Unit 11: Testing and Individual Differences

Vocabulary flashcards for Unit 11 covering key concepts of intelligence and testing.

Intelligence

Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

Intelligence Test

A method of assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

General Intelligence (g)

It represents a general mental ability that underlies specific cognitive abilities like verbal, mathematical, and spatial reasoning. The idea is that if you are good at one type of mental task, you are likely to be good at others as well.

Factor Analysis

statistical method in psychology used to find a smaller number of underlying "factors" that explain the patterns among a larger set of observable variables, like survey responses or test items

Savant Syndrome

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill.

Grit

Passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals.

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Mental Age

A measure of intelligence test performance that corresponds to a given level of performance.

Stanford-Binet Test

The widely used American revision of Binet's original intelligence test.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

Defined as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100.

Achievement Tests

Tests designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude Tests

Tests designed to predict a person's future performance.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

The most widely used intelligence test containing verbal and performance subtests.

Standardization

Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with a pretested group.

Normal Curve

A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many attributes.

Reliability

The extent to which a test yields consistent results.

Validity

The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

Content Validity

The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

Predictive Validity

The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict.

Cohort

A group of people from a given time period.

Crystallized Intelligence

Accumulated knowledge and verbal skills that tend to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

Intellectual Disability

A condition of limited mental ability indicated by an IQ score of 70 or below.

Down Syndrome

A condition of intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

Heritability

The proportion of variation among individuals attributed to genes.

Stereotype Threat

A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.