Behavioral Science (353)

Human Biology Three (3)

Ibrahim Kumuriwor Baidawu Weso-amo
Index number: 3416120
09/02/2023

THE PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH TO INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence is the ability to derive information, learn from experience, adapt to the environment,
understand, and correctly utilize thought and reason.
Psychometrics is a field that focuses on how to properly measure certain psychological concepts
such as cognition, knowledge and personality. The psychometric Approach to intelligence
therefore is an approach that seeks to study individual differences while making measurements
of various variables in psychology.

 Brief History
Though Francis Galton, was the first man who tapped into the concept of ‘Psychometric
experiment’ and the importance of measuring and quantifying “operations of the mind, the first
modern intelligence test was developed in France at the beginning of the 20th century to identify
children who needed special education services (Binet and Simon, 1905).
Bidet and Simon being psychometric pioneers devised a series of diagnostic tests that way easing
to administer score and interpret. They invented the concept of mental age, a person's level of
performance which could be compared to the performance typical of a given child's true
chronological age. For example, if an 8-year-old score on an intelligence test was equal to the
score octane by the average 10-year-old then the child was considered to have a mental age of 10
which is 2 years ahead of the child's chronological age. Later Innovations allowed psychologist
to interpret the scores in terms of intelligence quotient which is used to evaluate and compare the
overall mental capacity of the same age peers on a single scale.

 The Psychometric Approach today

Alongside Binet and Simon, the most popular intelligence test for at least the past half century
were developed by David Witchley in 1939 who emphasised the measurement of verbal and
performance (nonverbal) abilities and the importance of thinking of IQ test as clinical
instruments and not merely a psychometric tool. Today current versions of his test are popularly
used worldwide (Wechsler scale). The IQ test as well as other popular individually administered
instruments are used for educational, medical, and legal purposes.

 Factors of the psychometric approach

One of the earliest British psychologist Spearman devised the factor analysis, a statistical
technique that examines patterns of individual differences in test scores. He concluded that just
two kinds of factors underlie all individual differences in test scores. The first and more
important factor, which he labeled the “general factor,” or g, pervades performance on all tasks
requiring intelligence. In other words, regardless of the task, if it requires intelligence, it
requires g. The second factor is specifically related to each particular test. For example, when
someone takes a test of arithmetical reasoning, his performance on the test requires a general
factor that is common to all tests (g) and a specific factor that is related to whatever mental
operations are required for mathematical reasoning as distinct from other kinds of thinking. Later
on, The American psychologist L.L. Thurstone disagreed with Spearman’s theory, arguing
instead that there were seven factors, which he identified as the “primary mental abilities.”
These seven abilities, according to Thurstone, were verbal comprehension (as involved in the
knowledge of vocabulary and in reading), verbal fluency (as involved in writing and in
producing words), number (as involved in solving fairly simple numerical computation and
arithmetical reasoning problems), spatial visualization (as involved in visualizing and
manipulating objects, such as fitting a set of suitcases into an automobile trunk), inductive
reasoning (as involved in completing a number series or in predicting the future on the basis of
past experience), memory (as involved in recalling people’s names or faces), and perceptual
speed (as involved in rapid proofreading to discover typographical errors in a text).

THE COGNITIVE APPROACH TO INTELLIGENCE

COGNITION- the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through
thought, experience, and the senses.
Cognitive psychology therefore is the scientific study of the mind as an information processor. It
concerns the way we take in information from the outside world, how we make sense of that
information. The idea that humans conduct mental processes on incoming information, i.e.
human cognition came to the fore of psychological thought during the mid-twentieth century,
overlooking the stimulus-response focus of the behaviorist approach. A dominant cognitive
approach evolved, advocating that sensory information is manipulated internally prior to
responses made influenced by, for instance, our motivations and beliefs. Introspection a
subjective method predominantly used by philosophical and psychodynamic approaches was
rejected in favour of experimental methodology to study internal processes scientifically.
The cognitive approach assumes:
 The mind actively processes information from our senses (touch, taste etc.).
 Between stimulus and response are complex mental processes, which can be studied
scientifically.
 Humans can be seen as data processing systems.
The workings of a computer and the human mind are alike – they encode and store information,
and they have outputs. Using experimental research methods, the cognitive approach studies
internal mental processes such as attention, memory and decision-making. For example, an
investigation might compare the abilities of groups to memorize a list of words, presenting them
either verbally or visually to infer which type of sensory information is easiest to process, and
could further investigate whether or not this changes with different word types or individuals.

 Theoretical and computer models are proposed to attempt to explain and infer

information about mental processes. For example, the Information-Processing
Model (Figure 1) describes the mind as if a computer, in terms of the relationship
between incoming information to be encoded (from the senses), manipulating this
mentally (e.g. storage, a decision), and consequently directing an output (e.g. a
behaviour, emotion). An example might be an artist looking at a picturesque landscape,
deciding which paint colour suits a given area, before brushing the selected colour onto a
canvas.

Fig
ure 1: Flow chart highlighting the role of mental processing defined by the Information-
Processing Model

REFERENCES
www.simplypsychology.org
https://www.verywellmind.com
https://unacademy.com