Intelligence, Language Development, and Communication Disorders

Vocabulary flashcards covering theories of intelligence, psychometric testing, language properties, cognitive developmental milestones, and speech disorders based on lecture notes.

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to develop techniques for solving problems, which tends to stop rising and level off in adulthood.

Crystallized Intelligence

The ability to use acquired knowledge, which continues to grow throughout late adulthood.

Practical Intelligence

Contextual or 'street smart' intelligence that cannot be gained from formal learning or directly taught.

Convergent Thinking

A way of thinking that focuses on finding one single answer to a problem.

Divergent Thinking

The cognitive ability to generate many answers to a single problem.

Test Validity

A test quality meaning that it actually measures what it is supposed to measure.

Flynn Effect

The worldwide observation that scores on intelligence tests have risen over time, potentially influenced by improved nutrition and health care.

IQ Ratio Formula

The classical formula for calculating an intelligence quotient: $\text{IQ} = \left(\frac{\text{mental age}}{\text{chronological age}}\right) \times 100$.

Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome)

A genetic chromosome abnormality that occurs in approximately $1$ per $800$ births and serves as a risk factor for intellectual disability.

Giftedness

A classification for children who achieve high IQ scores greater than $130$ and typically exhibit higher general intelligence ($g$) scores.

Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT)

An assessment of creativity and divergent thinking in which participants are provided with random images to create whatever they want.

Threshold Hypothesis

Guilford's 1967 concept proposing that the relationship between intelligence and creativity has an IQ breakpoint of $120$.

Generativity

The property of human language that allows speakers to generate an infinite number of ideas.

Recursion

The linguistic property reflecting an unlimited capacity to combine words together into larger structures.

Displacement

The quality of human language that enables communication about things that are not present in the current time or location.

Broca's Area

A left cerebral cortex region linked to productive (non-fluent) aphasia, where individuals understand speech but cannot form complete spoken sentences.

Wernicke's Area

A brain area linked to receptive (fluent) aphasia, where individuals struggle with speech comprehension and produce disorganized language.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The linguistic determinism theory stating that language influences thought and cognitive processes, such as color and time perception.

Holophrastic Speech

The use of single or partial words by infants to convey whole meanings, such as saying 'Mo' for 'more' or 'nana' for 'banana.'

Fast Mapping

The rapid mechanism by which children learn and retain a new word's meaning after only a few exposures, documented by Carey & Bartlett (1978).

Mutual Exclusivity Assumption

A word-learning constraint where young children assume that each distinct object possesses only one label.

Syntactic Bootstrapping

A learning strategy in which children deduce the meaning of an unfamiliar word by relying on the grammatical structure of the sentence.

Articulation Disorders

Challenges with producing speech sounds that compromise intelligibility, characterized by substitutions, omissions, distortions, and additions.

Fluency Disorder

An interruption in normal speech patterns (stuttering) characterized by an excessively fast or slow speech rate, physical tension, and speaking-related anxiety.