What can I learn about intelligence and creativity throughout the life span? - Chapter 9

What is the definition of intelligence and creativity?

Piaget defined intelligence as thinking or behavior that is adaptive to what your situation or environment demands. Other experts often view intelligence as having to do with abstract thinking or effective problem solving. Research has shown intelligence is not entirely innate: it is changeable due to the environment. 

The psychometric approach brought the many standardized intelligence tests. According to psychometric theorists, intelligence is a trait or set of traits that characterizes some people more than others. These traits can be identified and measured. However, many researchers could not agree on whether it was one trait or more. Spearman had proposed a two-factor theory of intelligence, which involved a general mental ability (g) and special abilities (s). The first one contributes to performance on all kinds of tasks and the second one is specific to specific tasks. Cattell & Horn distinguished two dimensions of intellect. The first, fluid intelligence, is the ability to use your mind actively to solve problems, in a flexible way. It's about reasoning, seeing relationships and these things are usually not taught and seem to be a person's "raw information processing power". Crystallized intelligence is in contrast the use of knowledge that a person has gained through schooling and other experiences. 

Now, intelligence is most often seen as a hierarchy that includes:

• a general ability factor at the top, influencing how good people do on a range of cognitive tasks
• a few broad dimensions of ability, distinguishable in a factor analysis (statistical technique to identify groups of items that correlate with each other and so form one dimension)
• many specific abilities at the bottom that influence performance on specific tasks

Binet & Simon developed the forerunner of the IQ test. This test led to the finding of the concept of mental age (MA) which is the level of age-graded problems that the child can solve, since it showed that e.g. 6 year old children could pass all "6 year old items" but 5 year old children could not.  So for instance, a child that can handle all items at the 5-year old level but does worse on more difficult items, is said to have a MA of 5 (regardless of the actual age). Ultimately and with help of Terman this testing developed into the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Terman also developed a procedure for comparing MA with chronological age (CA) by finding the intelligence quotient (IQ) (MA/CA x 100). A score of 100 indicates average intelligence. The Stanford-Binet is still used nowadays and comes with test norms (standards of normal performance, expressed as average scores and the scores around the average) that are based on a large sample of people. Nowadays, MA is no longer used: individuals receive scores that show how they do compared with others of the same age. 

Wechsler also developed intelligence tests for different ages, named the Wechsler Scales. They result in a verbal IQ score (based on items that measure vocabulary, general knowledge, reasoning etc) and a performance IQ score (based on items that measure nonverbal skills like the ability to solve mazes or rearrange pictures). Both scores combined forms the full-scale IQ. Again, 100 is average. 

Scores on all these tests form a normal distribution, which shows in a bell-shaped graph that most people get the average score and less people get extreme scores. The standard deviation measures how tightly the scores are clustered around the mean score (16 for the Stanford-Binet, 15 for the Wechsler Scales). 

Concluding, intelligence tests that are based on the psychometric theory emphasize a general intellectual ability by putting performance in a single IQ score. They assess only some of the specialized abilities. There is criticism on this that says these test not fully describe intelligence. 

Gardner did not like the idea of a single IQ score representing intelligence. He thinks there are many different intelligences. He does not like the question of "How smart are you?" but prefers "How are you smart?" by identifying strengths and weaknesses in people. He believes there are eight or nine distinct intellectual abilities and the standard IQ tests only test 2 or 3 of those. And these dinstinct intelligences have its own developmental path and are even neurologically distinct. Support for Gardners beliefs comes from savant syndrome: a person can be very good at one thing and poor at others. Some people think that this depends on memory instead of intelligences. Analyses of prodigies (those with one or more extraordinary abilities) indeed suggest that those skills are related to very good working memory and their attention to detail, and not really to intelligence. What is taken into account in modern day education, and somewhat stems from Gadner's beliefs, is that education should be adjusted to a person's learning style, e.g. some learn by seeing and some by doing. 

Sternberg proposed a triarchic theory of intelligence which emphasizes three components that contribute to intelligence:

• Practical intelligence. According to Sternberg, the definition of intelligence varies from one context to another and also changes over time. People who have high practical intelligence can adapt to the environment, and can shape it to optimize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. This is about being "street smart" and having common sense. 
• Creative intelligence. According to Sternberg, what is intelligent when a person first tries a new task, is not the same as what is intelligent after much experience with that task. The first type of intelligence, response to novelty, is about active and conscious information processing, and the individual's ability to come up with creative ideas. The second kind of intelligence reflects automatization, meaning an increased efficiency of information processing with experience. So it depends on the familiarity of a task what is intelligent. Creative intelligence is about creating, inventing, discovering and imagining. 
• Analytic intelligence. This focuses on the information-processing skills, and seems more like what is tested in traditional intelligence tests. This component is about critical and analytical thinking, planning, evaluating, filtering and monitoring. Sternberg believed it's not only the "correct answers" that make up intelligence, but also the effiency and accuracy of the processes people use. 

Sternberg also came up with the theory of successful intelligence, which shows intelligence does not always have to be the stereotype of academic intelligence. This consists of being able to:

• establish and achieve realistic goals, consistent with your skills and circumstances
• optimize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses
• adapt to the environment, by selecting a good environment and adjusting yourself or the environment so it fits
• use all three components of intelligence

IQ scores and creativity scores do not correlate well, because they measure two different types of thinking. IQ tests measure convergent thinking (what is the best answer to a problem?) and creativity is about divergent thinking (coming up with more possible answers or ideas). Responses on divergent thinking tasks can be analyzed along three dimensions: originality or uniqueness of the idea, flexibility of thinking or how many different categories are expressed by the ideas, and the fluency of the ideas. The last, ideational fluency (the number of different ideas a person can come up with) is most commonly used to assess creativity. Using divergent thinking tasks to measure creativity reflects the psychometric approach. Sternberg's investment theory of creativity is different and is about creativity emerging from the coming together of 6 factors:

• intellectual skills that include the three abilities of the triarchic model 
• enough knowledge of something to understand the current state and what might be missing
• a thinking style that enjoys mentally playing with ideas
• a personality style that is open to risk and can go outside the box
• motivation to stay focused on the task and not give up when problems arise
• an environment that supports and rewards creativity

So, the constructs of intelligence and creativity are related, but distinct. 

What does intelligence mean to the infant?

Standard IQ tests cannot be used for infants. The most commonly used infant test of intelligence is the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID), which collects information on social-emotional skills and adaptive behavior from parents and also has three parts that are given to the child:

• The motor scale measures the ability to do things like grasp a cube or throw a ball.
• The cognitive scale assesses the child'd way of thinking and how it reacts to events like reaching for a desirable object or searching for a toy.
• The language scale measures the child's preverbal communication and developing vocabulary skills.

Everything combined, the infant gets a General Adaptive Composite (GAC), a score which reflects the comparison with other children of the same age. 

Mostly, correlations between infant Bayley scores and child IQ scores have been low. The reason is probably that the tests both focus on qualitatively different abilities: the Bayley cores on sensory and motor skills and the IQ tests on abstract abilities like reasoning and problem solving. Furthermore, higher or lower test scores may be nothing more than temporary deviations from an universal developmental path, since intelligence in infancy is highly influenced by powerful and universal maturational processes like changes in the brain. From around 2 years, real individual differences emerge. 

However, speed of habituation, reaction time and preference for novelty in an infant do correlate with later IQ. So the information processing effiency can predict later intelligence.

What does intelligence mean to the child?

Starting around 4 there is quite a strong relationship between early and later IQ. This relationship grows stronger by middle childhood. So, IQ is likely quite a stable thing. However for some children this is not the case and loads of children show ups and downs in their IQ scores, so it still depends on the individual. This could also be due to factors like motivation for testing and the conditions during the test: IQ may be more changeable than the actual intellectual ability it attempts to measure.

Children whose scores are changeable tend to live in unstable environments. Drops in IQ often occur among children living in child poverty (the children's basic needs are then barely met). Gains occur due to good and stimulating home environments. Environment clearly affects the brain.

Preschool-aged children already show high levels of divergent thought. Creativity measures like ideational fluency and originality increase and then from around 6th grade begin to decline, possibly increasing again from high school to adulthood. This may reflect pressures in education to conform to the group. In education, convergent thinking is emphasized. While average IQ scores differ across different socioeconomic groups, creativity scores usually do not. And genetic influences (which are important for individual differences in IQ) seem to have little to do with creativity. However, home environment and the parents can have a lot of influence. 

What does intelligence mean to the adolescent?

Changes in the brain in early adolescence probably underlie the impressive cognitive advances that come with this age, the better IQ scores included. IQ scores become more stable and can strongly predict later IQ. 

The Flynn effect (named after James Flynn since he came up with this) means that average IQ scores have increased almost everywhere. Most researchers believe such an increase cannot be caused by genetic evolution and therefore must have to do with the environment, for instance education and improved economic conditions. IQ is also better in countries without high rates of infectious diseases (because they rob the body of important nutrients and take energy from the brain). 

General intellectual ability as measured in IQ tests is a very good predictor of school achievement. This is better for high school grades than for college grades, probably because then success is more influenced by things like motivation as every college student has the intellectual ability needed for college. So IQ is a good predictor but factors like motivation and work habits are also influential.

In general, creativity remains quite depressed in adolescence. But still there is continuity between scores on creativity tasks and later creative scores in adulthood. So, it seems like adolescents put their creativity "on hold" as they focus on other important things in this period, but it's not lost. The ability to elaborate on ideas, which is also creative, keeps increasing in adolescence, maybe because this is rewarded in education. So it seems like the tendency to conform to the group still has a big role: adolescents that do not have this tendency can keep getting more creative, especially when the environment supports this. Talent and motivation are also important for people to flourish in a creative field, and a positive attitude can help as well, just like the openness to risks as mentioned before. Furthermore, a good knowledge base in a field is a necessary component of creativity. Environment (parents and school) can play a big part for creativity to flourish.

What does intelligence mean to the adult?

General intelligence is related to income, occupation and job performance, and the gap between those with higher intelligence and lower intelligence widened over time. The reason is that it takes more intellectual ability to get a really good and rewarding job. The complexity of the work is also relevant as high-intelligence people have more demanding jobs which brings them further. Still, there is variability and some people in low-status jobs have high IQs. 

IQ also has a correlation with health and longevity. SES probably contributes, but people with higher intelligence are also probably more knowledgeable of health and therefore live a healthier life. 

Dysrationalia is the inability to think and behave rationally, despite having good intelligence. Standard IQ tests do not measure the aspect of thinking rationally, which is important in everyday life. And as we are intelligent, why don't we always solve problems in the logical or rational manner? This is because we want to go with the easiest and most obvious solution first. And this is okay, however we need to know when this is sufficient or when we need to rationally and more extensively think. This is the dual process approach to cognition and it basically says there are two ways of thinking: System 1 is automatic, we can respond to the situation almost without thinking. It's easy and quick but can lead to incorrect answers. System 2 is the way of thinking that is slow and deliberate, but rational and usually correct. Our tendency to go for System  1 is called the cognitive miser: we use heuristics (mental shortcuts) to make decisions quickly and easy. For instance, there is the availibility heuristic: what is easier to think of will be your answer. 

Intelligence seems stable over adulthood. But even when there is high group stability, there will be changes in individual's IQs. It seems that when a person was born has as much influence on IQ as age does, so there are cohort differences. Recently born cohorts outperformed older cohorts overall, but different cohorts succeeded at different areas of testing. And patterns of aging differ for different abilities. Fluid intelligence declines earlier and more than crystallized intelligence. This could be because of fluid intelligence tasks usually being timed, and older people have a slower nervous system. The working memory also weakens. However with cognitively stimulating activities the decline of fluid intelligence can be reduced. Important: declines in intellectual abilities are not universal and there's much variability.

One predictor of decline is poor health. Terminal drop means that there is a rapid decline in intellectual abilities within a few years of death due to diseases. Another predictor is an unstimulating lifestyle. Individuals who maintain or even gain in performance have higher SES, good education, good marriages with intellectually capable spouses, and physically and mentally active lives. Married adults are even intellectually affected by each other. 

Eriksons theory of life-span development features the increase in wisdom in older adults. Wisdom is not the same as high intelligence, since there are many high intelligent people that are not wise. Baltes defined wisdom as a constellation of rich, factual knowledge about life, combined with procedural knowledge like strategies for giving advice and handling conflicts. Sternberg defines wisdom as successful intelligence combined with creativity to solve problems that require balancing multiple perspectives. And common features of definitions of wisdom are knowledge of life, prosocial values, self-understanding, emotional homeostasis (balance), spirituality and acknowledgement of uncertainty. Wisdom is not universal, and age does not predict wisdom well. However what influences wisdom is the knowledge base, life experiences that sharpen their insights, and social context. Wisdom, or exceptional insight into complex life problems, seems to reflect a combination of intelligence, personality and cognitive style, with environmental factors. 

Peak times of creative achievement vary, from field to field and from person to person. This could have to do with whether the field involves fluid or crystallized intelligence. Some researchers think that creative achievement requires enthusiasm (in your young years) and experience (in your old years), and in your 30s/40s you have it all. Simonton has another theory, that says that each creator has a certain potential to create, that is realized over the adult years, and as the potential is realized less is left to express. He sais creative activity involves the process of ideation (generating creative ideas) and elaboration (executing ideas to produce things). Some kinds of work take longer to complete than others, accounting for the variability in peak performance in fields. Simonton believes that with age, the quantity of potential ideas has decreased. So he thinks it's not about mental ability, but about the nature of the creative process in a person, that determines whether a creator will seem to get "less creative". Concluding, creative behavior becomes less frequent later in life, but is still possible.

What are factors that influence IQ scores over the life span?

Individual differences in IQ exist because of an interaction between genetics and environmental factors. Of course motivational and situational factors also come to play. The influence of genes on influence increases over the life span, from 20 % in infancy to 80 % in elderly. Still, genes need environment for expression. Poverty weakens the influence of genes on intelligence. Good environment provide the opportunity for genetic influences to fully express. So SES affects IQ scores as well as rate of intellectual growth. The cumulative-deficit hypothesis describes how impoverished environments inhibit intellectual growth and how these negative effects accumulate over time. Improving the environment can help to increase IQ. 

The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) inventory assesses the intellectual stimulation of the home environment. Scores on this can predict IQs of children. The most influential factors are parental involvement with the child and opportunity for stimulation. The amount of stimulation is less important than whether that stimulation is responsive to the child's behvaior and matches the child competencies. There are gene-environment correlations: parents with greater intelligence provide more intellectually stimulating environment but also pass on genes for high intelligence. 

Racial and ethnic group differences in IQ can also be found, sparking controversy. For instance in the US Asian American and European American children tend to score higher than African American, Native American and Hispanic American children. Different groups sometimes do well on different tasks. However of course there is so much variability and therefore this is not really relevant. Still, why do these group differences exist?

• Biased tests. The culture bias in testing may be a little bit accountable for differences: tests may just fit one group better than another group. 
• Motivational factors. Minority individuals could be less motivated because they are anxious or afraid of being judged by an examiner of a different race. It helps when they can get used to a friendly examiner. Minority children may be generally more insecure and afraid of failing and falling into a stereotype (stereotype threat). Positive stereotypes can increase performance on a test. Mentors can help with this, but of course eliminating negative stereotypes should be the goal. 
• Genetic differences. Some scholars may think IQ differences between ethnic groups are a result of genetic differences, but most scholars think that the contribution of genetics to within-group differences does not say much about the reasons for between-group differences. It probably reflects environmental differences. 
• Environmental differences. Home environment and SES are, as said before, very influential and are probably the main reason for racial difference in average IQ scores. 

What are the extremes of intelligence?

At the one end is intellectual disability or significantly below-average intellectual functioning with limitations in areas of adaptive behavior, originating before age 18. An IQ score of 70-75 or lower is associated with this, and there are 4 levels of disability: mild (52-70), moderate (35-51), severe (20-34) and profound (below 19). Again, it is the product of interaction between person and environment. A person with a low IQ score in a supportive and fitting environment may not seem disabled, but in a less supportive environment he may seem disabled. There is variability between persons with intellectual disability, and they can benefit from training. There are different causes for intellectual disability. Profoundly disabled individuals are often affected by "organic" conditions (a biological cause like Down syndrome or an alcoholic mother). Most cases however have no identifiable organic cause, but seem to result from a combination of genetics and environmental factors. A lot of intellectual impaired children have other impairments as well. Often, intellectually impaired children follow the same developmental path as other children but just at a slower rate. 

At the other end is giftedness. This can mean a child with a very high IQ score (130 or more) or with very special abilities/talents. Renzulli argued that giftedness comes from a combination of above-average ability, creativity, and task commitment/motivation. Giftedness can already be visible in toddlerhood, e.g. by advanced language skills, curiosity and motivation. Silverman and colleagues used the Characteristics of Giftdness Scale to identify gifted children and found that gifted children have the following attributes:

• rapid learning
• extensive vocabulary
• good memory
• long attention span
• perfectionism
• preference for older companions
• excellent sense of humor
• early interest in reading
• strong ability with puzzles and mazes
• maturity
• perseverance on tasks

It seems there is a strong genetic influence on high intellectual ability. Now, experts can predict nongiftedness, but not so easy giftedness. Modern research shows skipping classes and thus accelerating through school is associated with better achievement and more positive social-emotional outcomes, in contrast with what was believed earlier. As adults they have better occupations and better, healthier lifestyles. However giftedness can also lead to problems in some people, like isolation or unhappiness. And still, environment has influence too.