question_answer

Explain the term intelligence. Describe the PASS model of intelligence.

Or

Explain how intelligence is the result of heredity and environment.

Answer:

Intelligence is denned as due global and aggregate capacity of an individual to think rationally, act purposefully and to deal effectively with his/her environment. Intelligent individual not only adopts to the environment, but also actively modifies or shapes it.

Planning, Attention arousal, and Simultaneous Successive (PASS) Model of Intelligence.

(i) Developed by J.P. Das, Jack Naglien, and Kirby (1994).

(ii) According to this model, intellectual activity involves the interdependent functioning of three neurological systems, called the functional units of brain. These units are responsible for arousal/attention, coding or processing and planning respectively.

(iii) Arousal/Attention: State of arousal helps us in at tending to stimuli and enable to process information. An optional level of arousal focusses our attention to the relevant aspects of a problem. Too much or too little arousal would interfere with attention.

(iv) Simultaneous and Successive Processing: Information can be integrated into knowledge system either simultaneously or successively. Simultaneous processing takes place when you perceive the relations among various concepts and integrate them into a meaningful pattern for comprehension. Simultaneous processing helps in grasping the meaning and relationship.

Successive processing rakes place when you remember all the information serially so that the recall of one leads to the recall of another. Learning of digits, alphabets, multiplication tables, etc.

(v) Planning: After the information is attended to and processed planning is activated. It allows us to think of the possible courses of action, implement them to reach a target, and evaluate their effectiveness. If a plan does not work, it is modified to suit the requirements of the task or situation.

These PASS processes operate on a knowledge base development either formally (by reading, writing and experimenting) or informally from the environment. These processes are interactive and dynamic in nature, yet each has its own distinctive functions.

Or

The evidence for hereditary influences on intelligence comes mainly from studies on twine and adopted children.

(i) The intelligence of identical twins reared together correlate almost 0.90. Twins separated early in childhood also show considerable similarity in their intellectual, personality and behavioural characteristics.

(ii) The intelligence of identical twins reared different environment correlate0.72, those of fraternal twins reared together correlate almost 0.60 and those of brothers and sisters reared together correlate about 0.50, while siblings reared apart correlate about 0.25.

(iii) Another line of evidence comes from the studies of adopted children, which shoe that children?s intelligence is more similar to their biological rather than adoptive parents.

(iv) With respect to the role of environment, studies have reported that as children grow in age, their intelligence level tends to move closer to that of their adoptive parents.

(v) Children from disadvantaged homes adopted into families with higher socio-economic status exhibit a large increase in their intelligence scores.

(vi) There is evidence that environmental deprivation lowers intelligence while rich nutrition, good family background and quality schooling increases intelligence.

There is a general consensus among psychologists that intelligence is a product of complex interaction of heredity (nature) and environment (nurture).