1. Chapter 8 Outline
Please note that much of this information is quoted from the text.
I. THE CONCEPT OF INTELLIGENCE
A. What Is Intelligence?
1. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems and to adapt to and learn from
experiences.
2. This broad definition does not satisfy everyone.
B. Intelligence tests
1. Binet and Weschler
a. The Binet Tests
•Binet devised a method to identify children who were unable to learn in school.
•Mental age (MA) is an individual’s level of mental development relative to
others.
•Intelligence quotient (IQ) is a person’s mental age divided by chronological
age (CA), multiplied by 100. If mental age is the same as chronological age, then
the person’s IQ is 100.
•Then newest version, The Stanford-Binet 5, has five content areas: fluid
reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial reasoning, and
working memory.
•By administering intelligence tests to many people of different ages from
different backgrounds, researchers have found that the scores represent a normal
distribution. A normal distribution is symmetrical, with most scores falling in
the middle of the possible range of scores and few scores appearing toward the
extremes of the range.
•The Stanford-Binet intelligence test continues to be one of the most widely used
individual tests of intelligence.
b. The Wechsler Scales
•The Wechsler scales provide an overall IQ score and several composite scores in
different areas of intelligence.
•Patterns of strengths and weaknesses in different areas of the student’s
intelligence can be examined.
2. The use and Misuse of Intelligence Tests
• Psychological tests are tools and their effectiveness depends on the knowledge,
skill, and integrity of the user.
• Intelligence tests have real-world applications as predictors of school and job
success.
• The single number provided by many IQ tests can easily lead to false
expectations about an individual.
• Even though they have limitations, tests of intelligence are among psychology’s
most widely used tools.
3. Theories of Multiple Intelligences
a. The use of a single score to describe how people perform on intelligence tests
suggests intelligence is a general ability. Not all psychologists agree.
b. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of intelligence proposes three main types of
intelligence:
• Analytical intelligence involves the ability to analyze, evaluate, compare,
and contrast.
• Creative intelligence consists of the ability to create, design, invent,

2. originate, and imagine.
• Practical intelligence focuses on the ability to use, apply, implement,
and put into practice.
c. Triarchic Theory in the Classroom
• Students with different triarchic patterns look different in school.
• Students with high analytic ability tend to do well in conventional
schools.
• Most tasks require some combination of the three types of intelligence.
• Some argue that it is important for classroom instruction to give students
opportunities to learn through all three types of intelligence.
d. Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
• Gardner thinks there are eight types of intelligence:
• Verbal skills: the ability to think in words and to use language to express
meaning.
• Mathematical skills: the ability to carry out mathematical operations.
• Spatial skills: the ability to think in three-dimensional ways.
• Bodily-kinesthetic skills: the ability to manipulate objects and be
physically skilled.
• Musical skills: possessing sensitivity to pitch, melody, rhythm, and tone.
• Interpersonal skills: the ability to understand and effectively interact with
others.
• Intrapersonal skills: the ability to understand one’s self and effectively
direct one’s life.
• Naturalist skills: the ability to observe patterns in nature and understand
natural and human-made systems (farmers, botanists, ecologists,
landscapers).
• Gardner notes that each of the eight intelligences can be destroyed by brain
damage, that each involves unique cognitive skills, and that each shows up in
exaggerated fashion in the gifted and in individuals with mental retardation or
autism.
• Gardner believes that everyone has all of these intelligences to varying degrees.
• Multiple intelligences are related to how an individual prefers to learn and
process information.
e. Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom – Currently there is considerable interest in
applying Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences to children’s education.
5. Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive and express emotion accurately and
adaptively. This concept was initially developed by Salovey and Mayer.
•Critics argue that emotional intelligence broadens the concept of intelligence too far
and has not been adequately assessed and researched.
• Do People Have One or Many Intelligences?
•Gardner’s, Sternberg’s, and Salovey/Mayer’s views of intelligence have stimulated
researchers to think more broadly about what makes up people’s intelligence and
competence.
•Theories of multiple intelligences have motivated educators to develop programs
that instruct students in different domains.
• Many critics argue that the research base to support these theories has not yet
developed.
•A number of psychologists still support Spearman’s concept of g, since a person
who excels at one type of intellectual task is likely to excel in other tasks.

3. •Some experts who argue for the existence of general intelligence believe that
individuals also have specific intellectual abilities.
II. CONTROVERSIES AND GROUP COMPARISONS
A. The Influence of Heredity and Environment
1. Genetic Influences
• The difference in average correlations for identical and fraternal twins is not very
high, only .15.
• The heritability of a trait refers to the amount of variance in the population that
can be attributed to genetic influences. It is important to remember that
heritability tells us about a population, not specific individuals.
• Researchers have found that the heritability of intelligence increases from as low
as 0.45 in infancy to as high as 0.80 in late adulthood.
• The heritability index has several flaws:
• The data are virtually all from traditional IQ tests, which some experts
believe are not always the best indicator of intelligence.
• The heritability index assumes that we can treat genetic and environmental
influences as factors that can be separated, with each part contributing a
distinct amount of influence.
2. Environmental Influences
• Most researchers agree that there are both genetic and environmental influences
on intelligence.
• Variables that have been found to correlate with intelligence include how much
parents communicate with their children in the first three years of life, schooling
(or lack thereof), and parent training.
• Intelligence test scores have increased worldwide in a relatively short amount of
time. This phenomenon has been termed the Flynn effect and may be due to
increasing levels of education that have been attained worldwide.
• Due to the Flynn effect, new norms are periodically developed for IQ tests.
o A norm is a performance standard for a test, and it is created by giving the
test to a large number of individuals representative of the population for
whom the test is intended.
• For children born to disadvantaged families, there is an emphasis on early
prevention rather than remediation. A recent review of the research on early
interventions concluded the following:
o High-quality center-based interventions improve children’s intelligence and
school achievement.
o The effects are strongest for poor children and for children whose parents
have little education.
o The positive benefits continue into adolescence, although the effects are
smaller than in early childhood or the beginning of elementary school.
o The programs that are continued into elementary school have the most
sustained long-term effects.
• Research in Life-Span Development: The Abecedarian Project
o This program demonstrated the success of providing early intervention to
disadvantaged children.
B. Group Comparisons and Issues
1. Cross-Cultural Comparisons
• Cultures vary in their definitions of intelligence and depend a great deal on the

4. environment.
• People in Western cultures tend to view intelligence in terms of reasoning and
thinking skills, whereas people in Eastern cultures see intelligence as a way for
members of a community to successfully engage in social roles.
2. Cultural Bias in Testing
• Many of the early intelligence tests were biased against rural children, children
from low-income families, minority children, and children who do not speak
English proficiently.
• Contexts of Life-Span Development – Larry P.: Intelligent, But Not on
Intelligence Tests
o This section discusses one of the students involved in a class action law suit
which challenged the use of IQ tests for placing students in EMR classes at
school.
o The lawsuit brought to light the bias in some such tests.
• Culture-fair tests are tests of intelligence that attempt to be free of cultural bias.
• Two types have been devised: one type includes items that are familiar to
children from all SES and ethnic backgrounds; the second type removes all
verbal questions.
• Some people question whether it is even possible to create a culture-free test of
intelligence because intelligence itself is culturally determined. Some suggest
that the best we can do is produce culture-reduced tests.
3. Ethnic Comparisons
• In the United States, children from African American and Latino families score
below children from White families on standardized tests.
• It is important to note that there is wide variation in scores for all groups of
people (15 to 25 percent of all African American children score higher than half
of all White children).
• The gap between the scores has narrowed as African Americans have
experienced improved social, economic, and educational opportunities, which
highlights that these differences are environmentally influenced.
• One potential influence on intelligence test performance is stereotype threat, the
anxiety that one’s behavior might confirm a negative stereotype about one’s
group.
4. Gender Comparisons
 Average scores on IQ tests for men and women do not differ; however, the
variability in scores does. Specifically, men are more likely than women to have
extreme scores.
 There appear to be gender differences in specific intellectual capacities. Men
score better in some nonverbal areas, whereas women score better in some verbal
areas. There is, however, considerable overlap in the scores.
III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE
A. Tests of Infant Intelligence
• Arnold Gesell developed tests that were mainly used to distinguish normal babies
from abnormal babies for the purpose of adoption.
• The developmental quotient (DQ) is an overall developmental score that combines
subscores in the motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social domains in the Gesell
Assessment of Infants.
• The Bayley Scales of Infant Development are widely used in assessing infant

5. development. The current version, Bayley-III, has five scales: cognitive, language,
motor, socio-emotional, and adaptive.
• The Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence is increasingly being used and focuses on the
infants’ information-processing abilities.
B. Stability and Change in Intelligence Through Adolescence
• Strong correlations are found between IQ scores at age 6 and age 10, and between the
ages of 10 and 18.
• Other studies show even more fluctuation during childhood, especially when
individual IQ rather than group IQ tests are used.
• IQ scores can fluctuate a lot during childhood and intelligence does not appear to be
as stable as it was originally envisioned.
C. Intelligence in Adulthood
1. Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence
• Crystallized intelligence is an individual’s accumulated information and verbal
skills, which continue to increase throughout the life span.
• Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason abstractly and begins to decline from
middle adulthood on through later adulthood.
• John Horn argues that crystallized intelligence increases through the life span,
whereas fluid intelligence declines in middle adulthood. One caveat of Horn’s
work is that his data were cross-sectional and thus could be affected by cohort
effects.
2. The Seattle Longitudinal Study
• Conducted by K. Warner, Schaie initially tested 500 adults in 1956. Schaie found
that when assessed longitudinally, intellectual abilities are less likely to decline
and may even improve in middle adulthood than when assessed cross-sectionally.
• In further analysis, Schaie recently examined generational differences in parents
and their children over a seven-year time frame from 60 to 67 years of age.
• Higher levels of cognitive functioning occurred for the second generation in
inductive reasoning, verbal memory, and spatial orientation, whereas the first
generation scored higher on numerical ability.
• The parent generation showed cognitive decline from 60 to 67 years of age, but
their offspring showed stability or modest increase in cognitive functioning
across the same age range.
3. Cognitive Mechanics and Cognitive Pragmatics
• Paul Baltes clarified the distinction between those aspects of the aging mind that
decline and those that remain stable or even improve. He makes a distinction
between cognitive mechanics and cognitive pragmatics.
• Cognitive mechanics refer to the “hardware” of the mind; in other words, the
biology of the brain. These include things such as the speed and accuracy of
processes involved in sensory input, attention, visual and motor memory, and so
on. Because these things are strongly associated with biology and evolution, it is
very likely that they will decline with age.
• Cognitive pragmatics refers to the “software programs” of the mind. These
include reading and writing skills, language comprehension, knowledge about the
self and life, and so on. Culture seems to have a strong effect on these processes,
thus they can actually improve with age.
• Some experts now use the terms fluid mechanics and crystallized pragmatics due
to the similarity of the types of intelligences and these terms.
4. Wisdom

6. • Wisdom is expert knowledge about the practical aspects of life that permit
excellent judgment about important matters.
• Research by Baltes and his colleagues have found the following:
• High levels of wisdom are rare.
• The time frame of late adolescence and early adulthood is the main age
window for wisdom to emerge.
• Certain life experiences, such as having wisdom-enhancing mentors,
contribute to higher levels of wisdom.
• People higher in wisdom have values that are more likely to consider the
welfare of others rather than their own happiness.
• Personality-related factors, such as openness to experience, generativity, and
creativity, are better predictors of wisdom than cognitive factors such as
intelligence.
• Sternberg argues that wisdom is linked to both practical and academic
intelligence.
IV. THE EXTREMES OF INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY
• Intelligence tests can assess incidences of mental retardation and intellectual giftedness.
A. Mental Retardation
• Mental retardation is a condition of limited mental ability in which an individual
has a low IQ, usually below 70 on a traditional intelligence test, has difficulty
adapting to everyday life, and first exhibits these characteristics by age 18.
• Mental retardation can have an organic cause, or it can be social and cultural in
origin.
• Organic retardation is mental retardation caused by a genetic disorder or by brain
damage; organic refers to the tissues or organs of the body, so there is some physical
damage in organic retardation.
• Cultural-familial retardation is a mental deficit in which no evidence of organic
brain damage can be found; individuals’ IQs range from 55 to 70. Psychologists
suspect that these mental deficits often result from growing up in a below-average
intellectual environment.
B. Giftedness
1. What Is Giftedness?
• People who are gifted have above-average intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher)
and/or superior talent for something.
• Schools typically select children who have intellectual superiority and academic
aptitude, whereas talented children in other areas (music, arts) are often
overlooked.
• Recent research has found no relationships between giftedness and mental
disorders.
2. Characteristics of Gifted Children
• Contrary to popular belief, Terman found that gifted children are NOT
maladjusted.
• Ellen Winner described three characteristics of gifted children:
— Precosity: Mastering an area earlier than their peers.
— Marching to their own drummer: They learn in a qualitatively different way,
needing little help or scaffolding from adults and often preferring to solve
problems in unique ways.
— A passion to master: They are driven to understand the domain in which they

7. have high ability. They display intense, obsessive interest and ability to
focus.
3. Life Course of the Gifted
• Giftedness is likely a product of heredity and environment.
•Individuals who are gifted recall that they had signs of high ability in a particular
area at a very young age, prior to or at the beginning of formal training.
•Researchers have also found that individuals with world-class status in the arts,
mathematics, science, and sports all report strong family support and years of
training and practice.
•Deliberate practice is an important characteristic of individuals who become experts
in a particular domain.
•In Terman’s research on children with superior IQs, the children typically became
experts in a well-established domain; however, they did not become major creators.
•One reason that some gifted children do not become gifted adults is that they have
been pushed too hard by overzealous parents and teachers.
4. Education of Children Who are Gifted
• An increasing number of experts argue that the education of gifted children in the
United States requires a significant overhaul.
• Underchallenged gifted children can become disruptive, skip classes, and lose
interest in achieving.
• Some educators conclude that the inadequate education of children who are
gifted has been compounded by the federal government’s No Child Left Behind
policy.
• A number of experts argue that too often children who are gifted are socially
isolated and underchallenged in the classroom.
C. Creativity
1. What Is Creativity?
• Creativity is the ability to think about something in novel and unusual ways and
to come up with unique solutions to problems.
• Guilford distinguishes between convergent and divergent thinking:
• Convergent thinking produces one correct answer and is characteristic of
the kind of thinking required on conventional intelligence tests.
• Divergent thinking produces many different answers to the same question
and is more characteristic of creativity.
2. Steps in the Creative Process
 Preparation
 Incubation
 Insight
 Evaluation
 Elaboration
3. Characteristics of Creative Thinkers
• Flexibility and playful thinking: Including the use of brainstorming, a technique
in which members of a group are encouraged to come up with as many ideas as
possible, play off each other’s ideas, and say practically whatever comes to mind.
• Inner motivation: They tend to be less inspired by grades, money, or favorable
feedback from others.
• Willingness to risk: Creative thinkers learn to cope with unsuccessful projects
and to learn from failures.
• Objective evaluation of work: They may use an established set of criteria or rely

8. on the judgments of respected, trusted others.
4. Creativity in Schools
• An important teaching goal is to help students become more creative.
• School environments that encourage independent work, are stimulating but not
distracting, and make resources readily available are likely to encourage
students’ creativity.
• Some strategies for increasing children’s creative thinking include:
o Encourage brainstorming
o Provide environments that stimulate creativity
o Don’t overcontrol students
o Encourage internal motivation
o Build children’s confidence
o Guide children to be persistent and delay gratification
o Encourage children to take intellectual risks
o Introduce children to creative people
• Applications in Life-Span Development: Living a More Creative Life
• Try to be surprised by something every day.
• Try to surprise at least one person every day.
• Write down what surprised you and how you surprised others.
• When something sparks your interest, follow it.
• Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
• Take charge of your schedule.
• Spend time in settings that stimulate your creativity.
5. Changes During Adulthood
• Research suggests that creativity peaks in the 40s and then declines.
• The decline is gradual, and an impressive array of creative accomplishments
occurs in late adulthood.
• The decline is likely to be domain specific.