Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Define autism, savant syndrome, and intelligence.
2. Distinguish between and offer examples of achievement tests versus aptitude tests.
3. Describe the significant events and individuals in the history of intelligence testing, including discussion on differential psychology and the intelligence quotient.
4. Describe the origins of and principles underlying the Simon-Binet/Stanford Binet intelligence tests and then summarize the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to intelligence testing.
5. Explain the importance of the deviation IQ, and list and describe three intelligence scales developed by David Wechsler.
6. List and describe the three factors that are important in psychological testing.
7. List and describe four important and often controversial issues surrounding the validity of intelligence scales mentioning how researchers have attempted to respond to questions of cultural bias.
8. Define mental retardation, describe the four levels of retardation and summarize what is presently known about the causes of mental retardation.
9. Describe historical and contemporary approaches to educating persons with mental retardation.
10. Define mental giftedness and summarize the early twentieth century view of mental giftedness and Terman’s classic study.
11. Summarize the contributions of Charles Spearman, Louis Thurstone, and John Horn and Raymond Cattell regarding the nature of intelligence.
12. Summarize the important features of Robert Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence, offering examples of each type of intelligence delineated in the theory.
13. Describe and offer examples of the various types of intelligence delineated in Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, mentioning the recently proposed emotional intelligence.
14. Describe how women and immigrants were affected by the emphasis on hereditary explanations of intelligence.
15. Summarize the findings of historical and contemporary research regarding the relative contributions of heredity versus environment to intellectual capacity, emphasizing both twin studies and adoption studies.
16. Summarize the research findings regarding the impact of intellectual enrichment programs such as Head Start.