Psychological Attributes and Variations

• The chapter explores the variations in psychological attributes among individuals and the methods used to assess them
• It also explains the components of intelligent behavior and the differences between intelligence and aptitude

Individual Differences in Human Functioning

• Individual variations are common across all species and add to the diversity of nature
• People differ in physical characteristics and psychological dimensions (intelligence, personality traits)
• Individual differences refer to the distinctiveness and variations in people's characteristics and behavior patterns
• Situationism suggests that situations and circumstances influence behavior, with differing personalities responding similarly to powerful situational influences

Assessment of Psychological Attributes

• Assessment is the first step to understand psychological attributes
• Assessment measures and evaluates individuals' psychological attributes, using multiple methods compared against certain standards
• Psychological assessment uses systematic testing procedures to evaluate abilities, behaviors, and personal qualities
• Measurement uses scientific procedures
• Formal assessment: Objective, standardized, and organized
• Informal assessment: Varies case to case and from one assessor to another, being subjective

Domains of Psychological Attributes

• Psychological attributes are complex, multi-dimensional, and assessed across various domains
• Intelligence: The global capacity to understand the world, think rationally, and use resources effectively
• Intelligence tests: Provide a global measure of cognitive competence, including the ability to profit from schooling
• Aptitude: An individual's underlying potential for acquiring skills
• Aptitude tests: Predict what an individual will be able to do if given the proper environment and training
• Interest: Individual's preference for engaging in specific activities relative to others
• Assessment of interests: Helps students decide what subjects or courses they can pursue comfortably, promoting life satisfaction and performance on jobs
• Personality: Relatively enduring characteristics that make a person distinct from others
• Personality tests: Assess an individual's unique traits, predicting behavior
• Values: Enduring beliefs about an ideal mode of behavior
• Values assessment: Determines a person's dominant values (political, religious, social, economic)

Assessment Methods

• Psychological Test: Objective, standardized measure of an individual's mental and/or behavioral characteristics
• Objective tests: Measure dimensions of psychological attributes(intelligence, aptitude, etc)
• Objective tests: Used for clinical diagnosis, guidance, personnel selection, placement, and training
• Interview: Seeks information from a person on a one-to-one basis
• Used by counselors, salespeople, employers, and journalists
• Case Study: In-depth study of the individual in terms of psychological attributes, history, and environment
• Widely used by clinical psychologists, based on data from interviews, observations, questionnaires, psychological tests, etc
• Observation: Employs systematic, organized, and objective procedures to record behavioral phenomena
• Used to study real-time cases like mother-child interactions
• Major problems: Limited control over the situation and subjective interpretations
• Self-Report: A person provides factual information and/or opinions about themselves
• Information obtained through interview schedules, questionnaires, psychological tests, or personal diaries

Intelligence

• Intelligence: The ability to know how individuals differ and adapt their behavior to the environment
• Psychological notion: Includes mental alertness, ready wit, quickness in learning, and ability to understand relationships
• Oxford Dictionary: Defines intelligence as the power of perceiving, learning, understanding, and knowing
• Early theorists: Incorporate these attributes in defining intelligence
• Alfred Binet: Defined intelligence as the ability to judge well, understand well, and reason well
• Wechsler: Understood intelligence as functionality, the global and aggregate capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment
• Other psychologists: Intelligent individuals not only adapt but also modify or shape the environment

Theories of Intelligence

• Psychometric Approach: Considers intelligence as an aggregate of abilities expressed as a single index of cognitive abilities
• Information-Processing Approach: Describes how people use intellectual reasoning and problem-solving, focusing on how an intelligent person acts
• Uni or One Factor Theory of Intelligence : Intelligence consists of one similar set of abilities used for solving any problem
• Proposed by Alfred Binet
• Two-Factor Theory of Intelligence: Intelligence consists of a general factor (g-factor) and specific factors (s-factors)
• g-factor: Primary and common to all performances
• s-factor: Abilities specific to certain domains (singing, architecture, athletics, etc.)
• Proposed by Charles Spearman
• Theory of Primary Mental Abilities: Intelligence consists of seven primary abilities, each relatively independent of the others
• Proposed by Louis Thurstone;
• Primary abilities: Verbal Comprehension, Numerical Abilities, Spatial Relations, Perceptual Speed, Word Fluency, Memory, Inductive Reasoning
• Hierarchical Model of Intelligence: Abilities operate at two levels (Level I and Level II)
• Level I: Associative learning with output similar to input (rote learning and memory)
• Level II: Cognitive competence with higher-order skills transforming input for effective output
• Proposed by Arthur Jensen
• Structure-of-Intellect Model: Classifies intellectual traits among three dimensions (operations, contents, and products), resulting in 180 cells
• Proposed by J.P. Guilford
• Operations: Cognition, memory recording, memory retention, divergent production, convergent production, and evaluation
• Contents: Visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic, and behavioral
• Products: Units, classes, relations, systems, transformations, and implications
• Theory of Multiple Intelligences: Intelligence is distinct types that are independent that interact to solve problems
• Proposed by Howard Gardner

Types of Intelligences (Howard Gardner)

• Linguistic: Ability to produce and use language fluently to express one's thinking and understand others
• Word-Smart, sensitive to shades of word meanings
• Poets and writers exemplify this
• Logical-Mathematical: Ability to think logically and critically, and solve problems
• Abstract reasoning, manipulate symbols (mathematicians, scientists)
• Spatial: Ability to form visual images and patterns
• Form, use and transform mental images
• Pilots, sailors, sculptors, painters, architects, interior decorators, and surgeons possess the skill.
• Musical: Ability to produce and manipulate musical rhythms and patterns sensitive to sounds and vibrations
• Bodily-Kinesthetic: Ability to use the whole body or portions of it for display or construction of products and problem-solving
• Athletes, dancers, actors, sportspersons, gymnasts, and surgeons are likely to have.
• Interpersonal: Ability to understand subtle aspects of others' behaviors
• Understand the motives, feelings and behaviors of other people to bond into a comfortable relationship
• Psychologists, counselors, politicians, social workers, and religious leaders possess the skill.
• Intrapersonal: Ability to understand one's own feelings, motives, and desires is also significant.
• Naturalistic: Ability to identify features of the natural world like flora and fauna. Complete awareness of one's relation to the natural world.
• Hunters, farmers, tourists exhibit the type.

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

• Robert Sternberg's view of intelligence as the ability to adapt, shape, and select environments to achieve goals
• Componential Intelligence(Analytical): Analysis of information to solve problems
• Thinks analytically and critical and succeed
• Knowledge acquisition, meta-component, performance component
• Experiential Intelligence(Creative Intelligence): Using past experiences creatively to solve novel problems
• Creative performance integrates different experiences
• Contextual Intelligence: Ability to deal with environmental demands
• Adapts to present environment or select a more favorable environment, or modify the environment

Planning, Attention-Arousal, and Simultaneous-Successive (PASS) Model of Intelligence

• Developed by J.P. Das, Jack Naglieri, and Kirby's- intellectual activity with the interdependent functioning of three neurological systems
• Arousal/Attention: Enables a person to process information where an optimal level of arousal focuses our attention on relevant aspects of problem
• Simultaneous Processing: Integrates information into the knowledge system by perceiving relations among concepts and integrating them into meaningful patterns
• Used in Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) Test
• Successive Processing: Remembering all information serially so that the recall of one leads to the recall of another
• Used to learn digits, alphabets and multiplication tables
• Planning: Allows to think of the possible courses of action implement to reach a target, and evaluate its effectiveness. If a plan is bad, modify to fit in requirements of task or situation
• Cognitive Assessment System (CAS): Developed a battery of tests used to measure basic cognitive functions presumed to be independent of schooling meant for individuals between 5 and 18 years of age

Intelligence: Interplay of Nature and Nurture

• Intelligence results from an interaction between heredity and environment; heredity sets a range, while the environment shapes development
• Studies show twins have similarity and correlations in intelligence regardless if reared together or apart
• Identical twins reared together have the highest at 0.9, fraternal twins reared together have 0.6.
• Biological parents have more in common with adopted children
• Children from disadvantaged homes show rise in scores with families of high socio economic status and vice versa.

Assessment of Intelligence

• Mental Age (MA): The measure of a person's intellectual development relative to their age group
• Chronological Age (CA): The biological age from birth
• A test to measure the two, IQ, was devised by William Stern
• Intelligence Quotient (IQ): Mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100
• Average IQ: 100 irrespecitive of age
• Normal Distribution Curve: IQ scores distributed in general population. People with IQ scores of 90-110 are with normal distribution

Variations in Intelligence

• Intellectual disability, which consists of 2.2% of the population, is when persons have IQ below 70.
• To be judged with disability, a person must be with sub-average intellectual functioning. Deficits in adaptive behavior
• Intellectual Deficiency show variations in abilities. Individuals can range from those who that can be taught to work with assistance to those who can not be trained and require institutional care
• Mild: IQs 55 to approximately 70
• Moderate: IQs 35-40 to approximately 50-55.
• Severe: IQs 20-25 to approximately 35-40
• Profound: IQs below 20-25
• Individuals with down syndrome or with other genetic conditions may be more likely to have intellectual disability
• Intellectual Giftedness: Individuals showing higher performance because of potential
• Lewis Terman in 1925 studied the lives of those with around 130s
• Giftedness: General exceptional ability with superior performance in variety of areas
• Talent: Narrower term with remarkable ability in specific field
• Gifted include early signs like early span of recognition memory and early start of language skills
• Giftedness from teacher's point of view is teachers point of view depends of combination of high commitment, ability and creativity
• Children with giftedness require focus that is different from regular children in class

Types of Intelligence Tests

• Can be divided into 3 general groups, individual testing and group testing, then culture testings
• Individual Intelligence Tests: Administered to one person at a time by an test administrator to establish communication, can test body language
• Group intelligence test: Administered to people at the test room
• Inteligence test can be broken down into verbal and non-verbal, based on items used
• Culture-fair of Culture based tests: Intelligence tests in middle class biases

Culture and Intelligence

• Culture provides a social context in which people live, grow, and understand the world around them.
• Developed countries have technologically advanced system. Personal achievement has abilities to found personal judgment
• India has integrated intelligence, having connections with world enviroments
• Buddhi, term that India uses and explains through cognitive functions, opinion and action including feeling

Emotional Intelligence

• Is important because it can promote emotions
• The skills that create the ability to express and regulate is important
• EI is able to process accurately with emotion

Aptitude

• Focuses on mental ability

Creativitiy

• Is linked to other attributes like personality
• Some are high in creative while some are not
• Aspects if creativity consists if a the new and unique

Creativity and Intelligence

• Creative and talented geniuses work and create new facts, ides and innovations
• Limits of creative potential are set by their heredity, environmental factors also increase creativity
• Creativity test are open ended questions
• Expressions of creativity is wide based on tests.