Understanding Intelligence and IQ Testing

• Intelligence involves adaptation, analysis, flexibility, proficiency, and problem-solving abilities.
• Intelligence as a construct is abstract, unobservable, and based on thoughts, behaviors, and psychological phenomena.
• Intelligence enables living beings to manipulate their environment through learning, understanding, and adaptation.
• A.H. at 14 months can write her name
• A.H. at 2 years old, she learned to read by herself
• A.H. at 5, amazed her kindergarten teacher by bringing a laptop to class
• A.H. was reading an encyclopedia on the laptop
• A.H. at 10, studied an entire high school algebra course in just 12 hours
• B.A. at 10 years old, can write his name and count, but he struggles with simple addition and subtraction problems
• B.A. has been held back twice and still cannot complete tasks that his 8-year-old classmates find easy
• In 1904, Alfred Binet was tasked by the French Minister of Public Education to distinguish less capable students from more capable ones.
• The Binet test assessed intelligence-related abilities to determine if a child's performance matched their potential.
• Intelligence is used to explain adaptive behavior in people.

Psychometricians

• Specialize in measuring psychological characteristics related to intelligence.
• They use patterns of test scores to find evidence for general and specific abilities.

Spearman's Psychometric Approach

• A measurement of individual differences in behaviors and abilities
• Spearman found that mental ability test performance relies on a general ability factor ("g").
• Performance also requires a specific ability factor ("s").
• High performance in diverse cognitive tasks correlates well, suggesting individuals with excellence in one area tend to excel in others.
• All intelligent abilities have an area of overlap, which is called "g" for general ability.
• Each ability depends partly on an “s” factor for specific ability
• Spearman states the "g" factor is the dominant ability when doing tasks, while the "s" factors are lesser abilities.
• Psychologists disagree about what the "g" factor represents.
• Correlations between mental tasks may stem from shared underlying processes that grow together, dependent on the same factor. Conflicting theories propose hierarchical intelligence theories with both general and specific components.

Cattell's View of Intelligence (1963)

• Fluid intelligence is the ability to think critically and flexibly in new situations and to solve novel problems.
• Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use learned knowledge and examples.
• Examples of Fluid intelligence include the ability to perceive relationships, and gain new types of knowledge
• Examples of Crystallized intelligence include factual knowledge, arithmetic facts, and knowledge of meaning of words and state capitals

Measuring Fluid Intelligence

• Fluid intelligence is measured using the ability to assemble puzzles, determine entries in numbers and identify relationships between objects
• Children who do well on fluid intelligence tests may not necessarily perform well on crystallized intelligence tests.
• Fluid intelligence peaks before age 20 and then remains steady throughout life.
• Crystallized intelligence continues to increase with age if people are active and alert.
• A 20-year-old may be more successful than a 65-year-old at solving an unfamiliar problem
• A 65-year-old will excel on problems in their area of specialization
• Fluid intelligence can enhanced through intentional training of working memory, problem-solving skills, and other cognitive training.
• Due to fluid intelligence being applied to novel solutions, the types of training implemented must be frequently changed

John Carroll's Three-Stratum Theory

• Incorporates general, broad, and specific cognitive abilities.
• The levels of abilities include cognitive speediness, fluid intelligence, processing speed, broad visual perception and auditory perception among other skills.

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

• It mentions linguistic, logical-mathematical, and spatial reasoning

• Six remaining distinct intelligences unique to Gardner's theory include:

• Musical – Sensitivity to individual tones and phrases of music

• Bodily-Kinesthetic – Use of one's body in highly skilled ways for expressive or goal-directed purposes

• Interpersonal – Ability to notice and make distinctions among the moods, temperaments, motivations,

• Intrapersonal – access to one's own feelings, ability to draw on one's emotions to guide

• Naturalistic -- sensitivity and understanding of plants, animals, and other aspects of nature

• Existential – sensitivity to issues related to the meaning of life, death

• Emotional intelligence is seen as on of Gardener's nontraditional aspects of intelligence

• The first Intelligence tests were comprised of simple tasks using by Binet and Simon to distinguish who would do well in school

• An intelligence quotient (IQ) is used to measure a child's intelligence relative to those of the same age.

• IQ tests measure an individual's probable performance in school but do not explain it.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

• William Stern coined the term intelligence quotient in 1912.
• IQ reflects the ability to reason and think in comparison with others in the same age group.
• IQ can be assessed by reasoning, problem-solving, and logic tasks.

How To Measure IQ

• Researchers statistically measure an average mental age by calculating an average of intelligence for each group, based on what 70% can do at their age.
• A person's mental age is their level of intelligence relative to others in the same age group.
• To calculate IQ, divide mental age by chronological age and multiply by 100.
• The Stanford-Binet IQ Test measures language, memory, the ability to follow instructions, and computational skills
• Age-graded items measure a person's mental level or age.
• Adaptive Testing determines the age level of the most advanced items that a child could consistently answer correctly
• Children whose mental age equal their actual or chronological age were considered to be of "regular" intelligence.
• Average children will have an IQ of 100 because their mental age equals their chronological age.
• Two-thirds of children score between 85 and 115, while 95% score between 70 and 130.
• IQ Measures:
• 69 and under: Extremely low/mental disability
• 70 to 79: Borderline mental disability
• 80 to 89: Low average
• 90 to 114: Average intelligence
• 115 to 129: Above average IQ
• 130 to 144: Moderately gifted
• 145 to 159: Highly gifted
• 160 and up: Highest IQ, superior/profoundly gifted

WISC-V

• Children ages 6 to 16 take the WISC-V test
• A WISC score of 130 and above is considered gifted, while 69 and below is impaired
• Tests in WISC assess verbal comprehension, visual spatial, fluid reasoning, memory and procession speed

Test Reliability

• Reliability is when research can be repeated under the same conditions
• High reliability consists of consistent results that can be reproduced when conducted again
• Reliability considerations include:
• Consistent results over time
• Consistent measurements across samples
• Inter-rater reliability where different researchers complete the same study.

Validity in Research

• Validity refers to the degree a measurement accurately reflects the concept it's designed to measure.
• Face validity is how well a test looks like it measures what it intends to.
• Construct validity is the degree to which a test relates to measurements of other ideas related to the same theory.
• Content validity is the degree a test measures each aspect of a particular construct.
• Criterion validity, includes concurrent and predictive validity, assessing what someone might do based on current behavior.
• Tests Developers argue their IQ tests are valid measures as the scores related to children's grades in school
• Intelligence is relatively stable, and IQ scores tend to remain fairly consistent from early childhood.
• IQ scores are more consistent when IQ tests are administered close together in time.
• Scores increase when academic achievement is important, with active parental involvement, and firm but moderate disciplinary procedures.
• Factors that influence intelligence includes genetics, interaction, and gender.

Gender

- Boys and girls are equivalent in most aspects of intelligence

• boys tend to be over represented at both ends of the spectrum.
• Girls are stronger in verbal fluency, writing, and perceptual speed. -Boys excel in visual-spatial processing, science, and mathematical problem solving from a young age. -Attending school correlates to children becoming smarter, regardless of socioeconomic status.

Summer Learning

• Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds often experience a decline in achievement scores, while those from high socioeconomic backgrounds maintain or improve them.
• Longer school years can improve achievement scores and increase IQ levels and skill mastery.

Poverty

• Children who spend more years in poverty tend to have lower IQs.
• Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds often have IQs 10-15 points lower than middle-class children.
• Adequate health services, parenting, stimulation, and emotional support can impair intellectual growth.
• Raven's Progressive Matrices are culture-fair tests where the matrices progress from easy to difficult items and measure abstract reasoning.

Drawbacks of IQ Testing

• Misinterpretation of IQ Data: Historical misuse of IQ scores has led to harmful policies and practices in the 1900s.
• Notable Quote: Oliver Wendell Holmes said it is better to execute for crime to let them starve for their imbecility
• Nazi Germany sterilized individuals with disabilities under the guise of purifying society.
• IQ data highlights the dangers of viewing IQ traits as fixed characteristics. -Science can be misused to justify discrimination and human rights violations.

The Flynn Effect

• Average IQ scores are steadily increasing from generation to generation.
• Early 20th-century people might score an IQ of 70 by today's standards.
• Modern people could score an IQ of 130 on early 20th-century tests.
• Contributing effects include better tests instrumentation, environment, education, and more affluent living conditions
• Fluid intelligence is the ability to think critically and flexibly in new situations and to solve novel problems. Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence in Al
• Legg and Hutter's state “Intelligence measures an agent's ability to achieve goals in a wide variety of environments”
• Dual definitions of intelligence in Al:Differentiating crystallized ability from ability to acquire skill is critical to understanding and evaluating intelligence in Al.

Al evaluations

• Al evaluation is skill-based and involves task-specific metrics.
• Human review for judging output
• White-box analysis for system behavior inspection
• Peer confrontation for competing with Al or humans and Benchmarks
• Problems includes only good at one task, and not like human reasoning
• Al evaluations measures generalization by considering tasks to handle situations
• Broad generalization, local generalization, extreme generalization and universal
• A new measure of intelligence should seek to quantify generalization strength, since unlimited priors exhibit high skill at any number of tasks.
• general Al should be benchmarked against human intelligence and should be founded on a similar set of knowledge priors.
• The dataset ARC is used to describe characteristics.
• LLMs are pattern recognition systems predicting the next word based on statistical analysis of massive text datasets.