INTELLIGENCE:

Definition, Theories and Testing

 WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?
• Intelligence has been defined in many ways
• Higher level abilities (such as abstract reasoning, mental representation, problem solving, and
decision making)
• the ability to learn
• Emotional knowledge
• Creativity
•  Adaptation to meet the demands of the environment effectively
Psychologist Robert Sternberg defined intelligence as "the mental abilities necessary for adaptation
to, as well as shaping and selection of, any environmental context.
A Brief History of Intelligence
• late 1800s when Sir Francis Galton (the cousin of Charles Darwin) became one of the first
people to study intelligence.
• Galton theorized that because quickness and other physical attributes were evolutionarily
advantageous, they would also provide a good indication of general mental ability
• Thus, Galton operationalized intelligence as reaction time.
• Operationalization is an important process in research that involves defining an unmeasurable
phenomenon (such as intelligence) in measurable terms (such as reaction time), allowing the
concept to be studied empirically 
 THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE

• Spearman’s General Intelligence (g)

• Thurstone’s Primary Mental Abilities
• Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
• Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
 SPEARMAN’S GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (G)

• also known as g factor

• general mental ability 
•  underlies multiple specific skills, including verbal, spatial, numerical and mechanical.
• Spearman noticed that those who did well in one area of intelligence tests (for example,
mathematics), also did well in other areas (such as distinguishing pitch; Kalat, 2014
THURSTONE’S PRIMARY MENTAL ABILITIES

• Thurstone (1938) challenged the concept of a g-factor.

• The seven primary mental abilities in Thurstone's model 
• Word Fluency
• Verbal Comprehension
• Numerical Ability
• Spatial Visualization
• Perceptual Speed
• Memory
• Inductive Reasoning
GARDNER’S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
 TRIARCHIC THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE

• Robert Sternberg proposed a three-category theory of intelligence, integrating components that

were lacking in Gardner’s theory.
• Analytical intelligence
• Creative intelligence
• Practical intelligence
 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
• Emotional Intelligence is the “ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions, to
discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional
information to guide thinking and behavior” (Salovey and Mayer, 1990)
• The four key components of emotional Intelligence are
• (i) self-awareness
• (ii) self-management
• (iii) social awareness
• (iv) relationship management.
 FLUID VS. CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE
• Raymond Cattell (1963) first proposed the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence
• Fluid intelligence : use of logic and abstract thinking
• Crystallized intelligence :use of previously-acquired knowledge, such as specific facts learned
in school or specific motor skills or muscle memory 
 INTELLIGENCE TESTING
• Binet-Simon Scale
• a specific set of questions that focused on areas such as memory and problem-solving skills.
• created the concept of a mental age
• The Binet-Simon scale of 1905 comprised 30 items designed to measure judgment,
comprehension, and reasoning 
 STANFORD-BINET INTELLIGENCE SCALE

• Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman adapted the test for American students, and published the
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale in 1916
•  five features of cognitive ability
• fluid reasoning
• Knowledge
• quantitative reasoning
• visual-spatial processing 
• working memory
• Both verbal and nonverbal responses are measured.
  INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT (IQ)
• The average score for the test is 100
• any score from 90 to 109 is considered to be in the average intelligence range
• Score from 110 to 119 are considered to be High Average
• Superior scores range from 120 to 129 
• Anything over 130 is considered Very Superior
• To calculate IQ, the student’s mental age is divided by his or her actual (or chronological) age,
and this result is multiplied by 100
• If your mental age is equal to your chronological age, you will have an IQ of 100, or average
• your mental age is, say, 12, but your chronological age is only 10, you will have an above-
average IQ of 120.
 WISC AND WAIS

• American psychologist David Wechsler developed a new tool due to his dissatisfaction with the
limitations of the Stanford-Binet test.
• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)
• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) in 1955
• most up-to-date version being the WAIS-IV 2014
 APTITUDE VS. ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

•  Achievement tests measure what content a student has already learned (such as a unit test in
history or a final math exam)
• an aptitude test measures a student’s potential or ability to learn 
•  aptitude tests typically measure abilities in very specific areas.
 CRITICISM OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING

• biased in favor of white, middle-class people

•  Negative stereotypes about a person’s ethnicity
•  gender
•  burden of doubt about his or her own abilities
• create anxiety that result in lower scores
• Cultural Specificity
• Social and Environmental Factors
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
 INTELLIGENCE TODAY

• University of California Matrix Reasoning Task

• SAT, ACT, and the LSAT