AP Psych 11-1 Vocab

General Intelligence (g-factor)

underlies all 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

Savant Syndrome

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

Emotional Intelligence

the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Mental Age

the level of performance typically associated with children of a certain chronological age

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

a person's mental age divided by chronological age and multiplied by 100

Achievement Tests

a test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude Tests

a test designed to predict a person's future performance

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

the most widely used intelligence tests containing verbal and nonverbal subtests

Standardization

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

Normal Curve

a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data

Reliability

the ability of a test to get consistent results each time the same person takes it

Validity

the ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure

Content Validity

the degree to which the content of a test is representative of the domain it is supposed to cover

Predictive Validity

the degree to which the test predicts the behavior it was designed to predict

Intellectual Disability

a condition of limited mental ability

Metacognitive Skills

An ability to manage one's own thinking and problem solving

Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner's theory that there are several specific types of intellectual abilities.

Culture-Fair Tests

designed to minimize the importance of skills and knowledge that may be more common in one culture than in another.

Norm

An average score for a designated group of people.

Performance Intelligence

a measure of intelligence involving solving puzzles, assembling objects, completing pictures, and other nonverbal tasks.

Verbal Intelligence

Intelligence measured by answering questions, vocabulary, arithmetic, and other language or symbol based tasks.

Flynn Effect

the phenomenon that average IQ scores have risen with each generation.

Fluid intelligence

the ability to reason quickly and abstractly; tends to decline with age.

Crystallized Intelligence

the accumulation of knowledge; tends to improve with age.

Terminal Decline

A decline in measured intelligence about 5 years before death.