Tiffanytsao’s Blog

Posted in Uncategorized by tiffanytsao on December 1, 2009

daam it

why can’t all school be like today’s lecture n Human Variation: Race and IQ: sooo relatable and majorly enlightening…know that is e ducation

gotta be the first class in this course that didn’t have me snoring..

here’s my notes: (enjoy, my future self) (lecture by Trinkaus)

v Race and Intelligence in the US

Ø Throughout history, around the globe, instances of trying to prove inherent differences in inferior groups
Ø Dred Scott- U.S. said African Americans inferior to white Americans, as though biological fact
Ø Arthur Jensen, funded by the pioneer fund organization, trying to document the superiority and hence natural dominance of people of European descent
- Even james Watson, who, as director of Cold Spring Harbor, was fired in commenting natural inferiority of African Americans
- Both academics…(live and well with us still)

v Brief History of Measures of “intelligence”

Ø 19^th century
- Cranial capacity and intelligence
  - Samuel Morton, paul broca, etc.
  - Bigger brains smarter
Role of body size
- Leon Manouvrier
- Scale brain size to body size
- Ø Alfred Binet (1905)
  - Standardized test to evaluate children (screening test for children risk of not doing well in school)
    - Age specific, scored variety of things, like pattern recognition
(intelligence is a behavioral trait)
Ø Lewis Terman (1912), in Stanford, translated binet’s test
- “Stanford-Binet Test”= our standard IQ test
- Intelligence quotient (IQ), mean= 100; SD =10 (continuously adjusted)
  - If your IQ is 130, 3 STD above mean
  - Ø Arthur Jensen (Audrey Shuey) (1950s and 60s)
    - Race, IQ scores, and then Head Start (program to help disadvantaged children)
      - Found that IQ scores for Af. Am. consistently several points lower than European Americans
      - Arthur Jensen trying to prove than Head start is waste program
      - Ø Rushton (1992+) and Herrnstein and Murrary (1995)
        
        Brain size and intelligence
        
        The Bell Curve, also said basic differences in intelligence between different racial groups

v Race and IQ: the basic premises

Ø “intelligence” exists…(“what is intelligence? I don’t know”)
Ø “intelligence” is part of individual’s genotype
Ø Extreme environmental stress may stunt it
Ø Otherwise, “intelligence” is stable
Ø Individuals vary in their degrees of endowment of “intelligence”
Ø “intelligence” can be measured objectively and repeated
Ø Any measure of intelligence is a quantification of behavior
Ø Measures of “intelligence” can characterize individuals
Ø Aggregate measures of “intelligence” can characterize groups
- Based on: sex, nationality, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status

v The Components of “intelligence”

¨ Experience and education

v Perceptions / Models of “intelligence”

Ø Unitary Models
- E.g. Piaget, said intelligence is a unified whole, cannot separate out into bits and pieces
- Ø Domain-based models
  - Lots of differences ways to concentrate intelligences
  - Different ways of “cutting the pie”
  - E.g. Gardner
  - E.g. Demestriou and colleagues
  - E.g. Myers-Briggs
    - Made to help women left in home front to see which job suited for
    - Verbal, visual dichotomy
Neuro-imaging implications:
- Domain based primarily, because flexibility
- No single area controls individual functions
- There is no “gene” for “X”

v Implications of Brain Flexibility

v IQ Tests

Ø What is being evaluated?
- Testing ability, whether you know how, and whether you care about it, seriously
  - Background and attitude of kid taking test
Traditional “cognitive” skills
- For children how really try
Appropriateness of behavior
Ø What is being predicted?
- Ability to perform well on tests
- Potential for socially defined “success”
- Ø What influences scores?
  - Innate “intelligence”
  - Health and nutrition
  - Socio-economic class
    - Effects in attitudes

¨ Value of education and social class

¨ Home atmosphere

Culture
- Jewish cultures highly value people with knowledge
- In germany to be a professor is an official social class
- They can take everything away, but they can’t take away your education
- It’s a cultural difference! That makes all the difference!
- Different attitudes, makes an enormous difference
Discrimination
- Effects your self value, effects your attitude why bother?,
- Discriminated group, always the potential to being discriminated even when not being discriminated
- Minorities consistently discriminated against
Gender
- Girls mature much faster than boys, by in large
- Elementary IQ tests: ability for a child to sit down and shutting up
- By the time adults, sitting down and shutting up in girls not so great anymore
- Psychological differences in way girls mature and boys mature

¨ Ultimately effect attitudes

v IQ and Heritability

Ø Confusion between “inherited” and “inevitable”
Ø Confusion between Within-group and Between group heritability
- H^2, heritability is not inheritance

Be the first to like this post.