Child Psychology 1- Intelligence

1. Spearman- He proposed that mental ability could be understood as a single 'g' factor(general factor) and this 'g' was responsible for the different mental tasks around 50%.

2.Cattell-  Suggested that intelligence was having a set of skills he categorised the skills into fluid intelligence(gf) this is the innate ability what you are born with, and crystallised intelligence(gc) this is what you have learned through past experince.

3.Horn- assessed the development of IQ by testing these skills on 14-61, he found that fluid intelligence was found more in younger adults while in older adults crystallised intelligence was higher this could be such things as verbal knowledge.

4.Hairer-  Using MRI scans he found that men have more grey matter in thier frontal and parietal lobe which is assiociated with motor skills and higher level reasoning. Whereas women have more grey matter in other regions for tasks that require speech and writing.

5.Mortenson- significant positive correlation between the length of time a baby was breastfed and there IQ in adult intelligence.

6. Goldshmidt- he discovered that the heavy canabis use within the first three months of pregnancy linked to lower verbal reasoning skills as a child, heavy use during the last months is negatively assiociated with lower IQ skills overall.

ALTERNATIVE TO BIOLOGICAL-

7. Sternburg- Created a triadc model that identified three different types of intelligence, analytical intelligence, practical intelligence and creative intelligence. You may show strengths in any of them more than the others(Cognitive)

8. Gardener- Multi-model of memory which shows that the there are 7 types of intelligence, music,performance, composition and appreciation of music, using the body to solve problems, spaial intelligence, linguistics and logical mathmatics.

9.Goleman- He added 2 extra ones to Gardener these are understanding others and there feelings also understanding yourself your goals, intentions and behaviours.

Van Leeuwen-

Aim- To find out if intelligence is heridtary in families, this is done by comparing Twins to siblings and there parents.

Sample- Twins were recruited from the Netherlands and invited by letter(214) 112 families agreed to participate so this is a self selected sample. All families had a set of twins as well as one other sibling.

Procedure- Firstly they were tested to see if they were related to ensure they were and how closely. Cognitive IQ testing then took place, children took the raven's standard Progressive matricies which was scored out of 60 and the adults took the raven advanced progressive matricies which was scored out of 36.

Findings- More variance in the siblings compared to the Twins and the monozygotic twins were more closely related compared to the dizygotic twins. Female twins scored higher and closer than male twins overall

Conclusions- Environmental factors are significantly more important in children with a genetic predispostion for low IQ than in children with a genetic predidpostion for high IQ. For people with a lower IQ more stimulation is needed for you to learn?.

This could improve intelligence testing as there can be more ways developed to test IQ, The multi model by gardener shows that the IQ tests that have been developed need to be testing all the different types of intelligence to provide a better knowlegde.

Other way that could br developed to show intelligence would be MRI scans as they can show intelligence and you can actual see it, it also shows how different different parts of the brain work together to solve problems. Could also highlight other issues that could affect intelligence.