Post-Piaget theories

This would involve accommodation—the formation of a new cognitive structure. Cognitive development , according to Piaget, represents a dynamic equilibrium between the two processes of assimilation and accommodation. As a second part of his theory, Piaget postulated four major periods in individual intellectual development. The first, the sensorimotor period, extends from birth through roughly age two. During this period, a child learns how to modify reflexes to make them more adaptive, to coordinate actions, to retrieve hidden objects, and, eventually, to begin representing information mentally.

The second period, known as preoperational , runs approximately from age two to age seven. In this period a child develops language and mental imagery and learns to focus on single perceptual dimensions, such as colour and size. The third, the concrete-operational period, ranges from about age 7 to age A preoperational child, asked which beaker has more water, will say that the second beaker does the tall thin one ; a concrete-operational child, however, will recognize that the amount of water in the beakers must be the same.

Finally, children emerge into the fourth, formal-operational period, which begins at about age 12 and continues throughout life. The formal-operational child develops thinking skills in all logical combinations and learns to think with abstract concepts. For example, a child in the concrete-operational period will have great difficulty determining all the possible orderings of four digits, such as The child who has reached the formal-operational stage, however, will adopt a strategy of systematically varying alternations of digits, starting perhaps with the last digit and working toward the first.

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This systematic way of thinking is not normally possible for those in the concrete-operational period. One shortcoming is that the theory deals primarily with scientific and logical modes of thought, thereby neglecting aesthetic , intuitive, and other modes. In addition, Piaget erred in that children were for the most part capable of performing mental operations earlier than the ages at which he estimated they could perform them.

A second course has identified periods of development that are quite different from those suggested by Piaget. A third course has been to accept the periods of development Piaget proposed but to hold that they have different cognitive bases. Some of the theories in the third group emphasize the importance of memory capacity. A fourth course has been to focus on the role of knowledge in development. The views of intellectual development described above all emphasize the importance of the individual in intellectual development. This view is related to the cognitive-contextual theories discussed above.

Championed originally by the Russian psychologist L. The role of environment is particularly evident in studies across cultures. In her research on the cultural contexts of intelligence, Greenfield , while studying indigenous Mayan people, found that the Mayan conception of intelligence is much more collective than the conception of intelligence in European or North American cultures.

To the Maya, much of being intelligent involves being able to work with others effectively. Children who grow up in environments that do not stress Western principles of education may not be able to demonstrate their abilities on conventional Western intelligence tests. Sternberg and others have found that rural Tanzanian children performed much better on skills tests when they were given extended instruction beyond the normal test instructions.

Without this additional instruction, however, the children did not always understand what they were supposed to do, and, because of this, they underperformed on the tests. Tests for this type of knowledge were combined with conventional Western tests of intelligence and academic achievement.


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Results showed a negative correlation between practical intelligence knowledge of medical remedies and academic achievement. These findings suggested that in some cultures, academic skills may not be particularly valued; as a result, the brighter children invest more effort in acquiring practical skills. Almost all of the theories discussed above employ complex tasks for gauging intelligence in both children and adults. Over time, theorists chose particular tasks for analyzing human intelligence, some of which have been explicitly discussed here—e. Although the kinds of complex tasks discussed so far belong to a single tradition for the measurement of intelligence, the field actually has two major traditions.

The tradition that has been discussed most prominently and has been most influential is that of the French psychologist Alfred Binet — An earlier tradition, and one that still shows some influence upon the field, is that of the English scientist Sir Francis Galton.


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Building on ideas put forth by his uncle Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species , Galton believed that human capabilities could be understood through scientific investigation. From to Galton maintained a laboratory in London where visitors could have themselves measured on a variety of psychophysical tasks, such as weight discrimination and sensitivity to musical pitch. Galton believed that psychophysical abilities were the basis of intelligence and, hence, that these tests were measures of intelligence.

Catell nonetheless continued to develop his Galtonian approach in psychometric research and, with Edward Thorndike, helped to establish a centre for mental testing and measurement. The more influential tradition of mental testing was developed by Binet and his collaborator, Theodore Simon, in France. In the minister of public instruction in Paris named a commission to study or create tests that would ensure that mentally retarded children received an adequate education.

The minister was also concerned that children of normal intelligence were being placed in classes for mentally retarded children because of behaviour problems. He proposed instead that tests of intelligence should measure skills such as judgment, comprehension , and reasoning—the same kinds of skills measured by most intelligence tests today. This test has been revised frequently and continues to be used in countries all over the world.


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  4. The Stanford-Binet test, and others like it, have yielded at the very least an overall score referred to as an intelligence quotient, or IQ. An example of a verbal subtest would be vocabulary, whereas an example of a performance subtest would be picture arrangement, the latter requiring an examinee to arrange a set of pictures into a sequence so that they tell a comprehensible story.

    Later developments in intelligence testing expanded the range of abilities tested. For example, in the psychologists J. Das and Jack A. Naglieri published the Cognitive Assessment System, a test based on a theory of intelligence first proposed by the Russian psychologist Alexander Luria. The test measured planning abilities, attentional abilities, and simultaneous and successive processing abilities.

    Simultaneous processing abilities are used to solve tasks such as figural matrix problems, in which the test taker must fill in a matrix with a missing geometric form. Successive processing abilities are used in tests such as digit span, in which one must repeat back a string of memorized digits. IQ was originally computed as the ratio of mental age to chronological physical age, multiplied by A score of , where the mental age equals the chronological age, is average.

    As discussed above, the concept of mental age has fallen into disrepute. Many tests still yield an IQ, but they are most often computed on the basis of statistical distributions.

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    The scores are assigned on the basis of what percentage of people of a given group would be expected to have a certain IQ. Intelligence test scores follow an approximately normal distribution , meaning that most people score near the middle of the distribution of scores and that scores drop off fairly rapidly in frequency as one moves in either direction from the centre. For example, on the IQ scale, about 2 out of 3 scores fall between 85 and , and about 19 out of 20 scores fall between 70 and Put another way, only 1 out of 20 scores differs from the average IQ by more than 30 points.

    It has been common to attach labels to certain levels of IQ. At the upper end, the label gifted is sometimes assigned to people with IQs of or higher. Scores at the lower end have been given the labels borderline retarded 70 to 84 and severely retarded 25 to All such terms, however, have pitfalls and can be counterproductive. First, their use assumes that conventional intelligence tests provide sufficient information to classify someone as gifted or mentally retarded , but most authorities would reject this assumption.

    In fact, the information yielded by conventional intelligence tests represents only a fairly narrow range of abilities. To label someone as mentally retarded solely on the basis of a single test score, therefore, is to risk doing a disservice and an injustice to that person. Most psychologists and other authorities recognize that social as well as strictly intellectual skills must be considered in any classification of mental retardation.

    Second, giftedness is generally recognized as more than just a degree of intelligence, even broadly defined. Most psychologists who have studied gifted persons agree that a variety of aspects make up giftedness. Gruber, a Swiss psychologist, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, an American psychologist, were among those who doubted that giftedness in childhood is the sole predictor of adult abilities.

    Gruber held that giftedness unfolds over the course of a lifetime and involves achievement at least as much as intelligence.

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    Gifted people, he contended, have life plans that they seek to realize, and these plans develop over the course of many years. As was true in the discussion of mental retardation, the concept of giftedness is trivialized if it is understood only in terms of a single test score. Third, the significance of a given test score can be different for different people. A certain IQ score may indicate a higher level of intelligence for a person who grew up in poverty and attended an inadequate school than it would for a person who grew up in an upper-middle-class environment and was schooled in a productive learning environment.

    An IQ score on a test given in English also may indicate a higher level of intelligence for a person whose first language is not English than it would for a native English speaker. Because of these and similar drawbacks, it has come to be believed that scores should be interpreted carefully, on an individual basis. Intelligence has historically been conceptualized as a more or less fixed trait. Whereas a minority of investigators believe either that it is highly heritable or that it is minimally heritable, most take an intermediate position. Among the most fruitful methods that have been used to assess the heritability of intelligence is the study of identical twins who were separated at an early age and reared apart.

    If the twins were raised in separate environments, and if it is assumed that when twins are separated they are randomly distributed across environments often a dubious assumption , then the twins would have in common all of their genes but none of their environment, except for chance environmental overlap. As a result, the correlation between their performance on intelligence tests could identify any possible link between test scores and heredity.

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    They also earn more and lead more comfortable lives. Chances are, if you grew up as that awkward, quiet, geeky kid with social anxiety, you were probably special and didn't know it. As an adult, you now leverage your strength for processing, contemplating and thinking things over, which is a trait of highly intelligent people. In fact, more than 75 percent of people with an IQ above are introverted.

    I don't make this stuff up. A rather unorthodox study in Brazil followed 6, people from birth to the age of Breast-fed babies did better than babies who were nursed for a month or less, scoring better on intelligence tests as adults, having more success, and earning more.

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    Both types have been shown to be more intelligent than conservatives or religious types, says evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. The reasoning goes that liberals and atheists tend to show superiority or elitism, which is linked with higher IQ. Aligning your values and beliefs to progressive and nonconformist ideals may be ways to express to others that you're smarter than the average bear.

    Harvard Business Review reports that people with a higher " curiosity quotient " CQ are more inquisitive and generate more original ideas, and this "thinking style" leads to higher levels of knowledge acquisition over time. CQ, the author states , "is the ultimate tool to produce simple solutions for complex problems.

    So many studies have been conducted to link intelligence to humor, it deserves its own article. Comedians consistently scored much higher on IQ tests than the average population. The average IQ score of the generation population? Between 90 and Funny people have also been linked to generating greater creativity, having superior verbal skills , and being more sexually attractive. That's my cue to crack a good joke for my wife.