2.) In the Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould shows H.H. Goddard as an individual who manipulated science, truth, and social order. In accordance to the work of Binet, Goddard believed that intelligence testing worked best for locating those below the normal level. Nevertheless, through his practices and misapplications, he distorted Binet’s intentions; he regarded the scores as a single innate entity, he believed his measures of intelligence to be permanent, and he used the scores to limit, segregate, and sterilize the underachievers. Not only did Goddard believe his most defective to be morons, he used IQ scores as a mark of immorality as well. In order to prevent the immigration and procreation of such individuals, Goddard sent women to Ellis Island to detect the feeble-minded; such uncovering was done through observation and was based solely on female intuition. Goddard entered his “testing” with the preconceived notion that even the average immigrant exercised low levels of intelligence. It is this assertion of prejudice that flawed Goddard’s work. Gould shows Goddard’s results to be misrepresented, weak and inconclusive; the poor conditions in which he tested his subjects could have interfered with his finding; the immigrants were most likely frightened, poor, and confused, it is premature to overlook such confounding factors and to assume, instead, that their tests results represented innate stupidity. Also, it has been proven that Goddard’s photographs depicting the difference between the intelligent and the feeble-minded were altered to make the latter appear more sinister and dark. I agree with Gould, Goddard’s studies were merely speculations and manipulations used to feed his own prejudices. His methodology relied on arbitrary techniques, such as women’s intuition, and his faith in the visual identification of the less intelligent is void of scientific meaning and is idiotic in itself.
Mid Term Exam: long essays
1.) Researchers have shown that people with high ability in one intellectual task show increased ability in other intellectual tasks as well. In other words, intellectual tasks are positively correlated with one another- an example of positive manifold. Spearman based his description of intelligence on this finding; he claimed that such a finding proved the existence of one single factor common to all intellectual tasks which he called “g”. It was considered that tasks most heavily “g” concentrated were most representative of intelligence at its purest form. This ability to capture “raw” intelligence is why intelligence testing has been engineered to measure “g”. This single factor, “g”, is believed to be highly heritable, suggesting that intellectual ability is genetic.
Spearman’s “g” refers to performance on intellectual tasks as constant and is considered, at maturity, to come to a developmental halt. Similarly, Horn and Cattel observed that some abilities, such as reasoning and logic, which they called fluid intelligence, stopped developing at maturity. However crystallized intelligence, which they defined as the ability to apply knowledge to learning acquired through education and experience continued to develop with age. Vocabulary and general information were believed to comprise crystallized intelligence and could continue developing throughout life; whereas, the ability to manipulate abstract symbols was an example of fluid intelligence. Nonetheless, Horn and Cattel found that both types of intelligence were positively correlated, thus providing further evidence for the existence of “g”. Similar to Spearman’s “g”, Horn and Cattel believed fluid intelligence was innate; therefore, it was highly heritable. However, intelligence, to them, was not singular; in fact, crystallized intelligence was shaped by exposure to one’s environment, therefore, attributing some recognition to the role of nurture.
In the Garlick article, the author goes on to explore connectionist models and their definitions of intelligence. Neurologically, intelligence is the ability to connect inputs to outputs. Adapting such connections allows one to modify the pattern of activation in his or her neural network. Such modifications result in finding the connections that most appropriately and efficiently process the inputs. Once a rule is learned for changing the connections in response to a stimuli, this rule can be generated at any time the stimuli is presented again and can be generalized to novel occasions. Those who display greater intellectual performance do so because they have produced greater, more efficient, complex neural connections. Neural connections become more and more intricate and idiosyncratic until maturity is reached. Some connectionist models propose that each child is born with a neurological blueprint which takes it shape over the course of maturation, thus claiming that intellectual ability is innately fixed. However, others suggest that the development of such connections occurs as a consequence of exposure to environmental influence. Exposure causes the connections to change and to adapt to one’s particular setting. I find this view the most convincing because it defines intellectual development as a long term process whereby the brain adjusts, allowing for the processing of more and more information. This view also accounts for the effects of training. A brain which is better at adapting its connections will show increased ability in all intellectual tasks which explains why such tasks are positively correlated, thus satisfying the phenomenon of “g”. The plasticity of the brain and its neural efficiency may be influenced by genetics; however, the role of environment cannot be devalued.
2.) Cognitive processing can be explained in terms of top-down and bottom-up. In top-down processing, higher level information influences the lower levels. Your conceptual knowledge and expectations dictate what you perceive at the sensory level. In other words, top-down processing is goal directed. Your perceptions are governed by context, experience, and learning. On the other hand, bottom-up processing occurs when your perceptual experience can be described using knowledge of the physical characteristics of the stimuli. Bottom-up processes occur when lower levels of processing persuade higher ones; highly salient information, such as color, is processed by sensory driven mechanisms and can be treated pre-attentively. Individual differences in such processes can arise in differences within the nervous system, sensory receptors, or in the neural connections. According to the information processing approach, changes in hardware account for variances among individuals. Increased myelinization of neurons, which speeds the transmission of nerve impulses, along with the elimination of unnecessary synapses facilitates the processing of information, whether it is top-down or bottom up. Bottom-up influences are immutable; data levels of processing will never change. However, through exposure and instruction top-down influences can be altered; one’s conceptions and experiences are always changing, causing top-down processing to change as well. For example in visual searches, people most often use bottom-up influences to perceive the presented array of stimuli. However, if the search task is primed repeatedly, individuals can use information about the stimuli to limit their search, thus improving their reaction time. The information conveyed by the priming stimulus can be changed many times over, each time knowledge from the previous round affects the subject’s ability to detect the target. In each task, search or repeated guided searches, the individual is identifying the same stimuli, however, in the guided search task; the individual can use information from before in a top-down fashion to strategically detect the target. For example, If the target stimuli is a red square and the subject is guided with earlier images, one being a square and the next being some red object, the subject will find the target item faster due to his or her previous knowledge. This is important because it suggests that not all processing is fixed, but that top-down influences are flexible, adaptive, and conformable to our purposes. Also, individuals with ID can be instructed or primed to appropriate their processing styles to ones more efficient at solving the task at hand.
On the other hand, an example of bottom-up influences being absolute can be observed in letter detection. In the realm of perceptual operations, letter detection occurs at the feature detection level. This is a lower level of processing, which is immutable. A horizontal line will always be distinguished as such, no matter how much experience one acquires with horizontal lines. Nevertheless, it has been shown that increased knowledge of language allows people to apply top-down influences to letter detection. For example, within the context of a word, people use their expectations and prior knowledge to construct a representation of the word, possibly even passing over such features as horizontal lines. The more experience the reader has, the more quickly he or she will be at recognizing and discriminating features as well as whole words. In other words, bottom-down processes are useful in the detection of physical characteristics, but are unchallengeable in nature; however, this can be overcome by applying top-down processes, which are always individualized and always adapting
- It is important to study individual differences in cognition because they exist and can be useful in assessing one’s ability and/or providing them with assistance so that they can overcome such differences. Individual differences provide natural variation in experiments that would be unethical to execute otherwise. Also, studying variances within cognitive ability allow researchers to localize and characterize the deficits of those who show disabled cognition. For example, autism, ADHD, and Tourette’s syndrome were all considered disorders of the central executive. However, through examination of the differences between these groups, it was concluded that autism is more a disorder of flexibility, planning, and working memory, whereas, ADHD shows more dysfunction in planning and inhibition. Also, in contrast to popular thought, it was shown that those who had Tourette’s were able to inhibit prepotent impulses as well as those free of disorder. Since the abnormal behaviors particular to each group were identified, the process of normalizing them became easier. Guidance and instruction can be designed to help sufferers in a way, which is uniquely constructive to their specific needs. Also, in terms of education, helping a student discover their own individual cognitive abilities can help them adapt their learning style to one that is more efficient and individualized.
Many theorists have tried to uncover the variance that exists within individual cognitive systems, but how does cognition even function? In response to such a question, the information processing approach was designed. The disadvantages to such a perspective are as follows; the model demphasizes top-down processes and ignores research that shows the importance of conceptions, previously acquired knowledge, and beliefs, the approach does not account for the human ability to construct and interpret information (i.e. higher levels of processing), the model also assumes that all information is processed the same, whether it be tactile, visual, or even verbal, it neglects modularity and domain-specificity, and finally, unlike connectionist models, it proposes that processing occurs in a sequential, serial fashion.
Nevertheless, the information processing perspective is important to cognitive science. It states that all stimuli can be processed, but that different levels of processing contribute to its accessibility. This is beneficial knowledge, especially in terms of education. If a student can make something easier to retrieve, such as using mnemonic devices, than he or she can exploit their cognitive potential. Also, the discovery of elaborate rehearsal provides another strategy for transmitting information from short-term memory into long-term storage. Nonetheless, new evidence points to another way of increasing memory- connectionist models state information is processed in the form of networks of activations. The more connections to a single idea or concept that one can produce, the more likely it is to be remembered. Importantly, connectionist models also claim that information is processed simultaneously by several different systems.
Gould would appreciate that the information processing approach distinguishes between explaining individual differences and explaining what makes people act intelligently. However, since he was so opposed to “g” intelligence, I believe he would prefer a theory that accounted for multiple stores and processors of information; one that was more connectionist in nature and one that gave more credit to environmental influences. Since the information processing approach claims that all information is processed the same, Gould would find it a mismeasure of man. Gould notes that there is great diversity within cognition and an immeasurable variety of forms of intelligence.
