This content introduces the concept of intelligence, exploring its definition, various theoretical models, and methods of measurement, while also acknowledging the limitations and complexities of intelligence testing.
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good morning afternoon evening night
welcome back to the mr sin channel today
we're going to be going into unit 5
topic 9 of ap psychology an introduction
to intelligence now there's a lot of
information in this video so let's just
start off simply by defining
intelligence and then go over the
different ways we can measure
intelligence intelligence is the ability
to learn from experiences solve problems
and use knowledge to adapt to new
situations essentially it's the ability
to acquire and apply new knowledge and
skills now i'll be honest this is a
pretty abstract definition of
intelligence if you remember back to our
unit 1 videos we talked about
operational definitions if we're going
to measure something we have to be able
to define it and be able to measure it
this is where intelligence tests come
into play individuals such as charles
spearman believe that we have one
general intelligence this is our mental
abilities and is what is normally
measured on a standard intelligence test
spearman believed that we could look at
intelligence with a single score he
believed that people could be better at
certain activities but believe that
individuals who would score high in one
category often also did well in other
categories he used factor analysis to
look at different clusters of related
items and called this general ability
general intelligence or g for short this
idea was somewhat controversial and was
not accepted by everyone in the 1980s
individuals such as howard gardner
sought to redefine our understanding of
intelligence gartner identified eight
different intelligences which you can
see here he also identified a possible
ninth intelligence as well this showed
people that there are different types of
intelligence one person may excel in the
field of mathematics while another may
have sealed in sports depending on who
you are you will excel at different
intelligences robert sternberg agreed
with gardner about there being multiple
intelligences but thought that there was
more than just the traditional
intelligences sternberg believed that we
as individuals have multiple
intelligences and those intelligences
can be broken down into three categories
or intelligences there's analytical
intelligence which is when we're trying
to solve problems that have a single
right answer such as the test at school
there's also creative intelligence which
is our ability to create new ideas and
find a unique solution to problems and
practical intelligence which helps us
with everyday problems and tasks here we
are trying to problem solve issues that
have multiple solutions this theory
later became known as the triarchic
theory now before we go into
intelligence tests i also want to
highlight emotional intelligence this
was proposed by edward thorndike and
defined by peter salovey and john mayer
this intelligence is made up of our
ability to perceive emotions understand
emotions manage our own emotions and use
emotions when trying to critically think
traditionally when trying to assess a
person's intelligence people would take
an intelligence test which would give an
individual a score comparing them to
others we can break these tests into two
groups achievement tests which attempt
to show what an individual has learned
and aptitude tests which show an
individual what they can learn for
example right now you're in ap
psychology and at the end of the school
year you'll take the ap psychology
national exam this would be an
achievement test if you go to college
you might take an entrance exam which
will try to see your ability of what you
can do in college this would be an
example of an aptitude test over the
years there have been different ideas as
to what creates intelligence individuals
such as francis galton and charles
darwin believed that people were
naturally born with a high ability
galton sought to prove this by running
different experiments comparing
different individuals to show a
correlation between reaction times and
intelligence his goal was to find a
simple intelligence measure and ended up
yielding some poor results but he's
being credited as one of the first
people to believe that we could quantify
intelligence other individuals such as
alfred binay expand our understanding of
intelligence and also help laid the
groundwork for the education system
binay and his student theodore simone
sought to better understand how people
developed they believe that children
followed a certain intellectual track
they sought to better understand each
individual's mental age which is the
level of performance that typically
happens at a set age to measure this
they used aptitude tests to have
students solve different problem-solving
questions this would be used to better
understand which classes certain
children should be in the goal of these
tasks was to make sure that children
were put in appropriate classes which
would help them grow intellectually
later lewis turman a stanford professor
would take benay's test and modify to
determine what level of intelligence
that people were born with this became
later known as the stanford binet
intelligence scale it was from these
different tests that eventually the
intelligence quotient or better known as
the iq came to be this was created by
william stern who took the mental age of
individuals and divided by their actual
age and multiplied it by a hundred so
for example if you have a mental age of
20 and you're 20 years old your iq score
would be 100 but if you have a mental
age of a 30 year old and you're 20 years
old your iq score would be 150. now the
iq score works okay for children but
it's not the best at representing
intelligence for adults and while the
term iq is still around most tests do
not use the original formula anymore one
other reason why the old iq scores may
not be as relevant today is because of
the flynn effects which is over the
course of many years the average iq in
society will rise what was once
considered to be a high score no longer
is high psychologist david wexler wanted
to expand our understanding of
intelligence and created the wechsler
adult intelligence scale the test uses
15 subtests that if individuals look at
how objects and concepts are similar the
test also has individuals use different
vocabulary to identify concepts and
objects the test uses abstract
processing to have individuals create
concepts or objects and as individuals
use letter and number sequencing this
test provided an individual an overall
intelligence score and also an
individual score now throughout our
lifetime we continue to learn and grow
and expand our knowledge base our
intelligence is theoretically always
changing we can look at our accumulated
knowledge and our verbal skills which
traditionally increase as we age as a
form of intelligence this is known as
crystallized intelligence or we could
look at our fluid intelligence which is
our ability to quickly reason and break
down abstract problems this
traditionally decreases as we age this
is because over time our processing
speed starts to slow and it takes more
time for us to complete certain mental
tasks now i do want to highlight that
intelligence tests by no means are
perfect in fact they can sometimes
oversimplify these complex topics
causing inaccuracies for example people
with savant syndrome which is a
condition where a person is limited in a
variety of mental abilities and has
exceptional specific skills in a few
areas this is related to autism spectrum
disorder a person with savant syndrome
would score low on an intelligence test
but would have genius-like abilities in
specific areas such as drawing or
mathematics there's also a problem of
the stereotype thread which impacts a
person's ability to perform on
assessments this occurs when people are
put into an environment that treats them
differently than other individuals for
example students who are seen as trouble
or low performing will often accept this
categorization and perform lower on
their tests jane elliott illustrated
this in her blue eye brown eyed
experiment where she separates students
based on their eye color to show the
impact of racism in the education system
and society students who are put in the
dominant group showed increased test
scores and increased confidence while
students who were put in the oppressed
group saw their test scores decrease so
we can see that the theory of
intelligence is ever evolving and what
we know today may be different tomorrow
but now comes the time to practice
answer the questions on the screen and
check your answers in the comment
section down below also don't forget to
check out my ultimate review packet it's
a great resource that'll help you with
everything ap psychology it'll
definitely help you with your a in your
class and a five on that national exam
as always thank you so much for watching
i'm mr sin and i'll see you next time online
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