INTELLIGENCE

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
 Psychologists have had varying definitions of
intelligence and how to best assess it for as long
as there has been a discipline of psychology. This
chapter examines the numerous definitions of
intelligence as well as several methodologies to
measuring it. We'll discuss some of the major
concerns regarding how and why intelligence is
measured along the way.
DEFINITION OF
INTELLIGENCE
The following definitions have been
paraphrased for consistency.

Spearman (1904, 1923): a general ability that

involves mainly the education relations and
correlates
Binet and Simon (1905): the ability to judge well. to INTELLIGENCE
understand well: to reason well
Terman (1916): the capacity to form concepts and
to grasp their significance
Pintner (1921): the ability of the individual to adapt
adequately to relatively new situations in life
Thorndike (1921): The power of good responses
from the point of view of truth or fact.
The following definitions have been
paraphrased for consistency.
Thurstone (1921): the capacity to inhibit instinctive
adjustments, flexibly imagine diffrent responses,
and realize modified instinctive adjustments into
overt behavior
Wechsler (1939): The aggregate or global capacity
INTELLIGENCE
of the individual to act purposefully, to think
rationally, and to deal effectively with the
environment
Humphreys (1971): the entire repetoire of acquired
skills, knowledge, learning sets, and generalization
tendencies considered intellectual in nature that are
available at nay one period of time
The following definitions have been
paraphrased for consistency.

Piaget (1972): a generic term to indicate the

superior forms of organization or equilibrium od
cognitive structuring used for adaptation to the
physical form and social environment
INTELLIGENCE
Sternberg (1895, 1986): the mental capacity to
automize information processing and to emit
contextually appropriate behavior in response to
novelty; intelligence also includes metacomponents,
performance components, and knowledge-
acquisition components
The following definitions have been
paraphrased for consistency.
Eysenck (1986): error free transmission of
information though the cortex
Gardner (1986): the ability or skill to solve problems
or to fashion products that are valued within one or
more cultural settings
INTELLIGENCE
Ceci (1994): multiple innate abilities that serve as a
range of possibilities; these abilities develop
depending upon motivation and exposure to
relevant educational experiences.
Sattler (2001): intelligent behavior reflects the
survival skills of the species, beyond those
associated with basic physiological processes.
PSYHCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

GALTON & SENSORY

KEENNESS

Sir Francis Galton and his disciple J.

McKeen Cattell thought that
intelligence was underwritten by
keen sensory abilities. This
incomplete and misleading
assumption was based on a
plausible premise
INTELLIGENCE
PSYHCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

GALTON & SENSORY

KEENNESS

The only information that reaches us

concerning outward events appears
to pass through the avenues of our
senses; and the more perceptive the
senses of difference the larger is the
field upon which our judgment and
intelligence can act (Galton, 1983)
INTELLIGENCE
 SPEARMAN AND THE

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
g FACTOR
Based on extensive study of the
patterns of correlations between
various tests of intellectual and sensory
ability, Charles Spearman (1904, 1923,
1927) proposed that intelligence
consisted of two kinds of factors: a
single general fator g and numerous
specific factors s1, s2, s3, and so on. As
a necessary adjunct to his theory,
Spearman helped invent factor

INTELLIGENCE
analysis to aid his investigation of
nature of intelligence
 THURSTONE & THE
P
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

PRIMARY MENTAL
ABILITIES
Louis Thurstone (1931) developed factor
analysis procedures capable of
searching correlation matrices for the
existence of group factors. He
concluded that several broad group

A
factors - and not a single general
factor - could best explain empirical
results.
INTELLIGENCE
 PRIMARY MENTAL ABILITIES
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

VERBAL COMPREHENSION: The best measure is vocabulary,

but this ability is also involved in reading comprehension and
verbal analogies
WORD FLUENCY: Measured by such tests as anagrams or
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quickly naming words in a given category (e.g., foods

beginning with the letter R)
NUMBER: Virtually synonymous with the speed and accuracy
of simple arithmetic computation
INTELLIGENCE

SPACE: Such as the ability to visualize how a three-

dimensional object would appear if it was rotated or partially
disassesmbled.
 PRIMARY MENTAL ABILITIES
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY: Skill at rote memory tasks such as

learning to associate pairs of unrelated items.
PERCEPTUAL SPEED: Involved in simple clerical tasks such as
11

checking for similarities and differences in visual details

INDUCTIVE REASONING: The best measures of this factor
involve finding a rule, as in a number series completion test.
INTELLIGENCE
 CATTELL AND THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

FLUID/CRYSTALLIZED
DISTINCTION
Raymond Cattel (1941, 1971) proposed
an influential theory of the structure of
intelligence that has been revised and
extended by John Horn (1968, 1994).
Cattell and Horn identified two major
factors, which they labeled fluid
intelligence (gf) and crystallized (gc).
Intelligence
 FLUID INTELLIGENCE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

IS A LARGELY NONVERBAL AND RELATIVELY CULTURE-

REDUCED FORM OF MENTAL EFFICIENCY. IT IS RELATED
TO A PERSON'S INHERENT CAPACITY TO LEARN AND
SOLVE PROBLEMS. THUS, FLUID INTELLIGENCE IS USED
WHEN A TASK REQUIRES ADAPTATION TO A NEW
SITUATION

CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE
02

INVOLVES KNOWLEDGE THAT COMES FROM PRIOR LEARNING

AND PAST EXPERIENCES. SITUATIONS THAT REQUIRE
CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE INCLUDE READING
COMPREHENSION AND VOCABULARY EXAMS. CRYSTALLIZED
INTELLIGENCE IS BASED UPON FACTS AND ROOTED IN
INTELLIGENCE

EXPERIENCES. AS WE AGE AND ACCUMULATE NEW

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING, CRYSTALLIZED
INTELLIGENCE BECOMES STRONGER.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

PIAGET AND
ADAPTATION
The Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget
05

(1896-1980) devised a theory of

cognitive development that has a
number of implications for the design
of children's intelligence tests.
INTELLIGENCE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

His new perspective

included the following
points:

Children's thought is qualitatively

from adults' thought
Psychological structures called
schemas are primary basis for
gaining new knowledge about the
world.
INTELLIGENCE
 GUILFORD & THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

STRUCTURE-OF-
INTELLECT

J.P. Guilford (1967) proposed an

elegant structure-of-intellect (SOI)
model to summarize his findings.
Visually conceived, Guilford's SOI model
classifies intellectual abilities along
three dimensions called OPERATIONS,
CONTENTS, AND PRODUCTS.
INTELLIGENCE
 GUILFORD & THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

STRUCTURE-OF-
INTELLECT
by OPERATIONS. Guilford has in mind
the kind of most intellectual operation
required by the test. Most test items
emphasize just one of the operations.
Cognition
Memory
Divergent production
INTELLIGENCE

Convergent production
Evaluation
 GUILFORD & THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

STRUCTURE-OF-
INTELLECT
CONTENTS refer to the nature of the
materials or information presented to
the examinee. The five content
categories are as follows
Visual
Auditory
Symbolic
INTELLIGENCE

Semantic
Behavioral
 GUILFORD & THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

STRUCTURE-OF-
INTELLECT
The third dimension in Guilford's model,
PRODUCTS, refers to the different kinds
of mental structures that the brain
must produce to derive a correct
answer. The 6 kinds of products are:

Unit Transformation
Class Implication
INTELLIGENCE

Relation
System
GARDNER AND THE THEORY OF
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
Howard Gardner (1983, 1993) has proposed a
theory of multiple intelligence based loosely upon
the study of brain-behavior relationships. Based
upon the criterion of autonomous intelligence, he
proposes that the following seven natural
intelligence: linguistic, logical, mathematical,
spatial musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal,
and intrapersonal

INTELLIGENCE
 STERNBERG & THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

TRIARCHIC THEORY OF
INTELLIGENCE
Robert Sternberg (1985, 1986, 1996)
takes a much wider view on the nature
of intelligence than most previous
15

theorists.

Sternberg's theory is called triarchic

(ruled by three) because it deals with
three aspects of intelligence:
INTELLIGENCE

COMPONENTIAL, EXPERIENTIAL, AND

CONTEXTUAL.
COMPONENTIAL INTELLIGENCE
Metacomponents or executive processes (e.g.. planning)
Performance components (e.g., syllogistic reasoning)
Knowledge-acquisition components (e.g., ability to acquire
vocabulary words)

EXPERIENTIAL INTELLIGENCE
Ability to deal with novelty
Ability to automize information processing
CONTEXTUAL INTELLIGENCE
Adaptation to real-world environment
Selection of a suitable environment
Shaping of the environment
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST
SELECTION
COGNITIVE
PERFORMANCE- Tests that sample real-time
BASED MEASURES functioning of abilities by means of
right or wrong answers - answers
that can be calculated in
quantitative terms and yield
summary scores that are tied to
normative data
Includes intelligence, ability,
aptitude, and achievement tests
COGNITIVE
PERFORMANCE- Examples of cognitive performance-
based measures include the various
BASED MEASURES composite and individual measures
of intelligence, measures of
achievement, and measure of
specifc skills (aptitude)
These include (but are by no means
limited to) tests such as the
Wechsler tests of intelligence,
achievement, and memory oand
Stanford-Binet tests.
AMBIGUOUS-DEMAND PERFROMANCE-
BASED (PROJECTIVE) MEASURES
Tests with no right or wrong answers, desgined to elicit open-
responses
Traditionally, such tests have been called "projective" tests
Examples of ambiguous-demand test include the
Rorschach, TAT, figure drawing methods, and sentence
completion tests
SELF-REPORT MEASURES
Instruments that as k people to answer
descriptive questions about themselves, whether
in forced-choice or open-ended format, are self-
report (or self-attribution; Bornstein, 2007)
measures
For example the Beck Depression Inventory II
explicitly questions attributes of depression while
the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-
2 is asking for self-report on each item, the
responder is not always clear what her answers
will reflect in terms of personality profiles