Our Presentation!

Intelligence - or how bright you areSlide 0

Slide 1

• Intelligence is an important idea in science. It is also important in education. There is a debate about nature-nurture. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking (who are both physicists) are both thought of as highly bright.

Slide 2

Slide 2• Michael Balter in Science Now comments (and I will read this out):• ‘Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in conventional measures of success in

life: academic achievement, economic success, even greater health, and longevity. Is that because they are more intelligent? Not necessarily. New research concludes that IQ scores are partly a measure of how motivated a child is to do well on the test. And harnessing that motivation might be as important to later success as so-called native intelligence.

• Researchers have long debated what IQ tests actually measure, and whether average differences in IQ scores--such as those between different ethnic groups--reflect differences in intelligence, social and economic factors, or both. The debate moved heavily into the public arena with the 1994 publication of The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which suggested that the lower average IQ scores of some ethnic groups, such as African-Americans and Hispanics, were due in large part to genetic differences between them and Caucasian groups. That view has been challenged by many scientists. For example, in his 2009 book "Intelligence and How to Get It," Richard Nisbett, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, argued that differences in IQ scores largely disappear when researchers control for social and economic factors.

• New work, led by Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and reported online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores the effect of motivation on how well people perform on IQ tests. While subjects taking such tests are usually instructed to try as hard as they can, previous research has shown that not everyone makes the maximum effort. A number of studies have found that subjects who are promised monetary rewards for doing well on IQ and other cognitive tests score significantly higher.’

Slide 3• This is what a scholar suggested on the course website:

“No other aspect of human functioning explains so much of the differences in behaviour. It has fascinated great thinkers, even politicians and mass murderers, since time began. In the first half of the twentieth century many psychologists made a good living out of testing it…Thinking about it influences people’s perceptions, evaluations and decisions about themselves and others. It also impacts on social life, especially in relationships and in the workplace. We all have theories about intelligence based on experiences, education and preferences, using them to make judgements every day (Coaley, 2009, 148).”Coaley, K. 2009, An Introduction to psychological Assessment and Psychometrics, SAGE, London.• For me this sums up intelligence

Intelligence Test

• Here is an intelligence test which I want us to all try in this pres4entation (It takes about 30 minutes)

• http://www.free-iqtest.net/

Implications

• We won’t talk through these but will just mention them:

• Gifted and talented• Ability• Historical terms • Debates: ethno-centric

use of the term