unit 11

intelligence

mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

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ex. Dundunga is not very intelligent, the only solution he knows is swinging an axe really hard.

intelligence test

a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

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ex. can be achievement or aptitude

general intelligence

a general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

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ex. explains why those who score high in one area typically score higher than average in other areas

factor analysis

a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score.

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ex. grouping literacy questions with each others and grouping arithmetic together

Charles Spearman

Came up with general intelligence

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ex. His idea of a single score was very controversial

L. L. Thurstone

gave 56 different tests to people and mathematically identified seven clusters of primary mental abilities

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ex. He was an opponent of Spearman

savant syndrome

a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

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Chris is a living calculator but cannot write an essay.

Howard Gardner

views intelligence as multiple abilities that come in different
packages.

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ex. brain damage may affect one package but not the other

Robert Sternberg

Proposed a triarchic theory

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ex. Analytical, Creative, and Practical

grit

in psychology, grit is passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals.

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ex. Smarts + grit = success

emotional intelligence

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

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ex. Andy has low emotional intelligence and continues to bother his friend even though his face looks disgusted

Francis Galton

wondered if it might be possible to measure “natural ability”

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ex. …and to encourage those of high ability to mate with one another.

mental age

a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance.

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ex. Jill is a 5 year old child prodigy with a mental age of 21

Stanford-Binet

the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.

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ex.

Adapted some of Binet’s original items, added others, established new age norms, and extended the upper end of the test’s range from teenagers to “superior adults.”

intelligence quotient (IQ)

defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100, with scores assigned to relative performance above or below average.

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ex. I once saw a person call another person an ‘idiot with an iq lower than room temperature’

Alfred Binet

Him and Theodore Simon came up with mental age

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ex. The French government told him to do this

Louis Terman

Came up with the Stanford-Binet revision

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ex. he found that the french questions did not work so well with Californians

achievement test

a test designed to assess what a person has learned.

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ex. AP exam

aptitude test

a test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

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ex. College entrance exam

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

the WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

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ex. also has a kiddy varient, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

David Wechsler

created the WAIS

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ex. he worked with the United States Army to develop psychological tests to screen new draftees while studying under Charles Spearman and Karl Pearson

standardization

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

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ex. SAT gives the same test to all takers on the same day

normal curve

the symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

reliability

the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting.

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ex. Half of the takers who answer even questions and the other half who answers odd questions should get around the same score

validity

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

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ex. a ruler with correctly measured lines has validity

content validity

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

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ex. a test about math ability that is full of grammar questions has low content validity

predictive validity

the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior.

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ex. SAT scores are strongly predictive of college performance

cohort

a group of people from a given time period.

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ex. me and my friends during high school

crystallized intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

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ex. my ability to recall history facts

fluid intelligence

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

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ex. my ability to solve a coded puzzle

intellectual disability

a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life.

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ex. formerly known as mental retardation

Down syndrome

a condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

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ex. Chromosome 21 traces a police investigation into a young man with down syndrome involved in a murder

heritability

the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.

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ex. Today’s researchers have identified chromosomal regions important to intelligence, and they have pinpointed specific genes that seemingly influence variations in intelligence and learning disorders

Carol Dweck

reported that believing intelligence is bio- logically set and unchanging can lead to a “fixed mindset,” whereas a “growth mindset” results from believing intelligence is changeable, which focuses on learning and growing

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ex. has also developed interventions that effectively teach young teens that the brain is like a muscle that grows stronger with use as neuron connections grow.

stereotype threat

a self- confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.

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ex. negatively stereotyped minorities and women may have unrealized academic potential