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What is Intelligence

  • What is intelligence? Is intelligence, fundamentally, 1 import thing (Spearman, 1904), 3 things (Robert J. Sternberg 1988), 7 things (Howard Gardner, 1983), 10 things (Howard Gardner 1999), 120 things (Guildford, 1967), or even 150 or more things (Guilford, 1982)?
  • Thorndike, Hagen & Sattler (1986) point out the extent to which the history of intelligence is in part a battle over names.
Source: History of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales
  • “Perhaps the best way to achieve coherence in the field of intelligence is to recognize that no single correct “model” or “approach” is evident and that different ones elucidate different aspects of a very complex phenomenon (Robert J. Sternberg, 2003).”
  • Etienne Wenger (1978) had Moroccan and North American individuals remember patterns of Oriental rugs and others remember pictures of everyday objects, such as a rooster and a fish. Moroccans who have long experience in the rug trade seemed to remember rug patterns better than the North American individuals.
Source: What's Cultural About Cross-Cultural Cognitive Psychology? Annual Review of Psychology, January 1979, Vol. 30, Pages 145-172 Wagner (1978)
  • Serpell (1979) had Zambian and English children perform a number of tasks. He found that English children did better on a drawing task, but that Zambian children did better on a wire-shaping task
Source:Standardization of the Panga Munthu Test-A Nonverbal Cognitive Test Developed in Zambia Ravinder Kathuria, Robert Serpell The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 67, No. 3, Assessment in the Context of Culture and Pedagogy (Summer, 1998), pp. 228-241
  • Lave (1988) Showed that housewives in Berkeley California who could successfully do the mathematics needed for comparison shopping were unable to do the same mathematics when they were placed inside a classroom environment.
Source:"Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life (Learning in Doing)" by Jean Lave, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1988) ISBN 0521357349.
  • Carraher, Carraher, and Schliemann (1985) studied a group of Brazilian street children. The investigation found that the same children who are able to do the mathematics needed to run their street businesses were often unable to do mathematics in a formal setting.
Source:Street Mathematics and School Mathematics By Terezinha Nunes, David William Carraher, Analucia Dias Schliemann ISBN 0521388139
  • The Berkeley Guidance study (Honzik, Macfarlane & Allen, 1948) investigated the stability of IQ test performance over 12 years. The authors reported that nearly 60% of the sample changed by 15 IQ points or more from 6 to 18 years of age. A similar result was found in the Fels study (Sontag, Baker & Nelson, 1958): Nearly two thirds of the children changed more than 15 IQ points from age 3 to age 10. Researchers also investigated the so-called intelligence lability score, which is a child’s standard deviation from his or her own grand mean IQ. Bayley (1949), in the Berkeley Growth study, detected very large individual differences in lability across the span of 18 years. Rees and Palmer (1970) combined the data from five large-scale longitudinal studies, selecting those participants who had scores at both age 6 and age 12 or at both age 12 and age 17. They found that about 30% of the selected participants changed by 10 or more IQ points.
Source: The stability of mental test performance between two and eighteen years

MP Honzik, JW MacFarlane, L Allen - Journal of Experimental Education, 1948

  • Cole, Gay, Glick and Sharp (1971:233) made the following insightful observation: "Cultural differences in cognition reside more in the situations to which particular cognitive processes are applied than in the existence of a process in one cultural group, and its absence in another." A similar position is held by Berry
Source1:(1974[1]).
Source2:(The Cultural Context of Learning and Thinking: An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology [2] Cole, Gay, Glick and Sharp)
  • Sarason and Doris (1979) view intelligence as a cultural invention that does not hold true across cultures.
Source:From Educational Handicap, Public Policy, and Social History: A Broadened Perspective on Mental Retardation ISBN 0029279208
  • (Serpell, 1974; Super, 1983; Wober, 1974) Even within a given society, different cognitive characteristics are emphasized from one situation to another and from one subculture to another. These differences extend not just to conceptions of intelligence but to what is considered adaptive or appropriate in a broader sense.
Source 1: Estimates of intelligence in a rural community of Eastern Zambia (Serpell, 1974)
Source 2: The Cultural Construction of Child Development: A Framework for the Socialization of Affect Sara Harkness, Charles M. Super, Ethos, Vol. 11, No. 4, The Socialization of Affect (Winter, 1983), pp. 221-231
  • Views of intelligence vary from culture to culture; and the majority of these views do not reflect Western ideas (See, Berry & Bennett, 1992; Greenfield, 1997; Okagaki & Robert J. Sternberg, 1991; Serpell, 1993; Yang & Robert J. Sternberg, 1997)
  • We need to reduce the bias toward measuring intelligence through logical/mathematical and linguistic abilities and move toward looking more directly at a specific intelligence in operation (Howard Gardner, 1993).
  • Howard Gardner is vocal about his disdain for a singularly psychometric approach to measuring intelligence based on paper and pencil tests. Secondly, he responds to the belief that an intelligence is the same as a domain or a discipline. Gardner reiterates his definition of an intelligence and distinguishes it from a domain which he describes as a culturally relevant, organized set of activities characterized by a symbol system and a set of operations (See Howard Gardner; Phi Delta Kappan, 1995).
  • “Often intelligence tests measure skills that children are expected to acquire a few years before the taking the test (Robert J. Sternberg, Presidential addresses; Culture and Intelligence, 2004).”
  • “Vernon (1971) points out the axes of a factor analysis do not necessarily reveal a latent structure of the mind but rather represent a convenient way of characterizing the organization of metal abilites. Vernon believed that there is no one ‘right’ orientation of axes. Indeed, mathematically an infinite number of orientations of axes can be fit to any solution in an explanatory factor analysis (See Robert J. Sternberg, 2004).”
  • The two most widely used standardized tests of intelligence are the Wechsler scales and the Stanford-Binet. Both instruments are psychometrically sound, but Gardner believes that these tests measure only linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences, with a narrow focus within content in those domains. According to Howard Gardner, the current psychometric approach for measuring intelligence is not sufficient (Howard Gardner, 1993).
  • Robert J. Sternberg and his colleagues ask the experts to define “intelligence” according to their beliefs. Each of the roughly two dozen definitions produced in each symposium was different. There were some common threads, such as the importance of adaptation to the environment and the ability to learn, but these constructs were not well specified. According to Robert J. Sternberg, very few tests measure adaptation to environment and ability to learn; nor do any tests except dynamic tests involving learning at the time of the test measure ability to learn. Traditional tests focus much more on measuring past learning which can be the result of many factors, including motivation and available opportunities to learn (Robert J. Sternberg, Grigorenko, and Kidd, American Psychologist, 2005).
  • In Kenya, those schoolchildren whose traditional skills are most prized by the community tend to do least well in school tests (Robert J. Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997; Robert J. Sternberg, Nokes, et al., in press). In Brazil, street children who run a successful street business typically fail mathematics in the school setting (Ceci & Roazzi, 1994). In the West, school-based tests show correlations with career success, but they are also major gatekeepers of academic and vocational routes to advancement (Robert J. Sternberg, 1997).
  • IQ test items are largely measures of achievement at various levels of competency (Robert J. Sternberg, 1998,1999, 2003). Items requiring knowledge of the fundamentals of vocabulary, information, comprehension, and arithmetic problem solving (Cattell, 1971;Horn, 1994).
  • IQ scores do change over time. The average change between age 12 and age 17 was 7.1 IQ points; some individuals change as much as 18 points (Jones & Bayley, 1941).
  • “Individuals do not necessarily exhibit their "intelligence" in its raw state. Rather, they prepare to use their intelligence by passing through a developmental process. Thus, people who want to be mathematicians or physicists, spend years studying and honing their logical/mathematical abilities in a distinctive and socially relevant way (Howard Gardner, 1999).”
  • Instruments developed to quantify smartness are culturally based and cannot simply be "transplanted" to a culture with different values (Greenfield, 1997).
  • In addition to learned reasoning abilities, IQ measures little more than a person's ability to take an IQ test, as scores increase dramatically as a person is trained or familiarized with the tests (See Kamin, 1974).
  • "Intelligence is a biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture (Howard Gardner, 1999a), "
  • Scientists Richard Lewontin, Ruth Hubbard, and Howard Taylor have conclusively demonstrated that there is no scientific basis for any claims of a genetic, hereditary component of variations in "intelligence."
  • Research has shown that IQ type tests account for about 10% of the variation in how successful people are in various aspects of their adult lives. 10% isn't much and, maybe it's a coincidence, but when I ask people what it takes to be successful on the job or in a personal relationship and what it takes to be successful on one of these tests, or in an introductory classroom, the overlap is probably about 10%
Source: Robert J. Sternberg, interview with Frontline Read the interview here
  • IQ is a culturally, socially, and ideologically rooted concept. It could scarcely be otherwise, as this index is intended to predict success (i.e., to predict outcomes that are valued as success by most people) in a given society (i.e., in a large social group carrying its own set of values). IQ has been most studied where it was invented and where it is most appreciated, that is, in the established market economies and especially in the United States. Oddly enough, the country where its testing originated--France--largely ignores it.
  • Source: The Predictive value of IQ Robert J. Sternberg et al; Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Vol. 47, 2001
  • The situation of itself (e.g., communicating with strangers regarding things and issues that lack context and that might appear to be meaningless) often results in the collection of unreliable data (e.g., Glick, 1968).
  • Intelligence is not a characteristic of people, but rather a potential for intelligence performance that is embedded in specific situations (Barab & Plucker, 2002).
Source: Smart People or Smart Contexts? Cognition, Ability, and Talent Development in an Age of Situated Approaches to Knowing and Learning Sasha A. Barab and Jonathan A. Plucker


Source1: Directors of Development CL: Influences on the Development of Children's Thinking By Lynn Okagaki, Robert J. Sternberg. ISBN 0805806288
  • Howard Gardner (1993) emphasizes two additional points about assessment that are critical. The first is that the assessment of intelligence should encompass multiple measures. Relying on a single IQ score from a WISC-III (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) without substantiating the findings through other data sources does the individual examinee a disservice and produces insufficient information for those who provide interventions.
Source: Frames of Mind:the Theory of Multiple Intelligences By Howard Gardner. Published 1993. ISBN 0465025102
  • IQ tests are convenient partial operationalizations of the construct of intelligence, and nothing more. They do not provide the kind of measurement of intelligence that tape measures provide of height (See Robert J. Sternberg et al, 2005).
Source:The Theory of Successful Intelligence Interamerican Journal of Psychology - 2005, Vol. 39, Num. 2 pp. 189-202
  • At this point in history, the study of intelligence has moved well beyond the realm of psychometrics.

Race, a bad proxy

IQ differences between black and white populations in the UK and elsewhere are virtually non-existent. In fact, Blacks of African descents in the UK, on average, earn more money and obtain higher levels of education than the native white populations (Bhattacharyya, Ilson, Blair, 2000). According to the London daily times (January, 23, 1994, as reported in Stringer and McKie 1997:190; Re-reported by Smedley in Lieberman 2001:p87) “Black Africans have emerged as the most highly educated members of British society, surpassing even the Chinese as the most academically successful ethnic minority.”

In the U.S. Black immigrants from Africa average the highest educational attainment of any population group in the country, including whites and Asians (See Logan & Dean, 2003).

- Brains -

Tobias (1970) listed a number of difficulties involved in measuring and making meaningful comparisons of brain weight. These included equating subjects on age, sex, body size, temperature etc. In addition, brain development is plastic, and brain size may be affected by early environmental factors. Because of all these difficulties, Tobias (1970) concluded that no adequate racial comparative studies had actually been conducted.

Interestingly enough, the brain size of American blacks reported in Tobias’s summary were larger than any white group, (which include American, English and French whites) except those from the Swedish sub sample (who had the largest brains of any of the 77 national groups measured), and American blacks were estimated to have some 200 million more neurons than American whites (See Tobias 1970; Weizmann et. 1990).

Ironically, many of the racial researchers of today who make claims about racial differences in brain size cite Tobias (1970) as one of their main sources while ignoring the findings reported in his work; I.E. Blacks on average had larger brains than virtually all other population groups!

The main correlation with brain size is height/size; because of this the average black/white brain is certainly larger than the average Asian brain (not proportionally, but in Absolute terms). Witelson’s, Kigar’s and Thomas’ (1999) examination of Albert Einstein’s brain illustrates that something more complicated than a brain’s size relates to it’s owner’s intelligence. They compared Einstein’s brain with an average specimen from a sample 35 intact, control brains. Einstein’s brain has about the same dimensions and the same weight as the comparison brain. However, in areas specific to Einstein’s unique skills, his brain was quite different. This leads one to conclude that it is overall brain structure and not brain size that determines one’s intellectual strengths.

If you are interested in learning about the nature and nurture of brain development I suggest researching the work of Joan Stiles (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscientist, UCSD).

You may also view a presentation of her work, here: <a href="http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=5991955507070826102&q=joan+stiles">The nature and nurture of brain development</a>

- IQ -

There is also research that shows people with higher IQ scores to be lacking in skills relating to Practical Intelligence (See Sternberg 2001, and 2004). That is, IQ and Practical intelligence skills correlate negatively. Further, Sternberg demonstrates that tests of Practical intelligence are better at predicting job performance and real world success.

Leon J. Kamin (Bell Curve Wars, 1995 p.92): “Extensive practice at reading and calculating does affect, very directly, one's IQ score.”


Race, Genetics and IQ:

- A study conducted by Tizard and colleagues involving Caribbean children showed that there was no genetic basis for IQ differences between black & whites. The IQ of the children at the Orphanage was: Blacks 108, Mixed 106, and White 103 (James R. Flynn, 1980. Richard E. Nisbett, 1994. Also see, The Bell Curve wars, 1995).

- IQ differences in the U.S. are not as drastic as some would have you believe. Many researchers put the difference between 7-10 points (Richard Nisbett, 2005; Vincent, 1991; Thorndike et al, 1986; Leon J. Kamin, 1995; Dickenson & Flynn, 2002). As well, this conclusion is only reached after lumping the entire black population together as a single body. The truth is blacks from different regions in the U.S. differ markedly in culture and achievement.

- In more than a dozen studies from the 1960s and 1970s analyzed by Flynn (1991, 2002), the mean IQs of Japanese- and Chinese American children were always around 97 or 98; none was over 100. These studies did not include other Asian groups such as the Vietnamese, Cambodians, or Filipinos; who tended to under perform academically and on conventional psychometric tests in contrast to the former groups mentioned (See Flynn, 1991).

- Adjustments for socioeconomic conditions almost completely eliminate differences in IQ scores between black and white children. Co-investigators include Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Pamela Klebanov of Columbia's Teachers College, and Greg Duncan of the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University.

- Osbonre and Suddick (1971, as reported in Loehlin, 1975) attempted to use 16 blood-groups genes known to have come from European ancestors. Testing two samples the authors found that the correlation

Testing two samples the authors found that the correlation...
Ahh! what happened to the rest!? May I say, that these sources are AWSOME. :) futurebird 17:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
FB, 16 blood group genes != 2 samples. These genes were the 1970s version of ancestry-informative marker, but they are essentially useless by today's standards. Neisser (or Nisbet??) has a review. The anon commenter's presentation is about as the least neutral thing you could possibly read. If you're going to spend your time reading about the results of psychology research, start by reading the APA report, the subsequent review papers, etc. --W.R.N. 00:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
“IQ differences between black and white populations in the UK and elsewhere are virtually non-existent." - I’ve yet to hear a study that concludes this.
“In fact, Blacks of African descents in the UK, on average, earn more money and obtain higher levels of education than the native white populations” - Unsure how true this is but it may well be because Black African immigrants to the United Kingdom are not a representative sample of their population groups (Like South Asian Indians in the United States). Most of those who arrived in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, immigrated to the UK to attend higher education institutes.
Whilst I know of no studies that compare mean black and white IQ scores for the UK, the black population does do poorer academically. Indeed the educational underachievement of black children is, unfortunately, a longstanding matter of concern. Black children are five times less likely to be officially registered as "gifted or talented” [3]. Of all groups, Blacks perform poorest at ‘GCSE’ (equivalent to graduating high school) whereas Chinese pupils perform best. There has long been a level of under performance - “Many Black children, particularly Caribbean boys, were labelled ……..'educationally subnormal' (ESN) By 1970, in 'normal' London schools, 17 per cent of pupils were from ethnic minorities, but in ESN schools that figure was 34 per cent. “ [4]. In the United Kingdom different group performances are consistently attributed to racism. See [5]Romper 01:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
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