Evaluating the Teaching of Intelligence1

Abstract

FOR many years psychologists have been intrigued by the question of the relative importance of heredity and environment in determining differences in intelligence. Their major research method has been the correlation of intelligence test scores of people with varying degrees of genetic similarity. Thus, for example, they have shown that heredity is important because monozygotic twins, who are genetically identical, are more alike in their intelligence test scores than are dizygotic twins, whose degree of genetic similarity is only that of ordinary siblings. The users of this research method have generally been content to define intelligence as &dquo;the ability measured by intelligence tests.&dquo;Recently some psychologists have taken a different approach to the heredity-environment question. They argue that if environment is important, then it should be possible to create environments that foster intellectual growth. With this approach more care must be taken with the definition of intelligence. In a trivial sense, for example, one could increase a person's intelligence by giving him practice answering those very questions that comprise the test one uses to measure intelligence. Clearly, then, more meaningful research must take into account the relation between the training operations and the operations used to

Analysis of adult age differences on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices Test.

“…The evidence that the Raven's measure other factors such as processing speed is mixed, with some studies suggesting rather large relationships between this ability and the Raven's (Rimoldi, 1948;Zonderman etal., 1977), but other studies indicating otherwise (Cornelius, Willis, Nesselroade, & Baltes, 1983;Wilson etal., 1975). In yet another attempt to explain the processes involved in solving a matrix-style figural relations problem, Jacobs and Vandeventer (1972) suggested that subjects must be able to discriminate among the elements of the figure, identify relations among the elements to form rules, and combine the relations in order to solve the problem. The ability to discriminate among elements of a geometric figure can be viewed as a type of disembedding task in that the subjects must be able to discriminate various attributes of the figure as distinct elements.…”

An application of the Linear Logistic Test Model for the construction of a Fluid Intelligence Test

“…Based on the work developed by Jacobs and Vandeventer (1972), Carpenter et al (1990), and Primi (2001), the FRT items were dissected into a set of rules involved in their resolution to explain their level of difficulty (see .56. This indicator has been related to the amount of information that must be processed in working memory (Primi, 2001).…”

United States Air Force Summer Research Program - 1991. Summer Faculty Research Program (SFRP) Reports. Volume 2. Armstrong Laboratory, Wilford Hall Medical Center

“…This was accomplished by systematically identifying characteristics of the problems related to both individual attributes in each of the nine matrix entries and patterns of shared attributes between the nine entries. The model was compared to both the Carpenter et al model (1990) and the 12 general inductive rules identified by Jacobs and Vandeventer (1972).…”

“…The process of easoning has generally been defined in terms transformational rules (e.g., Carpenter, Just, & Shell, 1990;Evans, 1968;Jacobs & Vandeventer, 1972;Mulholland, Pelligrino, & Glaser, 1980, Raven, 1948Steinberg, 1977). On the most basic level, these rules can be thought of as a series of similarity judgements based on the number of shared dimensions between stimuli in multi-dimensional space (e.g., Holyoak, 1984;Royer, 1978;Rumelhardt & Abrahamson, 1973;Smith, 1989;Whitman & Garner, 1962).…”