PSYC 1010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Fluid And Crystallized Intelligence, Inductive Reasoning, Deductive Reasoning

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Heather Jenkin

Document Summary

Galton showed through the study of family trees that eminence and genius seemed to occur within certain families. He pioneered the study of intelligence with his studies of hereditary genius. Galton"s research convinced him that eminent people had inherited mental constitutions that made them more fit for thinking than their less successful counterparts. Exhibiting his own belief bias, galton dismissed the fact that the more successful people he studied almost invariably came from privileged environments. He even measured the size of people"s skulls, believing that skull size reflected brain volume and hence intelligence. In time, galton"s approach to mental-skills measurement fell into disfavor because his measures of nervous-system efficiency proved unrelated to socially relevant measures of mental ability, such as academic and occupational success. Nonetheless, galton"s work created an interest in the measurement of mental abilities, setting the stage for the pioneering work of alfred binet.