Lecture note on attitude, beliefs and values

Lecture note on attitude, beliefs and values 

Debdulal Dutta Roy
Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

Attitude:       Attitudes may be viewed as learned cognitive, affective, and behavioral predispositions to respond positively or negatively to certain objects, situations, institutions, concepts and persons. 

Opinion:     is the overt, conscious, verbal demonstration of attitude. It is less central, more specific, more changeable, and more factually based.

Value:   is a shared, enduring belief about ideal modes of behaviour or end states of existence. 

STUDY OF VALUES

Lecture notes on Intelligence Testing

D. Dutta Roy
Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India

In performing art therapy, knowledge about intelligence is important to get insight about screening, prognosis and selection of different therapeautic modules. The well accepted definition of intelligence is given below:


Spearman (1904) : a general ability that involves mainly the education of relations and correlates.


Binet and Simon (1905): the ability to judge well, to understand well, to reason well.


Thurstone (1921): the capacity to inhibit instinctive adjustments, flexibly imagine different responses, and realize modified instinctive adjustments into overt behaviour.


Wechsler (1939): the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with the environment.


Sternberg (1986): the mental capacity to automatize information processing and to emit contextually appropriate behaviour in response to novelty: intelligence also includes metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge-acquisition components.


Gardner (1986): the ability or skill to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued within one or more cultural settings.

Theories of intelligence

Two factor theories: Charles Spearman (1927) proposed that intelligence consisted of two kinds of factors: a single general factor and numerous specific factors and so on. He believed that individual differences in g were most directly reflected in the ability to use three principles of cognition: apprehension of experience, education of relations, and education of correlations. A simple example is Hammer : nail :: screwdriver : ?
To solve the problem, one must have prior experience of hammer, nail and screwdriver (apprehension of experience), the ability to establish relations between the objects and finally the correlation among three things. These three will find out right answer, i.e., screw. Primary abilities: Thurstone (1931) proposed several primary abilities. They can be grouped into seven abilities as verbal comprehension, word fluency, number, space, associative memory, perceptual speed and inductive reasoning.

1. verbal comprehension: it involves reading comprehension and verbal analogies;
2. word fluency: it includes anagram or quickly naming words in a given category;
3. number: it includes speed and accuracy of simple arithmetic computation;
4. space: it is the ability to visualize how a three-dimensional object would appear if it was rotated or partially disassembled;
5. associative memory: it includes learning to associate pairs of unrelated items;
6. perceptual speed : it involves checking for similarities and differences in visual details;
7. inductive reasoning: it involves finding a rule, as in a number series completion test.

Adaptation theory: Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers on the questions that required logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children. Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. His contributions include a theory of cognitive child development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities. Before Piaget’s work, the common assumption in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers than adults. He through his cognitive development theory postulated following points:

1. children's thought is qualitatively different from adult's thought: Conservation concept of child differs from adult. Conservation refers to the awareness that physical quantities do not change in amount when they are superficially altered in appearance.
2. schemas are the primary basis for gaining new knowledge about the world;there are four stages of cognitive development. These are 

•  Sensorimotor 0 - 2 yrs. 
• Preoperational 2 - 7 yrs.
• Concrete Operational: 7 – 11 yrs.
• Formal Operational: 11yrs +

Schema: To Piaget, schema is an organized pattern of behaviour or a well-defined mental structure that leads to knowing how to do something. Young infants possess schemas that are mainly sensorimotor in nature. such as the grasp-and-pull schema that allows a baby to retrieve a desired object and bring it up to the mouth.As we grow older, we add mental structures to our collection of sensorimotor schemas. For example, teeenagers usually possess the alphabeitizing schema that permits them to find a word in a dictionary. Schemas evolve toward greater levels of complexity by the process of equilibration.

Equilibration: It has three concepts as assimilation, accommodation and equilibrium

• Assimilation: It is the application of a schema to an object, person or event. Infant uses grasp-and-pull schema to retrieve a baby rattle and bring it to the mouth. 
• Accommodation: The above schema is modified and become the grasp-and-pull-and-turn schema. 
• Equilibrium: it is the success of schema application. Success leads to state of equilibrium.

Sternberg (1996) is proposing that certain mental mechanisms are required for intelligent behaviour, he also emphasized that intelligence involves adaptation to the real-world environment. His theory emphasizes what he calls successful intelligence or " the ability to adapt to, shape, and select environments to accomplish one's goals and those of one's society and culture". His theory is called triarchic (ruled by three) because it deals with three aspects of intelligence; componential intelligence, experiential intelligence and contextual intelligence. 

Componential intelligence:

• metacomponents or executive processes: planning 
• perfomance components : short term memory and syllogistic reasoning
• knowledge acquisition components: ability to acquire vocabulary words.

Experiential intelligence:   

• ability to deal with novelty
• ability to automatize information processing

Contextual intelligence:

• adaptation to real world environment
• selection of suitable environment

ASSESSMENT OF INFANT ABILITY

1. Gesell developmental schedule:  Gesell Developmental Schedules are a gauge of the status of a child's motor and language development and personal-social and adaptive behaviors.

Useful links: http://www.gesellinstitute.org/pdf/GesellSchedules.pdf

1. Neonatal Behavioral assessment scale
2. Ordinals scales of psychological development
3. Bayley scales of infant development-II

ASSESSMENT OF PRESCHOOL INTELLIGENCE

1. Wechsler Preschool and Primary scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-R)
2. Stanford-Binet : Fourth edition
3. Kaufman assessment battery for children
4. McCarthy scales of Children's abilities