Lecture 6: Creativity, Intelligence, Memory, Language — Glossary

A complete set of vocabulary flashcards derived from Chapters 8–10 of Life-Span Human Development (Sigelman & Rider, 9th ed.) and Dr. Bertus Jeronimus's Lecture 6 supplementary terms.

Retrograde amnesia

Loss of memory for information and events occurring prior to the incident that caused the amnesia. Contrast with anterograde amnesia.

Memory

The ability to store and later retrieve information about past events.

Information-processing approach

An approach to cognition that emphasizes the fundamental mental processes involved in attention, perception, memory, and decision making.

Sensory register

The first memory store in information processing in which stimuli are noticed and are briefly available for further processing.

Short-term memory

The memory store in which limited amounts of information are temporarily held; called working memory when its active quality is being emphasized.

Long-term memory

Memory store in which information that has been examined and interpreted is stored relatively permanently.

Encoding

The first step in learning and remembering something, it is the process of getting information into the information-processing system, or learning it.

Consolidation

In information processing, the processing and organizing of information into a form suitable for long-term storage.

Storage

In information processing, the holding of information in the long-term memory store.

Retrieval

The process of retrieving information from long-term memory when it is needed.

Recognition memory

Identifying an object or event as one that has been experienced before, such as when a person must select the correct answer from several options. Contrast with cued recall memory and recall memory.

Recall memory

Recollecting or actively retrieving objects, events, and experiences when examples or cues are not provided. Contrast with cued recall memory and recognition memory.

Cued recall memory

Recollecting objects, events, or experiences in response to a hint or cue. Contrast with pure recall memory and recognition memory.

Working memory

A memory store, often referred to as a mental “scratch pad,” that temporarily holds information when it is being actively operated upon or in one’s consciousness.

Central executive

Mechanism that directs attention and controls the flow of information in the working memory system.

Phonological loop

A component of working memory in Baddeley's model that briefly holds auditory information such as words or music.

Visual-spatial sketchpad (visuospatial sketchpad)

A component of working memory in Baddeley's model that holds visual information such as colors and shapes.

Episodic buffer

A component of working memory in Baddeley's model that links auditory and visual information; it was added to the model when research showed that some memories serve to connect the two and facilitate long-term storage of episodic memories.

Implicit memory

Memory that occurs unintentionally and without consciousness or awareness. Contrast with explicit memory.

Explicit memory

Memory that involves consciously recollecting the past. Contrast with implicit memory.

Semantic memory

A type of explicit memory consisting of general facts.

Episodic memory

A type of explicit memory consisting of specific episodes that one has experienced.

Anterograde amnesia

The inability to form new memories of recent experiences. Contrast with retrograde amnesia.

Hippocampus

Structure in the medial temporal lobe of the brain centrally involved in the formation of memories.

Problem solving

The use of the information-processing system to achieve a goal or arrive at a decision.

Executive control processes

Processes that direct and monitor the selection, organization, manipulation, and interpretation of information in the information-processing system, including executive functions.

Parallel processing

Carrying out multiple cognitive operations simultaneously rather than in a sequence.

Deferred imitation

The ability to imitate a novel act after a delay.

Perseveration error

Mistake made when an information processor continues to use the same strategy that was successful in the past over and over despite the strategy’s lack of success in the current situation.

Rehearsal

A strategy for remembering that involves repeating the items the person is trying to retain.

Organization (as memory strategy)

In Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, a person’s inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemes into more coherent systems; as a memory strategy, a technique that involves grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful clusters.

Elaboration

A strategy for remembering that involves adding something to or creating meaningful links between the bits of information the person is trying to retain.

Mediation deficiency

The initial stage of mastery of memory strategies in which children cannot spontaneously use or benefit from strategies even if they are taught to use them.

Production deficiency

A phase in the mastery of memory strategies in which children can use strategies they are taught but cannot produce them on their own.

Utilization deficiency

The third phase in mastery of memory strategies in which children fail to benefit from a memory strategy they are able to produce.

Metamemory

A person’s knowledge about memory and about monitoring and regulating memory processes.

Metacognition

Knowledge of the human mind and of the range of cognitive processes, including thinking about personal thought processes.

Knowledge base

A person’s existing information about a content area, significant for its influence on how well that individual can learn and remember.

Autobiographical memory

Memory of everyday events that the individual has experienced.

Childhood amnesia

A lack of memory for the early years of a person’s life.

Fuzzy-trace theory

The view that verbatim and general or gistlike accounts of an event are stored separately in memory.

Script

A mental representation of a typical sequence of actions related to an event that is created in memory and that then guides future behaviors in similar settings.

General event representation (GER)

Representations that people create over time of the typical sequence of actions related to an event; also called “scripts.”

Eyewitness memory

Remembering and reporting events the person has witnessed or experienced.

Rule assessment approach

Siegler’s approach to studying the development of problem solving that determines what information about a problem children take in and what rules they then formulate to account for this information.

Overlapping waves theory

Siegler’s view that the development of problem-solving skills is not a matter of moving from one problem-solving approach to a better one with age but of knowing and using a variety of strategies at each age, becoming increasingly selective with experience.

Reminiscence bump

The tendency for adults to recall a disproportionate number of memories from adolescence and early adulthood (roughly ages 15–25) compared with other periods of the life span.

Life script

The story a person constructs about his or her life story and tells over and over again.

Mild cognitive impairment

A level of memory loss between normal loss with age and pathological loss from disease.

Constraint-seeking questions

In the Twenty Questions task and similar hypothesis-testing tasks, questions that rule out more than one answer to narrow the field of possible choices rather than asking about only one hypothesis at a time.

Selective optimization with compensation (SOC)

The concept that older people cope with aging through a strategy that involves focusing on the skills most needed, practicing those skills, and developing ways to avoid the need for declining skills.

Psychometric approach

The research tradition that spawned standardized tests of intelligence and that views intelligence (or personality) as a set of traits that can be measured and that varies from person to person.

Fluid intelligence

Aspects of intelligence that involve actively thinking and reasoning to solve novel problems. Contrast with crystallized intelligence.

Crystallized intelligence

Those aspects of intellectual functioning that involve using knowledge acquired through experience. Contrast with fluid intelligence.

Factor analysis

Statistical technique to identify meaningful groupings of personality scale or intelligence test items that are correlated with each other but not with other groupings of items.

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner's (1999/2000) theory rejecting the idea that a single IQ score meaningfully measures human intelligence; he argues there are eight or nine distinct, relatively independent intellectual abilities.

Mental age (MA)

A measure of intellectual development that reflects the level of age-graded problems that a child is able to solve; the age at which a child functions intellectually.

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

One of the most widely used, individually administered intelligence tests, which yields an IQ score.

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

A numerical measure of a person’s performance on an intelligence test relative to the performance of other examinees of the same age, typically with a score of 100 defined as average.

Test norms

Standards of normal performance on psychometric instruments based on the average scores and range of scores obtained by a large, representative sample of test takers.

Wechsler Scales

A set of widely used, individually administered intelligence tests that yield verbal, performance, and overall IQ scores.

Normal distribution

A symmetrical (bell-shaped) curve that describes the variability of a characteristic within a population. Most people fall at or near the average score; there are relatively few high or low scores.

Standard deviation

A measure of the dispersion or spread around the mean of a distribution of scores; in the case of IQ tests with a mean score of 100, the standard deviation is 15, meaning that about two-thirds of people taking the test have scores between 85 and 115.

Savant syndrome

The phenomenon in which extraordinary talent in a particular area is displayed by a person who is otherwise mentally retarded.

Prodigies

Individuals, especially children, endowed with one or more extraordinary ability.

Triarchic theory of intelligence

Sternberg’s information-processing theory of intelligence that emphasizes three aspects of intelligent behavior: a practical component, a creative component, and an analytic component.

Practical component

In Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence, the aspect of intelligence that varies from one sociocultural context to another.

Creative component

In Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence, the aspect of intelligence that varies with experience on a task.

Automatization

The process by which information processing becomes effortless and highly efficient as a result of continued practice or increased expertise.

Culture bias

The situation that arises in testing when one cultural or subcultural group is more familiar with test items than another group and therefore has an unfair advantage.

Analytic component

In Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence, the information-processing skills such as thinking critically and analytically.

Successful intelligence

Sternberg’s concept that people are intelligent to the extent that they are able to succeed in life in their sociocultural context.

Creativity

The ability to produce novel responses or works; see also divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking

Thinking that involves “converging” on the one best answer to a problem; what IQ tests measure. Contrast with divergent thinking.

Divergent thinking

Thinking that requires coming up with a variety of ideas or solutions to a problem when there is no one right answer. Contrast with convergent thinking.

Ideational fluency

The sheer number of different (including novel) ideas that a person can generate; a measure of creativity or divergent thinking.

Investment theory

Sternberg’s view that creativity emerges from a confluence of intellectual abilities, knowledge, cognitive style, personality, motivation, and a supportive environment.

In vitro fertilization (IVF)

Procedure in which several eggs are removed from a woman’s ovary, fertilized by sperm in a petri dish in the laboratory, then transferred to the woman’s uterus in hopes that one will implant on the wall of the uterus.

General Adaptive Composite (GAC)

An overall score on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development reflecting the cognitive, language, motor, and social–emotional development of an infant in comparison with a large norm group of infants or toddlers the same age.

Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID)

Standardized test to measure the mental, motor, and behavioral progress of infants and young children.

Child poverty

A household climate that includes low income along with low levels of response to children’s basic needs.

Flynn effect

The rise in average IQ scores over the 20th century.

Dysrationalia

A term coined by Keith Stanovich for a quite common inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence.

Terminal drop

A rapid decline in intellectual abilities that people within a few years of dying often experience.

Wisdom

A combination of rich factual knowledge about life and procedural knowledge such as strategies for giving advice and handling conflicts.

Cumulative-deficit hypothesis

The notion that impoverished environments inhibit intellectual growth and that these inhibiting effects accumulate over time.

Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) inventory

A widely used instrument that allows an observer to determine how intellectually stimulating or impoverished a home environment is.

Stereotype threat

An individual’s fear of being judged to have the qualities associated with negative stereotypes of his or her social group.

Intellectual disability

Significantly below-average intellectual functioning with limitations in areas of adaptive behavior such as self-care and social skills, originating before age 18 (previously known as mental retardation).

Giftedness

The possession of unusually high general intellectual potential or of special abilities in such areas as creativity, mathematics, or the arts.

Language

A symbolic system in which a limited number of signals can be combined according to rules to produce an infinite number of messages.

Phoneme

One of the basic units of sound used in a particular spoken language.

Morphemes

The basic units of meaning that exist in a word.

Syntax

Rules specifying how words can be combined to form meaningful sentences in a language.

Semantics

The aspect of language centering on meanings.

Pragmatics

Rules specifying how language is to be used appropriately in different social contexts to achieve goals.

Prosody

The melody or sound pattern of speech, including intonation, stress, and timing with which something is said.

Aphasia

A language disorder.

Universal grammar

A system of common rules and properties of language that may allow infants to grow up learning any of the world’s languages.

Language acquisition device (LAD)

A set of linguistic processing skills that nativists believe to be innate; presumably the LAD enables a child to infer the rules governing others’ speech and then use these rules to produce language.