Chapter 12: Cognitive Psychology: Intelligence and Testing

anthropologist Francis Galton

anthropologist Francis Galton

The ________ had attempted to measure intelligence by means of reaction time tests.

standardization sample

a group of people who represent the entire population.

Flynn effect

supports the need to restandardize because the data indicates that the population has become smarter over the past 50 years.

Reliability

is a measure of how consistent a test is in the measurements it provides.

Validity

refers to the extent that a test measures what it intends to measure.

Robert Sternberg proposed that intelligence could be more broadly defined as having three major components

analytical, practical, and creative intelligence

Gardner has identified the following types of intelligence

verbal and mathematical (these are the two traditionally measured by IQ tests) as well as musical, spatial, kinesthetic, environmental, interpersonal (people perceptive), and intrapersonal (insightful, self-awareness)

Internal validity

is the degree to which the subject’s results are due to the questions being asked and not another variable.

External validity

is true validity—that is, the degree to which results from the test can be generalized to the “real world.”

projective tests

in which ambiguous stimuli, open to interpretation, are presented

inventory-type tests

in which participants answer a standard series of questions.

Power tests

gauge abilities in certain areas.

Achievement tests

assess knowledge gained; the Advanced Placement exams are of this type.

Aptitude tests

which evaluate a person’s abilities.

Intelligence

can be defined as goal-directed adaptive thinking.

Francis Galton

had attempted to measure intelligence by means of reaction time tests.

speed of processing

is an essential component of intelligence.

Alfred Binet

was a French psychologist who first began to measure children’s intelligence for the French government.

Lewis Terman

modified Binet’s test to create a test commonly referred to as the Stanford-Binet Test.

IQ or intelligence quotient

Most modern psychologists measure an aspect of intelligence

Charles Spearman

proposed that there was a general intelligence (or g factor) that was the basis of all other intelligence.

factor analysis

a statistical measure for analyzing test data.

Louis Thurstone

a researcher in the field of intelligence, posited that we need to think of intelligence more broadly because intelligence can come in many different forms.

Daniel Goleman

a psychologist at Rutgers, has done recent work on the importance of emotional intelligence (being able to recognize people’s intents and motivations) and has created programs for enhancing one’s emotional intelligence.

Crystallized intelligence

is accumulated knowledge.

Fluid intelligence

is the ability to process information quickly and to solve new problems.

Heritability

is sometimes computed by comparing the IQs of identical twins who were raised separately.

heritability coefficient

also known as the heritability index, is a measure of how much an individual's traits are determined by genetics.

Intellectual disability

refers to low levels of intelligence and adaptive behavior.

Savant syndrome

is a rare phenomenon in which individuals with low IQ scores display certain specific skills at a very high aptitude.