

In this lesson, we look at the varied ways intelligence has been defined and survey the
ways it has been measured. We conclude with a discussion of a few major issues surrounding
the practice of measuring intelligence, including the relationship between culture and
intelligence. In the Lesson 9, we look more closely at the “nuts and bolts” of intelligence tests
and focus on some representative tests. The measurement of intelligence and other ability- and
achievement-related constructs in preschool and educational settings is the subject of
succeeding lessons. We begin, however, by raising a question that logically precedes
consideration of intelligence measurement issues. What is intelligence?

LEARNING OUTCOMES: At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Familiarize one’s self with the different kinds of intelligence tests.

2. Determine the advantages and disadvantages of each test.

COURSE MATERIALS

LESSON 8: INTELLIGENCE AND ITS MEASUREMENT

What is Intelligence?

We may define intelligence as a multifaceted capacity that manifests itself in different ways
across the lifespan.

 Intelligence includes the abilities to:

 Acquire and apply knowledge

 Reason logically

 Plan effectively

 Infer perceptively

 Make sound judgments and solve problems

 Grasp and visualize concepts

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  Pay attention

 Be intuitive

 Find the right words and thoughts with facility

 Cope with, adjust to, and make the most of new situations

 Interestingly, no two psychologists agree what is intelligence

 A common misconception among the general public is that IQ is shorthand for

intelligence. But different intelligence tests that yield an IQ do in fact differ in content and
in other ways that affect interpretation of scores.

 Intelligence tests, as well as any other tests, should be used not to label individuals but
to help in understanding them. Intelligence should be regarded as a descriptive rather
than an explanatory concept. An IQ is an expression of an individual’s ability level at a
given point in time, in relation to available age norms.

COMMON THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE

1. Sir Francis Galton

 First person to publish on the hereditability of intelligence, thus framing the

contemporary nature-nurture debate

 Galton believed that most intelligent persons were those equipped with the best
sensory abilities. “The only information that reaches us concerning outward
events appears to pass through the avenues of our senses; and the more
perceptive the senses are of difference, the larger is the field upon which our
judgment and intelligence can act.”

 Galton attempted to measure intelligence through sensorimotor and other

perception-related tests, e.g. tests of visual acuity or hearing ability.

2. Alfred Binet

 Did not define what intelligence is, but identified components of intelligence.

 For Binet, these components included: reasoning, judgment, memory, and

abstraction

 Criticized Galton for his simplified view of intelligence. Galton viewed intelligence
as a number of distinct processes or abilities that should only be assessed by
separate tests. In contrast, Binet argued that when one solves a particular
problem, abilities used can’t be separated as they interact to produce the
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 solution. E.g. memory and concentration interact when a person is asked to
repeat digits presented orally.

3. David Wechsler

 Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act

purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment

 It is aggregate or global because it is composed of elements or abilities which,

though not entirely independently, are qualitatively differentiable

 The best way to measure this global ability is to measure several qualitatively
differentiable abilities. Wechsler wrote two of such differentiable abilities, which
are primarily verbal and performance-based in nature.

 Historically, users of Wechsler tests have interpreted data based on individual

subtest scores as well as the Verbal, Performance, and Full-Scale scores

 But intelligence is not the mere sum of these activities!

 There are non-intellective factors that must be taken into account when
assessing intelligence. These include; conative (rational action), affective, or
personality traits that include drive and persistence, goal awareness and ability to
respond to social, moral, and aesthetic values.

4. Jean Piaget

 Piaget’s focus is on the development of cognition in children

 For Piaget, intelligence is an evolving adaptation to the outside world. As

cognitive skills are gained, adaptation (at a symbolic level) increases, and mental
and trial and error replaces physical trial and error.

 Process of cognitive development occurs neither solely through maturation nor

solely through learning. Instead, as a consequence of interaction with the
environment, psychological structures become reorganized.

 Each new experience, according to Piaget, requires some form of cognitive

organization or re-organization in a mental structure called schema (plural
schemata). Learning purely by grasping and putting anything into their mouths,
infants use schemata to understand and appreciate the world.

 For Piaget, learning occurs through two basic mental operation: assimilation and
accommodation.

 Assimilation: actively organizing new information so that it fits in with what

is already perceived and thought

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  Accommodation: changing what is already perceived or thought so that it
fits with new information.

PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

a) Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years)

 Child develops ability to exhibit goal directed, intentional behavior;

develops the capacity to coordinate and integrate input from the 5
senses; acquires the capacity to recognize the world and its objects as
permanent entities (object permanence)

b) Preoperational Period (2-6 years)

 Child understanding of concepts is based solely on what is seen; the

child’s comprehension of a situation, event or an object is typically based
on a single, usually the most obvious, perceptual aspect of the stimulus.
Thought is irreversible (e.g., number of beads change if you push them
together, animistic thinking (attributing human qualities to non-human
objects and events)

c) Concrete Operational Period (7-12 years)

 Reversibility of thought now appears; conservation of thought (certain

attributes of the remain stable despite modification in appearance), part-
whole problems and serial ordering tasks can now be solved (able to put
ideas in rank order); can deal only with relationship and things with which
he or she has direct experience; able to look at more than one aspect of a
problem and able to clearly differentiate between present and historical
time.

d) Formal Operations Period (12 years and older)

 Increased ability to abstract and to deal with ideas independent of his or

her own experience; greater capacity to generate hypotheses and test
them in a systematic fashion (if-then statements, more alternatives); able
to think about several variables acting together and their combined
effects; can evaluate own thought; applies learning new problems in a
deductive way.

FACTOR ANALYTIC THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE

 Factor Analysis: a group of statistical techniques designed to determine the

existence of underlying relationships between sets of variables, including test
scores.

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  The principal object of factor analysis is to simplify description of data by
reducing the number of necessary variables or dimensions.

a) Charles Spearman

 Found that measures of intelligence tend to correlate with various degrees with
each other

 He proposed the existence of a general intellectual ability factor (g) that is tapped
by all other mental ability factors. The remaining components are accounted for
by specific components (s), or by error components of this general factor (e).
This theory is sometimes referred to as the two factor theory of intelligence, with
g representing the portion of the variance that all intelligence tests have in
common and the remaining balance accounted for by specific components (s) or
by error components (e).

 The greater the magnitude of g in a test, the better the test can predict overall
intelligence. Tests with high correlation with other intelligence tests were thought
to be highly saturated with g.

 Abstract reasoning problems are believed to be the best measure of g in a test.

b) Joy Paul Guilford

 J.P. Guilford rejected Charles Spearman’s view that intelligence could be

characterized in a single numerical parameter

 He proposed the Structure-of-Intellect (SI) model which classifies intellectual

traits along 3 dimensions:

 Operations: what the respondent does. e.g., cognition, memory recording,

memory retention, divergent production, convergent production, and evaluation.

 Content: nature of materials or information on which operations are performed.

E.g. visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic, and behavioral.

 Products: form in which information is processed by the respondent. Products

are classified into units, classes, relations, systems, transformations, and
implications.

c) Louis Leon Thurstone

 Opposed the notion of general intelligence.

 Initially conceived of intelligence as being composed of 7 “primary mental

activities” or PMAs. The seven primary mental abilities in Thurstone’s model
were:

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  Verbal comprehension (found in tests of reading comprehension, verbal
analogies, disarranged sentences, vocabulary tests)

 Word fluency (anagrams, rhyming, naming words in a given category)

 Number facility (speed and accuracy of simple arithmetic computations)

 Spatial visualization (may represent 2 distinct factors: one recovering perception

of fixed spatial and geometric relations, the other manipulatory visualizations
such as in which changed positions or transformations must be visualized)

 Associative memory (found principally in tests demanding rote memory for paired
associates)

 Perceptual speed (quick and accurate grasping of visual details, similarities and
differences)

 Induction or general reasoning (Thurstone originally proposed an inductive and

deductive reasoning factor).

 However, after designing tests to measure these abilities, Thurstone became

convinced that it was difficult, if not impossible, to develop an intelligence test
that did not measure g.

d) Howard Gardner

 Developed the theory of Multiple Intelligence (MI)

 These are: logical-mathematical, bodily kinesthetic, linguistic, musical, spatial,

interpersonal and intrapersonal.

HIERARCHICAL THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE

 Proposed by British psychologist Burt among others, and Americans Vernon and
Humphreys.
 Reconciles the single general factor (Spearman’s g) with multiple factor patterns.

1. Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory (CHC Theory)

 Raymond Cattell postulated the existence of two major types of cognitive

abilities: crystallized intelligence (Gc) and fluid intelligence (Gf)

 Crystallized intelligence include acquired skills and knowledge that are

dependent on exposure to a particular culture as well as on formal and informal
education e.g. vocabulary

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  Fluid intelligence are non-verbal, relatively culture-free, and independent of
specific instruction e.g. memory of digits

 This theory was later modified by John L. Horn, with the addition of several
factors: visual processing (Gv), auditory processing (Ga), quantitative processing
(Gq),

 Speed of processing (Gs), facility with reading and writing (Grw), short-term
memory (Gsm), and long-term storage and retrieval (Glr).

 According to Horn, some of these abilities are vulnerable abilities in that they
decline with age and tend not to return to pre-injury level after brain damage.
Other abilities are maintained abilities: they do not decline with age and may
return to pre-injury levels after brain damage.

 Another influential multiple-intelligence model is the three stratum theory of

cognitive abilities by John Bissell Carroll. (In geology a stratum is layer of rock
formation having the same composition throughout).

 The top stratum in Carroll’s model is g. The second stratum is composed of eight
abilities and processes: fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc),
general memory and learning (Y), broad visual perception (V), broad auditory
perception (U), broad retrieval capacity (R), broad cognitive speediness (S), and
processing/decision-making speed (T).

 Below each of the abilities are “level factors” and/or “speed factors” each
different, dependent on the second level stratum they are linked. Example: 3
factors linked to Gf general reasoning, quantitative reasoning and Piagetian
reasoning

 The three stratum theory is a hierarchical model, meaning all abilities listed in the
stratum are subsumed by or incorporated in the strata above.

2. Information Processing View

 By Russian neurologist Alexandr Luria, this approach focuses on mechanisms by

which information is processed—how (not what) is processed:

 Two basic types of informational processing styles:

 Simultaneous (or parallel) processing: information is integrated all at the same

time. In simultaneous processing, information is synthesized.

 Successive (or sequential) processing: each bit of information is individually

processed in sequence.

Sequential is logical and analytic, arranged and re-arranged until it makes sense.

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  Some tests, such as Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, rely heavily on
the distinction between simultaneous and successive processing.

 This model influenced others such as the PASS Model of intellectual functioning.
PASS stands for:

 Planning: strategy development for problem solving

 Attention: also referred to as arousal, refers to receptivity of information

 Simultaneous

 Successive

 Robert Sternberg proposed another information processing theory: triarchic theory of

intelligence.
 For Sternberg, the essence of intelligence is that it provides a means to govern
ourselves so that our thoughts and actions are organized, coherent, and responsive to
our internally driven needs and to the needs of the environment.

Principal elements:

 Metacomponents: planning what one is going to do, monitoring what one is

doing, and evaluating what one has done

 Performance: administering the instructions of metacomponents

 Knowledge Acquisition: learning how to do something in the first place

 Sternberg also introduced the notion of successful intelligence: the extent that
one effectively adapts, share, shapes and selects environments in a way that
conforms to personal and societal standards of success.

MEASUREMENT OF INTELLIGENCE is the sampling of an examinee’s performance on

different types of tests or tasks as a function of a developmental level to measure intellectual
abilities.

TYPES OF TASKS USED IN INTELLIGENCE TESTS

 In infancy (0-18 months), intellectual assessment consists mostly of measuring

sensorimotor development. This includes nonverbal motor responses like turning over or
lifting the head.
 Examiners also measure the “alerting response” in infants, which indicates an infant’s
capacity for responsiveness measured by brightening and widening of the eyes when
hearing the bell, and the “orienting response” which involves turning the head towards
the direction of the stimulus.
 Measures of infant intelligence typically rely on information from a structured interview
with parents, guardians, and other caretakers.

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  Older children are tested for verbal and performance abilities. These include measure of
general fund of information, vocabulary, social judgment, language, reasoning,
numerical concepts, auditory and visual memory, attention, concentration and spatial
visualization.
 When administered by a trained professional, tasks administered to children also allow
for examination of the child’s reaction to success, failure and frustration.
 Wechsler believe adult intelligence scales should measure retention of general
information, quantitative reasoning, expressive language and memory, and social
judgment.

ISSUES IN INTELLIGENCE TESTING

1. Nature vs. Nurture

 Most psychologists believe that intellectual ability is an interaction between innate

ability and environmental influence.

 Before: belief in

 Preformationism– living organisms are preformed at birth

 Pre-determinism– one’s abilities are pre-determined by genetic inheritance and that

no amount of learning or other intervention can enhance what has been genetically
encoded. A predeterminist view (Gesell) is that intelligence is genetically uncoded,
unfolding in maturation.

 Arthur Jensen’s controversial 1969 article proposed the existence of hereditability

index, which shows the proportional contribution of genetic or hereditary factors to
the total variance of a particular trait in a given population under existing conditions.

 Proponents of the nurture side emphasize the crucial role of pre-natal and post-natal
environment, socioeconomic status, educational opportunities, and parenting
models.

2. Inheritance and Interactionism

 People differ in intelligence levels just as they differ in blood pressure levels etc.

 According to the interactionist view, people inherit a certain intellectual potential.

Exactly how much of this potential is realized depends partially on the type of
environment where it is nurtured.

 Interactionism is a very optimistic model of intelligence.

 Hereditary influence on intelligence increase from 41% in childhood, 55% in

adolescence, and 66% in late adolescence to early adulthood. Possible explanation
is as people age, they modify their environment to complement genetic tendencies.
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3. Stability of Intelligence (mixed findings)

 The conclusion from longitudinal studies is that preschool tests (especially if

administered after the age of 2 years) have moderate validity in predicting
subsequent intelligence test performance, while infant tests have virtually none.

 In the absence of organic pathology, child’s subsequent development is determined

largely by the environment he or she has been reared.

 The concept of developmental transformations has been introduced to describe the

changes in age-appropriate manifestations of intellectual competence.

 Longitudinal research on adult intelligence, especially with older subjects, can be

complicated by many factors: extent to which one remains mentally active, physical
health and others.

 In many studies, group mean and SDs seem to suggest stability but focus on aging
related within- individual variability leads to different conclusion.

 Decline in cognitive abilities after age 75.

 Myth: early ripe, early rot. Gifted children tend to maintain their superior intellectual
ability. But there may be a point when gifted children cease to pursue or exploit their
gift.

4. Flynn Effect

 Also called the intelligence inflation: intelligence seems to rise on the average year
after year.

5. Culture

 Culture loading: the extent to which a test incorporates the vocabulary, concepts,
and traditions, knowledge, and feelings associated with a particular culture.

 Culture fair test: test or assessment process designed to minimize the influence of
culture with regard to various aspects of the evaluation procedures, interpretations
made from the resulting data.

6. Motivation

 The effects of transitory affective states on an individual’s current performance is

well-documented

 Even more important is the cumulative effect of personality traits on the direction and
extent of the individual’s intellectual development.

 J.W. Atkinson formulated a comprehensive schema representing interrelationships of

abilities, motivation, and environmental variables. A key concept on this schema is
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 “time-on-task”, the time an individual devotes to one kind of activity, such as
studying. Atkinson schema point to the lasting, cumulative effect of task performance
on a person’s cognitive and motivational development. This step points to a feedback
loop about one’s own traits.
 The relationship between personality and intellect is reciprocal.

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS/REFERENCES:

Cohen, R. & Swerdlik, M. (2009). Psychological Testing and Assessment: An

Introduction to Tests and Measurement 7th Ed. McGraw Hill Primis

Hilsenroth, M., Segal, D., & Hersen, M. (2004). Comprehensive Handbook of

Psychological Assessment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Urbina, S. (2004). Essentials of Psychological Testing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

ACTIVITIES/ASSESSMENTS: (Group Work)

Just Think:

1. How do you define intelligence?

2. Must professionals agree on a definition of intelligence?

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