Which of the following is not under the classification of
individual differences?
Abnormal psychology
А
Emotional differences
B
C С
Mental differences
D
Physical differences
Answers
Answer:
Abstract
Despite its avowed goal of understanding individual behavior, the field of behavior analysis has largely ignored the determinants of consistent differences in level of performance among individuals. The present article discusses major findings in the study of individual differences in intelligence from the conceptual framework of a functional analysis of behavior. In addition to general intelligence, we discuss three other major aspects of behavior in which individuals differ: speed of processing, working memory, and the learning of three-term contingencies. Despite recent progress in our understanding of the relations among these aspects of behavior, numerous issues remain unresolved. Researchers need to determine which learning tasks predict individual differences in intelligence and which do not, and then identify the specific characteristics of these tasks that make such prediction possible.
Keywords: intelligence, learning, three-term contingency, individual differences, processing speed, working memory, humans
The surprising and consistent empirical finding in psychometric intelligence research is that people who do well on one mental task tend to do well on most others, despite large variations in the tests' contents… This was Spearman's (1904) discovery, and is arguably the most replicated result in all psychology. (Deary, 2000, p. 6)
Historically, the study of individual differences has been an area of research relatively separate from experimental psychology. While experimental psychology has focused on the processes that determine performance in specific experimental situations, the field of individual differences has studied the stable differences among people, particularly those that generalize across diverse situations. The behavioral differences that have received the most attention in this regard have been personality traits and cognitive abilities. Behavior analysis has largely ignored such differences, other than those that are explainable in terms of reinforcement history. This disregard of individual differences is puzzling, given that behavior analysts emphasize that their research focuses on the behavior of individuals rather than on group averages. After all, it is the differences among individuals that distinguish them from the average.
The disregard of individual differences also is surprising because the agenda of behavior analysis includes the analysis of behavior in educational settings, and individual differences in performance are among the most salient aspects of behavior in such settings. Careful programming of environmental contingencies often can improve educational accomplishment, although the fact remains that individuals vary widely in how effectively they deal with academic topics. Some learn and understand complex material with relative ease, whereas others labor to succeed and nevertheless frequently fail in their efforts. Given the prominence of individual differences at every level of educational endeavor, it is surprising that behavior analysts have made so little effort to understand them.
Individual differences in educational performance are strongly related to differences in intelligence, a major focus of individual-differences research. ‘Intelligence’ has multiple meanings—so many in fact, that one of the most prominent researchers in the area has argued that the term should be abandoned (Jensen, 1998). Lurking within this diversity of meaning, however, are important facts that pose serious explanatory challenges to any approach to psychology that aspires to encompass the field's most basic empirical phenomena. The purpose of this article is to describe some of the most essential of these findings, and to consider their implications for a functional analysis of behavior.
Intelligence As Shared Variance
Numerous tests have been developed to help assess intelligence, including tests of vocabulary, short-term memory span, analogical reasoning, story construction from pictures, etc., with such diversity seemingly belying the usefulness of intelligence as an explanatory construct. Should the diversity of the tests putatively measuring intelligence be taken as evidence that, rather than there being one fundamental ability that distinguishes among people, there is a diverse set of cognitive skills in which people may differ? Would it be better, then, to consider these skills as separate behaviors with their own individual controlling variables? The few behaviorists who have addressed the topic of intelligence (e.g., Staats & Burns, 1981) have tended to adopt just such an approach, and nonbehavioral proponents of this view have had considerable popularity (e.g., Gardner, 1983). Such an interpretation certainly has intuitive appeal, but there is one very large elephant in the room that cannot be ignored: Performances on all of these tests, despite the obvious differences between the tests themselves, are significantly correlated with each other