Cognitive Development II: Intelligence and Tests

Cognitive Development II: Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities

• Intelligence involves abstract reasoning, learning from experience, and adapting to environments.
• Early IQ tests, developed by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon (1905), aimed to identify children needing extra support in school. These tests assessed vocabulary, comprehension, mathematical and verbal reasoning skills.
• Lewis Terman revised and adapted the Binet-Simon test for US use, creating the Stanford-Binet test, with six age-appropriate versions.
• IQ score calculations now directly compare a child's performance to the average performance of others their same age. An IQ of 100 is considered average.
• Gifted and mentally retarded children represent a small portion of the population's IQ distribution.
• Modern IQ tests, like the Stanford-Binet V, Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-III), and Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC-IV), assess various cognitive functions.
• Infant tests (like the Bayley Scales) evaluate sensory and motor skills development in infants with increasing difficulty, helping identify developmental delays and disorders.
• Achievement tests measure what a child has already learned in school, assessing the acquired knowledge and skills versus broader intellectual abilities. Comparing a child's achievement to their peers is a key component of this assessment.
• IQ scores are generally quite stable as children get older. However, some variation exists in younger children.
• IQ tests are evaluated based on validity– whether the test measures what it's designed to predict. Real-world performance should match the test results for validity.
• Twin and adoption studies suggest significant hereditary influence on IQ scores (up to 80% of variation). However, environment also contributes.

Explaining Individual Differences in IQ Scores

• Family environment strongly impacts intellectual development. Low Socioeconomic status and parental education can be risk factors impacting cognitive development. Adverse experiences in early life can lead to a cumulative deficit.
• Children in families often experience different environments; therefore, nonshared environment factors are important to consider.
• Early intervention programs can significantly impact cognitive development
• Interactions between heredity and environment are crucial, forming a reaction range for intellectual performance. The environment pushes intellectual performance towards the upper or lower ends of this range.

Group Differences in IQ or Achievement Test Scores

• A lack of valid and reliable tests across various cultures may confound cross-cultural comparisons of IQ/achievement scores. Different cultural values of innate ability and effort can also affect scores on these tests.

Sex Differences

• Sex differences in cognitive abilities are not consistently established though some minor differences in mathematical reasoning and spatial abilities may be observed. Prenatal environments or genetic predispositions may influence differences between boys and girls. Beliefs of parents play a role.

Alternative Views of Intelligence

• Information processing speed can influence IQ scores; people with faster processing often score higher.
• The flexibility and types of strategies used to solve problems can also be a key part of intelligence.
• Other theoretical perspectives exist, like Sternberg's triarchic theory and Gardner's multiple intelligences, which identify different types/aspects/components of intelligence.

Measuring Creativity

• Conventional IQ tests do not assess creativity directly.
• Divergent thinking, the ability to generate multiple solutions to a problem, is a key component of creativity. Assessment of creativity often uses tests that measure aspects of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.