Discuss drawbacks and limitations of measuring intelligence to agree or disagree with the different articles.

PSYCHOLOGY

Write 300 words to respond to each article, making comments and asking questions using an academic tone and backing up the ideas with APA referencing.

Discuss drawbacks and limitations of measuring intelligence to agree or disagree with the different articles.

Critically evaluate approaches to the theory of measurement of individual differences.

Make explicit reference to the debate and critically evaluate genetic and environmental influences on human behaviour.

Biblography:

Bernstein, D. (2016). Chapter 8: Intelligence. In Psychology: 10th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Maltby, J., Day, L., & Macaskill, A. (2017). Chapter 13: Heritability and Socially Defined Group Differences in Intelligence. In Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence (4th Edition) (pp. 324-361). Pearson Education.

Article 1

Through time various researchers have proposed different definitions of intelligence. Intelligence has been defined as a higher level of mental abilities an individual possess such as the use of the knowledge and how it is retained, decision-making, problem-solving skills and reasoning.

Alfred Binet (1857-1914) and his colleague Henri Simon (1872-1961) developed a measure that would allow for students to be differentiated between expected better learners and slower learners. This measure nowadays is seen as the first intelligence test. Binet and Simon (Binet, Simon, & Town, 1915: Siegler, 1992) supposed that even though the different questions that were asked all showed the same basic abilities of the mental processes it concluded that all the various types of measures presented all correlated with each other. Therefore it showed that students which got questions correct thus were more likely to continue getting questions correct.

The results helped to further assist other researchers to hypothesize and develop better findings. After Simons and Binet’s test was introduced, it was quickly realized that the best involved a few limitations as it suggested that intelligence was a broad concept rather than a concept that is actually influenced by many different factors.

Lewis Terman (1877-1956) an American psychologist adapted an American version to the existing test. The Stanford-Binet intelligence test was adapted and used as a measure of basic intelligence which was made up of various tasks in which included memory, vocabulary, repetition and listening skills.

Even though the test was adapted a few pros and cons arose towards this type of IQ testing as it forced the results to create inaccurate generalizations about individuals and populations. Even though there is an agreement between psychologists that general intelligence exists, however, this helped explained that not all intelligence is general but it can be specific too. An empirical result supports the ideas of specific intelligence due to the formation of the testings.

As even though all questions show correlation some items produce a higher correlation with other more specific items on the tests.

Another psychologist Wechsler, same as Binet believed that an array of mental abilities is involved in one’s intelligence. Therefore, he created the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), in 1955 as he was displeased with the limitations of the prior tests. As the test contained 10 subsets alongside another 5 supplemental testings this produced results across major areas such as verbal understanding, memory, mental processing and perceptual reasoning.

The test was scored on the comparison of the test takers score to the scores of other individuals in the same age group rather than it being based on chronological age and mental age. Thus, this test has made the scoring method become a standardised way of testing and defining intelligence.

Article 2

There has been a lot of speculations about intelligence over the years. From how it should be defined, to how it can be tested. Researchers around the world examined intelligence and many agreed that intelligence is the ability to utilize abstract thinking, reasoning, problem-solving skills and “the capacity to acquire knowledge” (Bernstein, 2015).

It can also be added the abilities to learn from experience and adopt to the environment (American Psychological Association, 2021)

Some researchers have gone to an extent to form a specific approach to defining and assessing intelligence. Today we know about 4 approaches which are psychometric approach – work of Spearman (1904), intelligence as information processing by Earl Hunt, the Triarchic Theory – work of Robert Sternberg (1988), and lastly multiple intelligences – by Gardner (1993).

This short article will examine intelligence as information processing and how the genetics and environment contribute to intelligent behaviour.

Information processing model is a study of intelligence focused on brain operations, such as memory and attention, that are involved in intelligent behaviour rather than “other products of intelligence” (Bernstein, 2015). Study by Hunt (1980) shows that people with abundant amount of attention available are likely to exhibit intelligent behaviour.

Attention can be measured in various ways. For example, dichotic listening test can measure one’s attention by playing two different stories at the same time and asking examinee to concentrate only on one story (story A). After the listening part, examinee would be asked to tell what he/she remembered from the story B (Squirre, 2009).

Study by Lamm et al. (1999), conducted on kindergarten and first-grade students with and without dyslexia, showed that poor readers had hard time shifting attention from left to right ear, while students who read well had better attention shifting abilities.

A notable example of memory involvement with IQ is study by Alloway and Alloway (2010), that found working memory and IQ to be dissociable in academic attainment. It did however, highlighted that IQ plays a small role in academic outcomes while working memory is the best predictor of future literacy and numeracy (Alloway & Alloway, 2010)

Luciano et al. (2001) conducted research on twins and found that genetics indeed play a role in IQ. Using a CRT (Choice Reaction Time) tasks and visual spatial delayed response, significant covariation between working memory and reasoning ability was found (Luaciano et al., 2001) However, it can’t be said for sure if fast processing influences IQ nor it is vice versa.

From the nurture side, a lot of studies had been considering environmental influences, such as race, socio-economic status, physical activity, place of residence, on IQ (Nisbell, 2005, Rushton&Jensen, 2005, Singh et al., 2016) In addition, children who were physically active more than 5 hours a week, showed higher IQ (Singh et al, 2016)

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