Intelligence and thinking

Intelligence

Capacity for goal

Aptitude Intelligence

Test to predict a person's future performance; capacity to learn.

Achievement test

Designed to assess what a person has learned.

Intelligence test

Method of assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them to those of others using numerical scores.

Standardization

Comparing scores with those of a pretested standardized group.

Reliability

Yield consistent results.

Split half

Test for single knowledge area, split into 2 parts and comparing the results from both parts.

Validity

Extent to which a test measures/predicts what it is supposed to.

Stereotype lift

An increase in a group's test performance due to not being part of a negative stereotype.

The Wechsler scale

Yields overall intelligence score and separates 'verbal' and 'performance'.

Wechsler adult intelligence scale

Most widely used intelligence test.

Wechsler intelligence scale for children

WAIS but for kids.

General intelligence

Score well in one area, score higher than average in other areas.

Howard Gardner

Independent multiple intelligences; brain damage diminishes one ability but not others; may excel in only one area.

Fluid intelligence

Ability to solve abstract problems and pick up new skills.

Crystallized intelligence

Using knowledge accumulated over time.

Social intelligence

The know-how involved in comprehending social situations and managing oneself successfully.

Emotional intelligence

Ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.

Heritability

The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes.

Flynn effect

Every generation had a higher IQ.

Cognition

Mental activity associated with processing, understanding, and communicating information.

Symbol

An object that stands for something else.

Concept

Mental group of similar objects, events, or people; organized into hierarchy.

Prototype

Best example of a category.

Schema

Framework for thinking.

Assimilation

Take in new information but not changing schema.

Accommodation

Take in new information and changing schema to accommodate the new information.

Algorithm

Methodical logical rule or procedures that guarantees solving a particular problem.

Heuristic

Rule of thumb strategy that allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently like a shortcut; faster than algorithms but more error-prone.

Representative heuristic

Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match our prototype.

Availability heuristic

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in our memory.

Mental set

Tendency to approach a problem in a particular way; especially a way that has been successful in the past.

Creativity

Way of thinking that includes generating novel ideas and engaging in divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking

Focuses on reaching one well-defined solution to a problem.

Functional fixedness

Tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions.

Gamblers fallacy

Cognitive bias that occurs when someone believes that the probability of a future event is based on frequency of past events.

Sunk cost fallacy

When people continue to support past decisions despite new evidence suggesting that it isn't the best course.

Framing

The way an issue is posed.

Priming

Activation often unconsciously of particular associations in memory.