1. Measuring Smartness? Tristram Jones, Ph.D. Kaplan University, Intro to Psychology SS124-26AU

2. WHO DECIDES WHO’S INTELLIGENT? Take Williams Syndrome, for instance: Individuals with Williams syndrome are highly verbal and sociable but lack common sense and typically exhibit inhibited intelligence. They tend to have widely spaced teeth, a long upper lip region and flattened nasal bridge. MAD’s iconic mascot is rumored to have been based on a portrait of a Williams sufferer. Individuals with the condition tend to demonstrate a love of music, and also often possess perfect pitch. They are also likely to enjoy other arts and read avidly, though they may be incapable of making change or telling left from right. THIS MAN could not drive a car, make change, or groom himself without assistance. He did not speak until he was 3, flunked math, was considered retarded by his parents and may have been mildly autistic!

3. SO WHO MEASURES IQs? PSYCHOLOGISTS, NATURALLY Alfred Binet was a self-taught student of psychology. He never received a degree in the field! But the government of France hired him to assess the intelligences of French school kids in 1909! THOSE WERE THE DAYS!! INTELLIGENTLY ENOUGH....Binet realized that he should avoid measuring learned or culturally specific items of knowledge and focus on what he called natural intelligence! Binet’s test took the kid’s score and compared it to the average score across age groups, giving his testers a ‘mental age’ score. How did he make the distinction between natural and learned smarts?

4. TESTING FOR NATIVE INTELLIGENCE... CULTURALLY prejudicial IQ question: Which one of the five is least like the other four? COPPER - IRON - BRASS - TIN - LEAD CULTURALLY non-prejudicial IQ question: Which glass doesn’t make sense?

5. ABUSE OF IQ TESTS STARTED EARLY  During the 1920s the United States Government wanted to cut down on immigration, so it hired Henry Goddard (he was a psychologist, all right!) to check the intelligence levels of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. After extensive testing, Goddard made an important discovery! Jews, Italians, Russians, and Hungarians were all idiots! (Like a lot of crackpot IQ gurus, Goddard was an enthusiastic eugenicist who wanted to mass sterilize populations he deemed mentally inferior!)

6. Okay, so how’d we came up with “IQ”?  A German named William Stern (he was a psychologist, by the way) decided that Binet and his partner, Dr. Simon (NOT a psychologist) had a pretty good test of intelligence, but thought mental ages could be translated into quotients by comparing a kid’s mental age to his actual age. But...that’s as far as he got! Lewis Terman in the USA actually got around to the math. He decided that:  MENTAL AGE/ PHYSICAL AGE X 100 = RATIO IQ, problem solved! WILLIAM STERN <WILLIAM STERN LEWIS TERMMAN LEWIS TERMMAN>

7. ANOTHER PROBLEM! If you really think about it..... There is a real problem with IQs as kids age. Kids, age 5, with IQs of 200 are really smart (because they are as smart as 10 year olds, right?) But why shouldn’t a 30 year old be as smart as a 60 year old??? Isn’t that normal? What about older folks—whom do we compare THEM to? 100-year-olds?

8. SOLUTION: DEVIATION IQ! Here’s what you do: Divide test score by the average test score of people in the same age category. THEN multiply by 100. This gives you the deviation IQ, telling you how far from the bean-curve average each tester scores!

9. ARE THESE TESTS ANY GOOD? IQ tests seem to predict life outcomes such as scholastic achievement, criminality and vocational earnings. Even divorce is more likely if we’re stupid! Yikes! Stephen J. Gould thinks they SUCK! And he’s not alone! "the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups—races, classes, or sexes—are innately inferior and deserve their status." (Gould, 1981)

10. Think he’s kidding? Check out these guys! SHOCKLEY: (Not a psychologist) During the 1960s, he argued, in a series of articles and speeches, that people of African descent have a genetically inferior mental capacity when compared to those with Caucasian ancestry. JENSEN: (Yes he’s a psychologist) has argued for the “G” factor, the idea that genetic heredity means that blacks are mentally inferior to whites, who are, according to Jensen, inferior to those clever Asians! Needless say, most experts disagree profoundly!

11. Today we think we know this:  IQ must be understood (AT LEAST) as a tri-level hierarchy with general intelligence on top, midlevel abilities in the middle, and specific abilities at the bottom. These vary from person to person but include:  Memory/learning/retrieval ability/cognitive speed/visual perception/processing speed and---  CRYSTALIZED INTELIGENCE: Stuff we already know  FLUID INTELLIGENCE: How we use info we already know to inform thought and activity.  Questions of aesthetics and artistic talents and genius are STILL not effectively addressed, many claim! (CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE)...like, Shockley probably couldn’t have written “Roll Over Beethoven!” Jensen couldn’t have written “Roots!”

12. So who would YOU hire ? If you were President and you had 5 applicants to fill an important secretarial post in your cabinet, who would you pick? White violin soloist? Brilliant Black artist? Well dressed Black guy? Well dressed White guy? Handsome Hispanic guy? Pretty White lady?