Exam 10: Section 1: Intelligence

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The answer should include the following information: (1) Spearman believed that if there is a single ability called intelligence that enables people to perform a variety of intelligent behaviors, then people who have the ability should do well in just about everything, and those who lack it should do well at nothing. He developed this belief by measuring how well school-age children could discriminate small differences in color, auditory pitch, and weight; then he correlated these measures with the children's grades. He combined the results into a two-factor theory of intelligence that suggested that every task requires a combination of a general ability (g) and skills that are specific to the task (s); (2) The two-factor theory of intelligence can be illustrated in someone with exceptional musical ability. According to Spearman, this exceptional ability is the combination of a high level of general ability (g) combined with knowledge and ability specific to music (s). Because g is high, Spearman would predict that the person probably will do well in other areas, such as verbal comprehension and the ability to solve mathematical problems. The person may not perform exceptionally in these areas, however, because the specific skills relative to those tasks may not have been mastered; (3) Louis Thurstone disagreed with Spearman's views. He noticed that although scores on most tests were positively correlated, scores on verbal tests were more highly correlated with scores on other verbal tests than they were with scores on perceptual tests. Thurstone took this to mean that there was no such thing as g and that there were instead a few stable and independent mental abilities, which he called primary mental abilities. These were neither general like g nor specific like s. Thurstone's primary mental abilities included word fluency, verbal comprehension, numerical abililty, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and reasoning. According to Thurstone's model, it is quite possible for someone to be both a great writer and inept at solving simple algebraic problems, because these tasks involve different primary mental abilities.

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The answer should include the following information: (1) Parents in high-SES homes have, on average, higher levels of intelligence than parents in low-SES homes. Because there is a genetic component to intelligence, the children of high-SES parents will, on average, have higher levels of intelligence than children of low-SES parents; (2) Children exposed to impoverished environments also may not receive adequate nutrition or medical care; they also have a greater risk of being exposed to toxins, pollutants, and stress than children of high-SES families. These factors may negatively impact brain development; (3) Children who grow up in intellectually stimulating environments tend to have higher intelligence scores than children who grow up in less stimulating environments. Compared to low-SES parents, high-SES parents are more likely to read to their children, ask their children stimulating questions, and expose them to more vocabulary.

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The answer should indicate that there are several situational factors that influence how individuals perform on intelligence tests. For example, African American students perform more poorly on tests if they are asked to report their race at the top of the answer sheet because doing so causes them to feel anxious about confirming racial stereotypes; the anxiety thus interferes with their test performance. Also, when Asian American women are reminded of their gender, they perform unusually poorly on math tests. However, when they are instead reminded of their ethnicity, they perform well on the same tests, probably because they are aware of stereotypes suggesting that Asians are especially good at math.