INTELLIGENCE
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DEFINITIONS
● Individual’s ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to environment,
to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning and to overcome the
obstacles by careful thoughts. Spearman (1904)
● A general ability which involves mainly the education of relations and correlates.
Binet and Simon (1905)
● The ability to judge well, to understand well and to reason well. Terman, Rex, Knight,
Munn
● The capacity to form concepts and grasps their significance. Thurston (1921)
● The capacity to inhibit instinctive adjustments flexibly imagine different responses
and realise modified instinctive adjustments in to overt behaviour. Wechsler (1939)
● The aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully to think
rationally and deal effectively with his or her environment. Gardner (1986)
● The ability or skills to solve problems or to fashion products which are valued within
one or more cultural settings.
History of mental testing
• In 2200 BC Chinese officials were examined to check their fitness for office work.
• 206 BC-220 BC test batteries where common in civil laws, military affairs, revenue and
agriculture.
• In 1368 AD-1646AD Ming dynasty used national multistage testing program it was
conducted in local level, provisional level and in capital level.
• Western countries adopted similar methods east India Company (1832), France and
Germany.
• After 1850, psychology broke from philosophy and started creating alliance with
biological science.
• Psychological and educational measurement during the period 1850 to 1900nourished by
three major influences.
• Darwin’s theory of evolution in which he stated two members of the same species are not
alike individual differences exist.
• Galton, first cousin of Darwin who was obsessed with the idea of measurement he used
method of brass instrument mental testing.
• J.M Cattel studied both Wundt and Galton he proposed the term mental test.
• Galton known as the father of mental testing quantified mental abilities.
• 1905 Alfred Binet proposed the first intelligence scale.
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• First psychological test to appear was Alfred Binet scale.
• In 1918 Woodsworth introduce the first personality inventory.
• Alfred Binet is known as the father of IQ testing.
• Terman revised Binet test to allow comparison of intellectual functioning among
individuals.
• Spearman proposed the two factor theory in1920s.
• Thurston’s primary ability in 1930s.
• Cattell’s fluid and crystalized intelligence in1960s
• Piaget stated intelligence as an adaptation or assimilation.
• 1960s Vygotsky processed activity rather than state entities (1970).
• Robert stern berg triarchic theory of intelligence 1970s.
• Howard Gardener theory of multiple intelligence 1980s.
• Alfred Binet introduce the concept of mental age
• Lewis Terman introduce the concept of IQ
• Wilhelm Stern introduced the term IQ
Theories of Intelligence
1. Uni-factor theory of Intelligence
• Around 1911 Wilhelm Stern introduced his Unifactor theory of intelligence which is
also known as the general capacity theory
• Accordingly, intelligence is a general or unitary ability which has been labelled G.
• Stern considered that all persons are endowed with g though in unequal amounts. It is
applied to any problem solving situation, on the efficiency of which depends solely
upon the environment thus, sterns Uni factor theory is the simplest one
• It is known common sense model too.
2. Spearman’s two factor theory of intelligence.
• Charles spearman proposed it.
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• First scientific explanation based on factor analysis
• Proposed that we has two a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related
items on a test
• He developed the concept of g factor or general intelligence and also the s factor or
specific intelligence
• General intelligence also known as “g” factor refers to the existence of a broad mental
capacities that influences performance on cognitive ability measures it is universally
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• The s factor or a specific factor is a score representing a person’s ability within one
particular area .it is acquired from the environment it varies from activity to activity in
the same individual.
3. Thurston’s primary mental abilities
• In 1935 Louis Thurston proposed the 7 primary mental abilities.
• Certain mental operations have in common a primary factor that gives them
psychological and functional unity and that differentiates them from other mental
operations. These mental operations operate in a group.
• There are a number of groups of mental abilities, each of which have its own primary
factors, giving groups of functional unity and a cohesiveness.
• The seven primary mental abilities are
• Verbal comprehension: ability to understand the meaning of words, vocabulary test.
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• Word fluency: ability to think words rapidly as in solving anagrams or thinking of
words and rhymes.
• Numbers: the ability to work with numbers and perform computations.
• Space: the ability to visualize space relations as in identifying the figures when it is in
different orientations.
• Associative memory: effective encoding, storage and retrieval. Ability to recall
verbal stimuli such as word pairs and sentences.
• Perceptual speed: the ability to grasp visual information quickly to see similarity and
differences between pictured objects.
• Reasoning: ability to find a general rule on the basis of presented instances. Inductive
reasoning (specific to general)
4. Structure of intellect model
• Proposed by Guilford in 1967.
• He has proposed a three dimensional box like model which he calls the structure of
intellect model or SI model.
• The model has tried to simplify the picture of intellectual trait relationships by
organising them into traits along three dimension viz contents, operations and
products.
• Each of these aspects of intelligence was analysed as separate into subcategories
making 5*6*5=150 abilities.
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• Shortly before his death Guilford expanded his theory from 150 to 180 thus 6 abilities
for operation, 5 for content and 6 for products considered 6*5*6=180 abilities.
▪ Operations: it refers to the basic intellectual process of thinking used by persons.
It has 5 sub categories.
a) Cognition: it includes discovery, rediscovery, and recognition of information
or some understanding.
b) Memory recording: it includes a person’s ability to readily encode the
information. Memory retention: it includes a person’s ability to retain the
encoded information.
c) Divergent production: it refers to the ability to search for multiple creative or
novel solutions to the problem.
d) Evaluation: it means placing a value judgement on knowledge and thought.
e) Convergent production: it includes the ability to search for a correct solution
to a problem.
▪ Content: it refers to a type of content or material on which the operations are
performed it has 5 subcategories.
a) Visual: it includes concrete visual material.
b) Auditory: it includes nature and characteristics of the sound perceived.
c) Symbolic: it includes letters words and other signs
d) Semantic: it includes verbal meanings or ideas.
e) Behavioural: it includes knowledge regarding other persons
▪ Products: it refers to the research of performing operations on contents it has 6
subcategories.
a) Units: it refers to the production of a single word, definition or isolated bit of
information.
b) Classes: it refers to a production of a concept.
c) Relations: it refers to the production of any form of relationships such as an
analogy or opposites or another similar ones.
d) Systems: it refers to the production of an internally consistent set of
classification of various forms.
e) Transformation: it refers to the production of changes in meanings,
organisation or some other arrangements.
f) Implications: it refers to the production of such information as if beyond the
data presented
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5. Cattell’s fluid and crystalized intelligence
● Raymond Cattel (1963) proposed the idea of fluid and crystalized intelligence based
on the factor analysis.
● Fluid intelligence is the people’s inherent capacity to learn and solve problems used
in adapting to new situations.
● It helps solve problems in the novel reasoning problem and is correlate with the
number of important skills such as comprehension, problem solving and learning.
● Crystalized intelligence is what one has learnt through the investment of fluid
intelligence in cultural settings. Past an new experience, capacity resultant of
experience, learning and environment.
● Used for tasks which require learned or habitual responses. Highly dependant on
culture.
● After middle adulthood fluid intelligence decrease
6. Howard Gardener Theory of Multiple Intelligence
He disagreed spearman’s g factor and came up with this concept.
• He conducted studies in savant’s (person’s a having limited mental abilities, extremes
are considered.
• He came up with eight different types of intelligence proposed by majority of the
individuals’.
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• Visuospatial: relation among objects, recreate visual images creating and interpreting
visual images and thinking in 3 dimensions.
• Verbal linguistic: sensitivity to language, grasping, using language to represent ideas,
to express your feelings and persuade others.
• Logical mathematical: abstract reasoning and manipulating of symbols, reasoning,
logical thinking, mathematical problem solving skills.
• Bodily kinaesthetic: feelings and expressing things physically going hands on works
and they are brightly flexible e.g.; gymnastics.
• Musical intelligence: sensitivity to speech and tone. Creating and feeling rhythm to
express a mood: detecting and analysing musical themes.
• Intrapersonal intelligence: understanding our own interior thoughts and feelings in
a clear way.
• Interpersonal intelligence: understanding the feelings, needs and purpose of others.
• Naturalistic intelligence: understanding nature, seeing patterns, in the nature work,
classifying things.
• Then two more were added later:-
Existentialism: meaning and purpose in life, spiritual, leaders and philosophers.
Environmentalistic: they are being separate from naturalist
▪ e.g. activist, environmentalist.
7. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
• Mainly divided intelligence into 3 major aspects so the name triarchic theory.
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• He divided intelligence into 3 subcomponents componential, contextual and
experimental.
a. Componential sub theory (analytical intelligence) – book smart.
In these 3 different kinds of mental components are present
▪ Meta components: enables to monitor, control, evaluate our mental processing
so that we can make decisions, solve problems and create plans.
▪ Performance components: enable us to take actions on the plans and the
decisions arrived.
▪ Knowledge acquisition component: enables us to learn new information that
will help carry out our plans.
b. Experiential sub theory (creative intelligence)
▪ Continuum of experience from novel to atomization in which intelligence can
be applied. It is at these extremes of the continuum that intelligence is best
demonstrated. They are mainly based on novel situation and atomization.
c. Contextual sub theory (practical intelligence) – street smart.
▪ Intelligence intertwined with individual’s environment. Thus, intelligence
based on everyday circumstances.
▪ Adaptation: adapts to one’s environment.
▪ Select: select the best environment for oneself
▪ Shaping: shape the environment to better fit one’s nee and desires.
8. Jenson’s Hierarchical Theory
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• On the basis of his research he claimed that the general cognitive ability is essentially
an inherent trait, determined predominantly by genetic factors than the environmental
conditions.
• It was a racist concept.
• Level 1- associative learning:
▪ in which output is more or less similar to input in level 1 two
genetically based level of intelligence exist; associative learning, short
term memory, rote learning, attention, simple association skills.
• Level 2- cognitive competence:
▪ That transforms the input to affective output. It includes conceptual
learning, use of language in problem solving.
• He argued the level 1 is equally distributed across all races and national groups but on
the contradictory level2 is concentrate more on the middle class Anglo- American
population than in the blacks.
9. Goleman’s theory of Emotional Intelligence
• A cluster of traits or abilities relating to the emotional side of life abilities such as
recognizing and managing one’s own emotions, being able to motivate other, being
able to motivate oneself and restrain ones impulses, recognizing and managing others
emotions an handling interpersonal relationships in effective manner.
• It consists of 5 different domains.
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a. Self-awareness (knowing our own emotions) :
▪ Capacity to recognize an understand emotion and have to sense
ones action, mood and emotions of others take effect. Noticing
different emotion, as well as being able to identify emotion
correctly. How we feel, what are we related to, personal strength
and limitations, being open to different experience an interactions.
b. Self-regulation (managing our own emotions):
▪ Being flexible, coping wide change, managing conflicts. Diffusing
difficult or tense situation and being aware of how ones actions
affect other and take ownership of these actions.
c. Social skills (recognizing and influencing others emotions):
▪ How well interaction with people. Interact and communicate on
day to day basis. Active listening, verbal communication skills,
nonverbal communication skills, leadership, developing rapport.
d. Empathy:
▪ Recognition of others emotions, sense power dynamics that play a
part in all social relationship, but also most especially in work
place relations.
e. Motivation:
▪ Intrinsic motivation, individual driven to meet personal needs and
goals, rather than by external rewards such as money, fame,
recognitions. State of flow experienced usually. Action oriented
and set goals. Need for achievement and search ways to improve,
they are more likely to take initiative.
10. PASS Model
• Indian model proposed by J P Das, Kar and Parrila (1975).
• Neuropsychological model (biological influence) brain made up of interdependent
but separate functional systems.
• 3 functional units of brain determine intellectual activity, the PASS process is
interactive in nature.
a. Attention arousal: basic in behaviour, processed by the first functional unit of
brain that involves the ability to selectively attend to stimuli while ignoring
other reactions.
▪ Arousal keep people aware and alert. Generally associate with brain stem
and thalamus.
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▪ People with ADD have impairments in these area.
b. Simultaneous processing: this involves ability to integrate separately stimuli/
information to our knowledge as and interrelate whole.
▪ Occipital and parietal lobes are important for this.
▪ E.g. RPM, a design given, one part missing. Simultaneous processing help
us in feeling relationship between the given abstract figures.
c. Successive processing: ability to integrate stimuli information into sequential
order.
▪ E.g. learning digits, alphabets, multiplication tables.
▪ This are related to temporal lobe.
d. Planning: the ability of individual to make decisions about how to solve and
carry on tasks, goal setting, and cause of action to reach goal and anticipating
their consequences.
▪ Associated with frontal lobe of brain.
11. Heirarchical theory of intelligence
• By Vernon
• 3 levels of intelligence
a. Stratum 3- general intelligence(3 factor).
b. Stratum 2- broad abilities
c. Stratum 1- specific level
Different types of intelligence test
1. Individual tests:
Individual test as the name implies can be administered to single individual at
a time.
● It requires highly skilled professionals required.
● Generally done in the clinical settings.
● Difficult to construct.
● Generally done in younger children e.g. Binet Simon scale.
2. Group test:
one in which can be administered to a group.
● The first group intelligence test was done during the First World War.
● The army alpha and the army beta test were the first group test.
● No much highly skilled professionals required.
● Mainly used in educational settings.
● Used in adults and adolescents.
● The problem is that only less time is required to create the rapport.
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a. Stanford Binet intelligence testing:
● Oldest of the modern test of intelligence.
● Alfred Binet established the first psychological laboratory in France in 1889.
● He was asked by the government of France to devise a means for diagnosing slow
learners and mentally retarded in their schools.
● The scale is known as Binet Simon scale with 30 items first published 1905.
● It was arranged in the ascending order of difficulty.
● In 1908 they revised it to overcome several defects and it was the first age scale.
● They considered intelligence as general ability it is a unitary factor not separate
mental ability.
● 1911 revise version extended from the age of 3 years to adults.
● In 1916 Terman introduced a new look and the concept of IQ was also included.
● At present we are using the 5th edition Stanford Binet scale(SB5-2003)
● No units of measurement was there. Simply categorizing people into idiots,
imbecities and morons.
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b. Wechsler intelligence scale
● Introduce by David Wechsler.
● Wechsler bull eve scale form I and form ii which consisted of 10 subtest both
performance test and verbal test later in 1955 renamed as Wechsler adult intelligence
scale.
● Wechsler’s adult intelligence scale (WAIS 3). Administered in age group of 16 to
90. It consists of 5 performance test and 6 verbal test.
▪ It mainly includes digit span, vocabulary, arithmetic’s, comprehension, similarity,
picture completion, picture arrangement, block design, object assembly, digit
symbol etc.
● Wechsler’s intelligence scale for children (WISC 3). It provides the profile of
someone’s strength and weakness.
▪ Each test is made of 12 parts (6 verbal test and 6 performance test). Each question
begins with the simple question and progress to increasingly difficult ones.
▪ Mainly administered in children from the age of 6 to 16 years.
● WPPSI (Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence) administered in
children from 4 to 6 years. It includes the animal peg test and sentence test.
c. Kaufmann assessment battery for children
● Mainly used in the children in the age group of 3 to 18.
● The commonly used scales are KABC (Kaufmann assessment battery for children),
KAIT (Kaufmann adult and adolescent and adult intelligence scale and KBIT
(Kaufmann brief intelligence test).
● KABC is mainly administered in children 2-3 to 12-13.
● It consists of 16 subtest.
● KAIT mainly administered in 11 to 85 years age people.
● KBIT IN 4 to 10 year old children.
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● Subtest and scoring allows a choice between Cattell’s fluid and crystalized
intelligence.
● It could be administered in children with learning disability.
● Consists of good reliability and validity.
● Visual processing, fluid intelligence, short term memory and long term memory are
assessed.
d. Raven’s progressive matrices
● Introduce by J C Raven in 1936.
● It is a group of nonverbal test typically used in educational settings.
● It is regarded as the culture fair intelligence test.
● Many patterns are presented in the form of 6*6, 4*4 or 2*2 matrices.
● It mainly ranges from easy to difficult to abstract reasoning type.
● Covers mainly 4 years to elderly.
● CPM (Coloured progressive matrices) used in children and elderly.
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● SPM (standard progressive matrices) individuals between the age of 6 to 80 years
● APM (Advanced progressive matrices) for above average individuals.
e. Seguin form board
● Introduced by the French physician Seguin.
● The intellectual test for mentally retarded (performance test)
● Based on the single factor theory of intelligence.
● Based on the eye hand coordination, shape concept and visual concept.
● Mainly used for assessing motor skills.
● It is done by using 10 differently shaped wooden blocks.
f. Bhatia’s test of intelligence:
● CM Bhatia (1995).
● Performance test.
● It includes the following subtests.
a. Kohl’s block design tests: it is a performance test to measure intelligence. The test
consists of 16 coloured cubes and 17 cards with coloured designs, which the subject is
supposed to duplicate by using the blocks.
b. Alexander’s pass along test: it was a component of W P Alexander’s performance
scale. The child moved the block around a tray to match a predetermined design.
c. Pattern drawing test: this includes 8 cards. Every card has a pattern and the subject
is required to draw these patterns in one go without lifting the pencil.
d. Immediate memory test: this test ha 2 parts: digit span forward and digit span
backward. The test taker is require to repeat the numbers the examiners say the
number of digits increase on every trail.
e. Picture construction test: this requires the subject to construct a picture that is given
in parts. The parts are to be meaningfully combined to construct the picture.
Aptitude test:
● Aptitude is a person’s ability, acquired or innate to learn or develop knowledge of a
skill in some specific area.
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● Abilities or character whether native or acquired some specific knowledge, skills or
set of organise responses such as musical ability, language used etc.
● Aptitude test can be grouped into 2 categories multiple aptitude tests and special
aptitude test.
● Multiple aptitude tests are those which several aptitudes each by an Independent
subtest.
● Multiple aptitude tests are not tests but batteries of tests. Special aptitude test are
those which intends to measure only one aptitude.
● Differential aptitude test (DAT) is an example of multiple aptitude test. General
Aptitude Test Battery (GATB)
Achievement test:
● Achievement refers to what the person has acquired or achieved after the specific
training or instruction has been imparted.
● Achievement test is the tool mainly used in educational and psychological works they
are effective ways to check any weaknesses is found in the instruction, the instructor
or the teacher may be asked to improve his instructions.
● They are helpful in the formulation of educational goals and very easy means of
critical examinations of the content and method of instruction.
● It helps in adapting the instructions to the individual need of the learner.
● E.g. Crawford small part dexterity test, Sternberg’s dexterity test, and Benet hand tool
dexterity test.
Factors influencing intelligence
• Nature (genetic factors) and nurture (environmental factors, personal experience).
• Child’s intelligence mainly influenced by genetics, genotype (environmental interaction)
and gender.
• The immediate environment is highly influential: family events, social events etc. the
societal influence race, ethnicity.
• Genetic factors: Twin studies conducted by Plomin and colleagues study reveals that
adopted children have IQ resembling to their biological parents than adopted parents.
Identification of the specific genes responsible for intelligence. Heritability : the
proportion of the variance of any trait within the population attributable to genetic factors
• Environmental factors: environmental deprivation: children’s raise in the substandard
circumstances should experience gradual decline in IQ. Understaffed organisations led to
the predicted erosion of IQ. Environmental enrichment: more conductive in learning
benefits from this. Centres of middle and upper class.
• Flynn effect; James Flynn researchers uncovered an important phenomenon an average
IQ test score worldwide are being increasing over time. Younger generations perform
better than older generations. Per generation the average IQ score increase by 10%.
• Gender: female score higher than male in verbal abilities like naming synonyms and
verbal fluency, achievements in literature, spelling and writing. Males tends to score
higher on Visuospatial tasks such as mental rotation or tracking a moving object through
space.
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• Father of modern creativity: Torrens.
• The ability to produce the work that is novel (original and unexpected) and appropriate (it
is useful or meet task constraints) and is conceptual (process involving the generation of
new ideas or concepts or new association between existing ideas or concepts)
Convergent and divergent thinking (J P Guilford)
a. Convergent thinking:
Required to solve problems which have only one correct solution.
b. Divergent thinking:
In which variety of thoughts are involved, open ended thinking where individuals
can think of different answers to the problem in terms of their experience.
▪ Factors affecting divergent thinking
1. Fluency: it is the ability to produce many ideas for a given task or a
problem. The more ideas a person proposes more is his fluency.
2. Flexibility: it indicates the variety in thinking( different uses of objects
an different ways of solving problems )
3. Originality (novelty) : ability to produce new ideas that are rare or
unusual by seeing new relationship, combination of old ideas, looking
at things in different perspective
4. Elaboration: ability that enables the person to go into details and
workout implications of new ideas.
Stages of creative thinking (Graham Wallas)
a) Preparation: formulation of the problem and collection of facts and materials also
consider necessary new findings.
b) Incubation: the overt activity and sometimes even thinking about the problem is
absent in this stage. But the unconscious thought processes takes places.
c) Illumination : the sudden flash of solutions known as “aha” experience e.g:
Archimedes
d) Verification: it is the last stage in which the evaluation of the solution is one. If the
solution is not satisfactory the thinker goes back to the creative processes from the
beginning onwards
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Confluence approach:
An approach suggesting that for creativity to occur multiple components must
converge. Creativity and intelligence are relate but they are opposite to each other in a
certain way.
Classification of intelligence
a. Intellectually gifted:
Highly developed mental abilities and not only intelligence but also specific
mental abilities related to one’s chosen field. Ability to involve in creative
problem solving. Motivation and dedication. Their general IQ is above 130.
b. Intellectually disabled or mental retarded:
• IQ below 70.
• According to DSM 4 TR they are mainly classified into 4 different categories
▪ Mild retardation (IQ: 50-70)
Common type. Accounts for about 85-90% of the intellectual disability.
Minimum retardation, motor development slow and delayed. They could hold
a job and lead a family life.
▪ Moderate retardation (IQ: 30-35 TO 50-55)
About 10%. Motor development problems, especially in speech, response
in training in various self-help activities. Simple job under supervision.
▪ Severe retardation (IQ: 20-25 TO 35-40)
Poor motor development and markedly delayed speech and
communication skills.
▪ Profound retardation (IQ: BELOW 20-25)
Are severely deficit in adaptive behaviour and unable to master any but the
simplest tasks. Useful speech, as it develops is rudimentary. 1-2% of people
are included in this category, gross disability and minimal capacity for
functioning, needs nursing care, incapable of self-maintenance. Down
syndrome (trisomy of chromosome 21) phenylketonuria (by an enzyme
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deficiency) hydrocephaly (excessive accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in
skull)
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