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Intelligence & academic achievement

What is intelligence?

• Does it even exist or is it something that we invented?
• Related to three abilities:
  
  • Acquire knowledge
  • Think and reason effectively
  • Deal adaptively with the environment
• Different types of intelligence

What was the first attempt?

To conceptualize intelligence

• Francis Galton
  • First to use a questionnaire and survey to collect data on human behavior
  • Intelligence as a heritable trait
  • Conceptualization: energy and sensitivity to stimuli
  • Intelligence has something to do with the size of the skull » he measured skulls but couldn’t find any differences » we now know that not the size of the skull is related to intelligence, but the size of the brain
• Alfred Binet
  
  • Asked to develop an easy-to-administer objective test of intelligence for children (Binet-Simon test)
  • For the test he assumed that mental abilities develop with age » with this he could make a distinction between the chronological age and the mental age

How do we measure intelligence –

• Binet-Simon intelligent scales
  • Tasks of reasoning and problem solving
    • Verbal reasoning (e.g. defining certain objects)
    • Quantitative reasoning (e.g. counting backwards)
    • Abstract reasoning » involves defining abstract terms and problem questions
    • Short-term memory
  • Main limitations: relies heavily on verbal skills (that’s why it isn’t used often nowadays)
• Wechsler
  
  • It relies less on verbal skills. It measures both verbal IQ and performance IQ
  • Based on Carroll’s three striatum theory
  • Version for adults (called WAIS)
  • Version for children 6-18 (called WISC)
  • version for children 2 years and up (called WIPPSI)

Intelligence quotient

• IQ = ratio of mental age to chronological age, multiplied by 100
• The problem: it doesn’t work anymore at a certain age (it’s likely that for example a 25 year old can’t do a lot more tasks than a 23 y/o)
• Now based on standardization (with the median)
• The Flynn effect: gain in mean IQ for world regions (possible through increasing accessibility for schools, longer learning, more experience with testing and (maybe) improving in nutrition)

What is intelligence?

• Factor analysis: statistical method to identify clusters of variables that correlate highly with each other » if you score high on one task you will also score high on the other task if they correlate highly with each other
• General intelligence vs. multiple types of intelligence
  
  • Charles Spearman » factor analysis » The G-factor (general intelligence with ‘subcategories’)
  • Thurstone: the correlations between tasks are positive but not that high
    
    • 7 mental abilities » independent from each other
    • Independency of mental abilities criticized because they aren’t totally independent
• General intelligence
  
  • Fluid intelligence: reasoning, problem solving » increases through childhood and adolescence and decreases after adolescence
  • Crystallized intelligence: knowledge, relying on memory » develops almost your entire life
  • They’re different types of intelligence, but are related
• The model of intelligence we use today: three-stratum theory
  
  • The model has three different levels: General intelligence (top), influenced by fluid & crystalized intelligence, and the 7 abilities. These abilities determine how well people perform on specific cognitive, perceptual and speech tests

Does intelligence matter?

IQ is an important predictor of many outcomes (in child development)

• Academic success
• Occupational success
• Economic success
• Health behavior and outcomes
• Resilience » protective factor

What influences intelligence?

• Active effects: the genotype of a child influences the environment a child chooses
• Passive effects: : the overlap of the genotype of the parents and the child's genotype influences the environment the child grows up in
• Evocative effects: behavior of the child (due to its genotype) will influence the reaction of others to the child
• Biological factors
  
  • Metabolic disorders: PKU or Tay-Sachs disease
  • Cromosomal disorders: Down Syndrome, Fragile X syndrome
  • Premature birth
• Prenatal environment
  
  • Rubella
  • Drugs
  • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
  • Maternal prenatal stress or anxiety
• Schooling
  
  • Positive correlation between years of schooling and IQ independent of age
  • Practice makes perfect? » Brain connectivity (If there are more effective connections in the brain, it helps with learning)
  • Possible explanation for Flynn effect
• Poverty
  
  • Consistent negative effect of poverty on intelligence and IQ scores
  • Several underlying mechanisms:
    
    • Nutrition
    • Reduced access to health services
    • Household conflict
    • Less intellectual stimulation
• Beliefs/expectations
  
  • The Pygmalion Effect: if a teacher believes that a child has potential, the child will develop better cognitive skills.
  • Beliefs/expectations can work positively AND negatively

How to promote academic achievement

Project Head Start

• Health promotion
• Nutrition
• Education and school readiness
• Parental involvement » stimulates child parented-orientation motivation (children want their parents approval and awards when it comes to schoolwork) » stimulates child engagement in school and subsequently their achievement

Gifted children

• Giftedness: IQ » 130
• Giftedness is often specific » often gifted in a specific domain
• Asynchronous development » rapid development in one domain and slow in another domain
• Giftedness ≠ academic achievement » they often do not have study skills