Testing and Individual Differences Vocab

Intelligence

The mental potential to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

General Intelligence

According to Charles Spearman, a general intelligence factor that underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

Factor Analysis

A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score.

Savant Syndrome

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

Grit

Passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals

Emotional Intelligence

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

Intelligence Test

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

Achievement Test

A test designed to assess what a person has learned (e.g., your AP Psychology unit tests).

Aptitude Test

A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn (e.g., the SAT).

Mental Age

A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Alfred Binet; the level of performance typically associated with a certain chronological age.

Stanford-Binet

The widely used American revision (by Lewis Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

Defined originally as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100. On contemporary tests, the average performance for a given age is simply assigned a score of 100.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

The most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests

Standardization

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

Normal Curve

The bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

Reliability

The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternative forms of the test, or on retesting.

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 (e.g., a road test for a driver's license).

Predictive Validity

The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior.

Cohort

A group of people sharing a common characteristic, such as being from a given time period, often used in longitudinal studies.

Crystallized Intelligence

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence

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

Longitudinal Study

Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.

Intellectual Disability

A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence test score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life.

Down Syndrome

A condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome

Cross-Sectional Study

Research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time.

Heritability

The proportion of variation among individuals in a group that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.