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7 HUS 133 Intelligence
1. Adulthood and Aging, 6e
John C. Cavanaugh
Fredda Blanchard-Fields
CHAPTER SEVEN
Intelligence
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2. Defining Intelligence
Learning Objectives
• How do people define intelligence in everyday life?
• What are the major components of the life span
approach?
• What are the major research approaches for studying
intelligence?
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3. Defining Intelligence
Intelligence in Everyday Life
• Intelligence involves more than just a
particular fixed set of characteristics.
• Laypersons and experts agree on three
clusters of intelligence:
– Problem-solving ability
– Verbal ability
– Social competence
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4. Defining Intelligence
The Big Picture: A Life-Span View
• Theories of intelligence have four concepts:
– Multidimensional (many domains of intellectual functioning)
– Multidirectionality (distinct patterns of change of abilities)
– Plasticity (degree to which a person’s ability can be modified)
– Interindividual variability
(adults differ in the direction of their intellectual development)
• The dual component model of intellectual functioning
– Mechanics of intelligence (thinking & information processing)
(reasoning, spatial orientation, perception speed)
– Pragmatics of intelligence (acquired knowledge available within culture)
(everyday cognitive performance & adaptation – verbal knowledge, wisdom,
and practical problem solving)
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5. A Life-Span View of fluid mechanics and crystallized
pragmatics
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6. Defining Intelligence
Research Approaches to Intelligence
• The psychometric approach
– Measuring intelligence as a score on a standardized
test
• Focus is on getting correct answers.
• The cognitive-structural approach
– Ways in which people conceptualize and solve
problems emphasizing developmental changes in
modes and styles of thinking
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7. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Learning Objectives
• What are primary mental abilities? How do they
change across adulthood?
• What are secondary mental abilities? What are the
developmental trends for fluid and crystallized
intelligence?
• What are the primary moderators of intellectual
change?
• How successful are attempts at training primary
mental abilities?
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8. Developmental Trends in Psychometric Intelligence
The Measurement of Intelligence
• Psychometric approach focuses on the
interrelationships among intellectual abilities.
– Major goal is to measure ways relationships are
organized:
• The structure of intelligence is described as a hierarchy
• Lowest level – word fluency
• Second level – tests
• Third level – primary mental abilities
• Fourth level – secondary mental abilities
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9. Developmental Trends in Psychometric Intelligence
Primary Mental Abilities
• Thurston’s five primary mental abilities:
– Numerical facility -- basic math skills / reasoning
– Word fluency -- verbal description of things
– Verbal meaning -- vocabulary ability
– Inductive reasoning -- ability to extrapolate from facts to general concepts
– Spatial orientation -- ability to reason in 3D world in which we live
• Two additional abilities added by Schaie:
– Perceptual speed -- ability to rapidly find visual details
– Verbal memory – ability to store and recall meaningful language
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11. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Age-Related Changes in Primary Abilities
• Data from K. Warner Schaie’s Seattle
Longitudinal Study of more than 5,000
individuals from 1956 to 1998 in six testing
cycles:
– People tend to improve on primary abilities until late
30s or early 40s.
– Scores stabilize until mid-50s and early 60s.
– By late 60s consistent declines are seen.
– Nearly everyone shows a decline in one ability, but few
show decline on four or five abilities.
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13. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Secondary Mental Abilities
• At least six secondary mental abilities have been found
– Fluid Intelligence
Abilities that make you a flexible and adaptive thinker, to draw
inferences, and relationships between concepts independent
of knowledge and experience
– Crystallized Intelligence
The knowledge acquired through life experience and
education in a particular culture
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15. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Moderators of Intellectual Change
• Cohort differences
– Comparing longitudinal studies with cross-sectional
show little or no decline in intellectual performance
with age
• Information processing
– Perceptual speed may account for age-related
decline.
– Working memory decline may account for poor
performance of older adults if coordination between
old and new information is required.
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17. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Moderators of Intellectual Change (cont.)
• Social and lifestyle variables
– Differences in cognitive skills needed in different
occupations makes a difference in intellectual
development.
– Higher education and socioeconomic status also
related to slower rates of intellectual decline.
– Does a cognitively engaging lifestyle predict greater
intellectual functioning?
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18. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Moderators of Intellectual Change
• Health
– A connection between disease and intelligence has
been established in general and in cardiovascular
disease in particular.
– The participants in the Seattle Longitudinal Study who
declined in inductive reasoning had significantly more
illness diagnoses and visits to physicians for
cardiovascular disease.
– Hypertension is not as clear. Severe HT may indicate
decline whereas mild HT may have positive effects on
intellectual functioning.
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19. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Moderators of Intellectual Change (cont.)
• Relevancy and appropriateness of tasks
– Traditional tests have high correlation with tests that
have been updated to measure actual tasks faced by
older persons.
• Modifying primary abilities
– Training seems to slow declines in some primary
abilities.
• Project ADEPT and Project ACTIVE
– Ability-specific training does improve in primary
abilities.
– Effect varies in ability to maintain and transfer gains.
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20. Developmental Trends in Psychometric
Intelligence
Moderators of Intellectual Change
• Other attempts to train fluid abilities
– Schaie and Willis’ cognitive training showed
improvement in spatial and reasoning abilities both
with people whose abilities were declining and
improvement in those whose abilities had stabilized.
• Long-term effects of training
– Seven year follow-up to the original ADEPT showed
significant training effects.
– 64% of trained group’s performance was above the
pre-training level compared to 33% of the control
group.
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21. Qualitative Differences in Adults Thinking
Learning Objectives
• What are the main points in Piaget’s theory of
cognitive development?
• What evidence is there for continued cognitive
development beyond formal operations?
• What is the role of both emotion and cognition in
cognitive maturity?
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22. Qualitative Differences in Adults Thinking
Piaget’s Theory
• Basic concepts
– Assimilation
• Use of currently available information to make sense out
of incoming information
– Accommodation
• Changing one’s thought to make a better approximation
of the world of experience
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23. Piaget’s Theory
• Sensorimotor Period
– Object permanence (objects exist when out of sight)
• Preoperational Period
– Egocentrism (belief that all people and objects experience the world as they do)
• Concrete Operations Period
– Classification, conservation, mental reversing
• Formal Operations Period
– Abstract thought; (solutions to problems people have not seen or encountered)
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24. Going Beyond Piaget: Postformal Thought
• Developmental progressions in adult thought
– Reflective judgment (how people reason through delimas)
– Optimal level of development (highest level of info processing possible)
– Skill acquisition (process by which people learn new abilities)
• Three thinking Styles
– Absolutist
Belief there is only on correct solution & personal experience provides the answer.
– Relativistic
Realizing there are many sides to an issue; answer depends on the circumstance
– Dialectical
See the merits in different viewpoints but can synthesize them into a workable
solution
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25. Everyday Reasoning and Problem Solving
Learning Objectives
• What are the characteristics of older adults’ decision
making?
• What are optimally exercised abilities and
unexercised abilities? What age differences have
been found in practical problem solving?
• What is encapsulation, and how does it relate to
expertise?
• What is wisdom, and how does it relate to age and
life experience?
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26. Everyday Reasoning and Problem Solving
Decision Making
• Younger adults make decisions quicker than
older adults.
• Older adults
– Search for less information to arrive at a decision
– Require less information to arrive at a decision
– Rely on easily accessible information
Why is this?
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27. Everyday Reasoning and Problem Solving
Problem Solving
• We use our intellectual abilities to solve problems.
– Some people are better than others at problem solving.
– Why is that? Could it have to do with the kinds of
abilities we use regularly versus the ones we use only
occasionally?
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28. Everyday Reasoning and Problem Solving
Denny’s Model of Unexercised and
Optimally Exercised Abilities
• Unexercised ability
– The ability a normal, healthy adult would exhibit without
practice or training (fluid intelligence)
• Exercised ability
– The ability a normal, healthy adult would demonstrate
under the best conditions of training or practice
(crystallized intelligence)
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29. Everyday Reasoning and Problem Solving
Practical Problem Solving
• Observed Tasks of Daily Living (OTDL)
(food prep, medicine intake, telephone use)
– OTDL scores were directly influenced by:
• Age
• Fluid intelligence
• Crystallized intelligence
– OTDL scores were indirectly influenced by:
• Perceptual speed
• Memory
• Several aspects of health
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30. Everyday Reasoning and Problem Solving
Expertise
• Older adults compensate for poorer
performance through their expertise.
– Expertise helps the aging adult compensate for losses
in other skills. Learned via experience alternative ways
to solve problems / make decisions
• Encapsulation
– The processes of thinking (like attention & memory) become
connected to the products of thinking (such as knowledge
about world history).
– Adult knowledge becomes more and more specialized
based on experience
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31. Everyday Reasoning and Problem Solving
Wisdom – (growth of expertise and insight)
– Involves practical knowledge
– Is given altruistically
– Involves psychological insights
– Based on life experience
• Implicit conceptions of wisdom are widely
shared within a culture and include:
– Exceptional level of functioning
– A dynamic balance between intellect, emotion, and
motivation
– A high degree of personal and interpersonal
competence
– Good intentions
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