Define intelligence in one sentence

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Define intelligence in one sentence What are
the top 5 skills to define intelligence?
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Outline

• Implicit theories
• Testing and scoring intelligence
• Intelligence scales
• Factor analysis of intelligence
• Biological bases of intelligence
• Alternative approaches
• Cultural contexts
• Multiple intelligences

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Experts definitions

• In 1921, when the editors of the Journal of
  Educational Psychology asked 14 famous
  psychologists What is intelligence.
• The responses varied but they all generally
  implied that intelligence involves 1) the
  capacity to learn from experience and 2) the
  ability to adapt to the surrounding environment.
• Sixty-five years later (Sremberg Detterman,
  1986), 24 cognitive psychologists with expertise
  in intelligence research were asked the same
  question. They, too, highlighted the importance
  of learning from experience and adapting to the
  environment.
• They also broadened the definition to emphasize
  the importance of metacognition, that is people's
  understanding and control of their own thinking
  processes.
• Contemporary experts also more heavily emphasized
  the role of culture, pointing out that what is
  considered intelligent in one culture may be
  considered stupid in another culture (Serpell,
  2000).

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Experts definitions
Therefore, intelligence seems to be the capacity
to learn from experience, using metacognitive
processes to enhance learning, and the ability to
adapt to the surrounding environment, which may
require different adaptations within different
social and cultural contexts.
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Implicit theories

• All of us have our own implicit (unstated) ideas
  about what it means to be smart that is, we have
  our own implicit theories of intelligence.
• We use our implicit theories in many social
  situations, such as when we meet people or when
  we describe people we know as being very smart or
  not so smart.
• Within our implicit theories, we also recognize
  that intelligence has different meanings in
  different contexts. A smart salesperson may show
  a different kind of intelligence than a smart
  neurosurgeon or a smart accountant, each of whom
  may show a different kind of intelligence than a
  smart choreographer, composer, athlete, or
  sculptor.

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Implicit theories

• Implicit theories of intelligence may differ
  from one culture to another.
• For example, there is evidence that Chinese
  people in Taiwan include interpersonal and
  intrapersonal (self-understanding) skills as part
  of their conception of intelligence (Yang
  Sternberg, 1999). Rural Kenyan conceptions of
  intelligence encompass moral as well as cognitive
  skills (Grigorenko, et al., 2001).
• Western cultures can attribute intelligence even
  in the absence of moral rules. Machiavelli docet.

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Testing and scoring intelligence

• Explicit definitions of intelligence also
  frequently take on an assessment-oriented focus.
• In fact, some psychologists, such as Edwin
  Boring (1923), define intelligence as whatever it
  is that the tests measure.
• This definition, however, is circular because
  according to it, the nature of intelligence is
  what is tested but what is tested must
  necessarily be determined by the nature of
  intelligence.
• Moreover, what different tests of intelligence
  test is not always the same thing, so it is not
  feasible to define intelligence by what tests
  test as though they all measured the same thing.
• The attempt to understand intelligence by
  measuring various aspects of intelligence has a
  long history.

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Testing and scoring intelligence

• Go back to your list of top 5 skills.
• When making these assessments, were
  psychophysical or judgment abilities more
  important to you?
• Contemporary measurements of intelligence
  usually can be traced to one of two very
  different historical traditions.
• One tradition concentrated on lower-level,
  psychophysical abilities (i.e., sensory acuity,
  physical strength, and motor coordination) the
  other focused on higher-level, judgmental
  abilities (which we traditionally describe as
  related to thinking).

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Testing and scoring intelligence

• Francis Galton (1822-1911) believed that
  intelligence is a function of psychophysical
  abilities, and for several years Galton
  maintained a well-equipped laboratory where
  visitors could be tested on a variety of
  psychophysical tests such as weight
  discrimination (the ability to notice small
  differences in the weights of objects), pitch
  sensitivity (the ability ro hear small
  differences benveen musical notes) and physical
  strength (Galton, 1883).
• However, many attempt to unify the various
  dimensions of psychophysically based intelligence
  failed. For example, the psychophysical tests did
  not predict college grades. Thus, the
  psychophysical approach to assessing intelligence
  soon faded almost into oblivion, although it
  would reappear many years later.

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Testing and scoring intelligence

• An alternative to the psychophysical approach
  was developed by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon,
  who also attempted to assess intelligence as they
  were asked to devise a procedure for
  distinguishing normal from mentally retarded
  learners (Binet Simon, 1916).
• Thus, Binet and his collaborator set out to
  measure intelligence as a function of the ability
  to learn within an academic setting. In Binet's
  view, judgment, rather than psychophysical
  skills, is the key to intelligence.
• For Binet, intelligent thought (mental judgment)
  comprises three distinct elements direction,
  adaptation, and criticism.

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Testing and scoring intelligence

• Direction involves knowing what has to be done
  and how to do it.
• Adaptation refers to customizing a strategy for
  performing a task and then monitoring that
  strategy while implementing it.
• Criticism is the ability to critique your own
  thoughts and actions.
• Initially, when Binet and Simon developed their
  intelligence test, they were interested in some
  means of comparing the intelligence of a given
  child with that of other children of the same
  chronological (physical) age, the so called
  mental age.

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Testing and scoring intelligence

• William Stern (1912) suggested instead to
  evaluate intelligence by using an intelligence
  quotient (IQ) a ratio of mental age (MA) divided
  by chronological age (CA), multiplied by 100.
  
• This ratio can he expressed mathematically as IQ
  (MA/CA) x 100. When mental age exceeds
  chronological age, the IQ score is above 100,
  viceversa the IQ score is below 100.
• For various reasons, ratio IQs, too, proved
  inadequate.
• The main is that increases in mental age slow
  down at about age 16 years. What does a mental
  age of 60 mean?!

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Intelligence scales

• Nowadays, the competitive Wechsler scales, are
  probably even more widely used.
• There are three levels of the Wechsler
  intelligence scales, including the third edition
  of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
  (WAIS-III), the third edition of the Wechsler
  Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III), and
  the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of
  Intelligence (WPPSI).
• The verbal score is based on tests such as
  vocabulary and verbal similarities.
• The performance score is based on tests such as
  picture completion, which requires identification
  of a missing part in a picture of an object, and
  picture arrangement, which requires rearrangement
  of a scrambled set of cartoon-like pictures into
  an order that tells a coherent story.

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Factor analysis of intelligence

• Psychologists interested in the structure of
  intelligence have relied on factor analysis as
  the indispensable tool for their research.
• Factor analysis is a statistical method for
  separating a construct -intelligence in this
  case- into a number of independent factors (i.e.,
  abilities) that are assumed to form the basis of
  individual differences in test performance.
• Charles Spearman usually is credited with
  inventing factor analysis (Spearman, 1927).
• Using this tool, he concluded that intelligence
  can be understood in terms of both a single
  general factor that pervades performance on all
  tests of mental ability and a set of specific
  factors, each of which is involved in performance
  on only a single type of mental-ability test.
• In Spearman's view, the general factor, which he
  labeled g factor, provides the key to
  understanding intelligence. Spearman believed "g"
  to be the result of "mental energy".
• Many contemporary psychologists still believe
  Spearman's theory to be essentially correct
  (e.g., Jensen, 1998 see essays in Sternberg
  Grigorenko, 2002).

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Factor analysis of intelligence

• In contrast to Spearman, Louis Thurstone (1938)
  concluded that the core of intelligence resides
  in seven factors, which he referred to as primary
  mental abilities. According to Thurstone, the
  primary mental abilities are as follows
• Verbal comprehension measured by vocabulary
  tests.
• Verbal fluency measured by time-limited tests
  requiring the test-taker to think of as many
  words as possible that begin with a given letter.
• Inductive reasoning measured by tests such as
  analogies and number-series completion tasks.
• Spatial visualization measured by tests
  requiring mental rotation of pictures of objects.
• Number measured by computation and simple
  mathematical problem-solving tests.
• Memory measured by picture and word-recall
  rests.
• Perceptual speed measured by tests that require
  the test-taker to recognize small differences in
  pictures or to cross out the as in strings of
  varied letters

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Factor analysis of intelligence

• At the opposite extreme from Spearman's single
  g-factor model is J. P. Guilford's (1967, 1982,
  1988) structure-of-intellect (SOI) model, which
  includes up to 150 factors of the mind in one
  version of the theory.
• According to Guilford, intelligence can be
  understood in terms of a cube that represents the
  intersection of three dimensions operations,
  contents, and products.
• Operations are simply mental processes, such as
  memory and evaluation (making judgments.
• Contents are the kinds of terms that appear in a
  problem, such as semantic and visual.
• Products are the kinds of responses required,
  such as units (single words, numbers, or
  pictures), classes (hierarchies), and
  implications.
• Although considering as many as 100 factors can
  be considered an exaggeration, Guilford's most
  valuable contribution was to suggest that we
  consider various kinds of mental operations,
  contents, and products in our views and our
  assessments of intelligence.

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Factor analysis of intelligence

• A more parsimonious way of handling a number of
  factors of the mind is through a hierarchical
  model of intelligence such as the one developed
  by Raymond Cattell (1971).
• This model proposes that general intelligence
  comprises two major subfactors fluid abilities
  (speed and accuracy of abstract reasoning,
  especially for novel problems) and crystallized
  abilities (accumulated knowledge and
  vocabulary).
• Subsumed within these two major subfactors are
  other, more specific factors.
• A similar view was proposed by Philip E. Vemon
  (1971), who made a general division between
  practical-mechanical (procedural) and
  verbal-educational (declarative) abilities.

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Factor analysis of intelligence summary of models
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Biological bases of intelligence

• Although the brain is clearly the organ
  responsible for intelligence, early studies
  (e.g., those by Lashley) seeking biological
  indices of intelligence and other aspects of
  mental processes were a resounding failure,
  despite great efforts.
• More recent biological studies are largely
  correlational, showing statistical associations
  between biological and psychometric or other
  measures of intelligence. These studies do not
  establish causal relations!
• One line of research looks at the relationship
  of brain size to intelligence (see Jerison, 2000
  Vemon et al., 2000).

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Biological bases of intelligence

• The evidence suggests that, for humans, there is
  a modest but significant statistical relationship
  between brain size and intelligence - and the
  direction of the relationship is unknown.
• Moreover, it probably is more important how
  efficiently the brain is used than what its size
  is. For example, on average, men have larger
  brains than women, but women have better
  connections through the corpus callosum. So it is
  not clear which sex would be, on average, at an
  advantage - and probably neither would be.
• It is important to note that the relationship
  between brain size and intelligence does not hold
  across species (Jerison, 2000). Rather, what is
  held seems to be a relationship between
  intelligence and brain size, relative to the
  rough general size of the organism.

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Biological bases of intelligence

• Some of the current studies offer some appealing
  possibilities. For example, complex patterns of
  electrical activity in the brain, which are
  prompted by specific stimuli, appear to correlate
  with scores on IQ tests (Barrett Eysenck,
  1992).
• Several studies, not fully confirmed, suggested
  that speed of conduction of neural impulses may
  correlate with intelligence, as measured by IQ
  tests.
• Surprisingly, neural-conduction velocity appears
  to be a more powerful predictor of IQ scores for
  men than for women, so sex differences may
  account for some of the differences in the data
  (Wickett Vemon, 1994), but even in this case
  results are not definitive.

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Biological bases of intelligence

• An alternative approach to studying the brain
  suggests that neural efficiency may be related to
  intelligence such an approach is based on
  studies of how the brain metabolizes glucose
  during mental activities.
• Haier and his colleagues (1992) have cited
  several other researchers who support their own
  findings that higher intelligence correlates with
  reduced levels of glucose metabolism during
  problem-solving tasks -that is, smarter brains
  consume less sugar than do less smart brains
  doing the same task.
• Moreover, cerebral efficiency increases as a
  result of learning on a relatively complex task
  involving visuospatial manipulations (i.e., the
  computer game Terns)
• As a result of practice, more intelligent
  participants show not only lower cerebral glucose
  metabolism overall but also more specifically
  localised metabolism of glucose.
• Thus, more intelligent participants may have
  learned how to use their brains more efficiently
  to focus their thought processes on a given task.
  

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Biological bases of intelligence

• Some neuropsychological research (e.g.,
  Dempster, 1991) suggests that performance on
  intelligence tests may not indicate a crucial
  aspect of intelligence the ability to set goals,
  to plan how to meet them, and to execute those
  plans.
• Specifically, people with lesions on the frontal
  lobe of the brain frequently perform quite well
  on standardized IQ tests, which require responses
  to questions within a highly structured
  situation, but which do not require much in the
  way of goal setting or planning.
• If intelligence involves the ability to learn
  from experience and to adapt to the surrounding
  environment, the ability to set goals and to
  design and implement plans is fundamental.
• An essential aspect of goal setting and planning
  is the ability to attend appropriately to
  relevant stimuli and to ignore or discount
  irrelevant stimuli according to the settings they
  occur in.
• Hence, many researchers and theorists urge us to
  take a more contextual view of intelligence. This
  leads straight to the final part of the lesson

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Alternative approaches to intelligence

• According to contextualists, intelligence cannot
  be understood outside its real-world context.
• The context of intelligence may be viewed at any
  level of analysis, focusing narrowly, as on the
  home and family environment, or extending
  broadly, as on entire cultures.
• For example, even cross-community differences
  have been correlated with differences in
  performance on intelligence tests. Differences
  were found in rural vs. urban communities, low
  vs. high proportions of teenagers to adults
  within communities, and low vs high socioeconomic
  status of communities (see Coon, Carey, Fulker,
  1992).
• Theorists who endorse the contextual model study
  just how intelligence relates to the external
  world in which the model is being applied and
  evaluated.
• But what prompted psychologists to believe that
  culture might play a role in how we define and
  assess intelligence?

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Cultural context and intelligence

• In a famous study of 1971, the investigators
  asked adult members of the Kpelle tribe in Africa
  to sort terms representing concepts.
• In Western culture more intelligent people
  typically will sort hierarchically. Less
  intelligent people will typically sort
  functionally. They may sort "fish" with "eat,"
  for example, or they may sort "clothes" with
  "wear". The Kpelle sorted functionallyeven after
  investigators unsuccessfully tried to get the
  Kpelle spontaneously to sort hierarchically.
  Finally, in desperation, one of the experimenters
  asked a Kpelle to sort as foolish person would
  sort, and the Kpelle quickly and easily sorted
  hierarchically.

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Cultural context and intelligence

• A study by Sarason and Doris (1979) provides a
  more familiar example.
• The researchers tracked the IQs of an immigrant
  population Italian Americans.
• Less than a century ago, first-generation
  Italian-American children showed a median IQ of
  87 (low average range 76-100), even when
  nonverbal measures were used and when so-called
  mainstream American attitudes were considered.
• Some social commentate and intelligence
  researchers of the day pointed to heredity and
  other non environmental factors as the basis for
  the low IQs. Stephen Ceci (1991) notes that the
  subsequent generations of Italian-American
  students who take IQ tests today show slightly
  above-average IQs. Even the most fervent
  hereditarians would be unlikely to attribute such
  remarkable gains in one or two generations to
  heredity.
• Cultural assimilation, including integrated
  education, seems a much more plausible
  explanation.