AP Psychology - Intelligence Review Guide

Intelligence

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

Intelligence Test

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

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 one's total score.

Reification

When we view an abstract concept (like intelligence) as if it were a concrete thing, we have made the error of ____.

Francis Galton

He believed that some people were more superior to others with respect to intelligence. He felt those people should be encouraged to mate and that less superior people should not be allowed to produce offspring (eugenics movement). He felt you could determine one's intelligence by measuring his/her head size, body proportions, and reaction time.

Charles Spearman

Noted that people "smart" in one area were often skilled in other areas. Thus, he believed in an underlying general intelligence or G-FACTOR.

g-factor

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

L.L. Thurstaone

Disagreed with Spearman. He identified "7 Primary Mental Abilities" and believed they were all independent from each other. They included perceptual speed, numerical ability, memory, spatial ability, inductive reasoning, word fluency, & verbal comprehension. The existence of SAVANT SYNDROME supports his viewpoint.

Savant Syndrome

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

Howard Gardner

agreed with Thurstone in that intellectual skills were independent of one another. He identified 8 independent MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES, logical/mathematical, spatial, linguistic, body-kinesthetic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, & naturalist.

Triarchic Movement

The three general types of IQ, created by Robert Steinberg

Academic Intelligence(or analytic)

intelligence which is assessed by intelligence tests, which present well-defined problems with a single correct answer (i.e., school smarts).

Creative Intelligence

intelligence demonstrated by reacting adaptively to new situations and generating novel ideas.

Practical Intelligence

intelligence required for everyday tasks, which are frequently ill-defined with multiple solutions (i.e., street or business smarts).

Emotional Intelligence

the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.

Creativity

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Aptitude Test

a test designed to predict a person's future performance. Aptitude refers to the capacity to learn (IQ tests are considered to be aptitude tests).

Achievement Test

a test designed to assess what a person has already learned (e.g., AP exams, driver's license test).

Alfred Binet

Along with Theodore Simon developed the first intelligence test in France in 1904. It was designed to measure a child's mental age in order to predict future school performance. The test was called the Simon-___ Intelligence Test. It was later revised at Stanford University by Lewis Terman and is now known today as the Stanford-Binet.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

defined originally (Stern) as the ratio of mental age (MA) to chronological age (CA) multiplied by 100 (thus, ___ = MA/CA * 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.

WAIS and WISC

These are the 2 most frequently used IQ tests in the US. They provide a verbal IQ along with a non-verbal or performance IQ. They also provide an overall or full-scale IQ score. The Wechsler tests have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15

Standardization

defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested "____ group".

Normal Curve

the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological traits (including intelligence). 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 (split-half ) or on retesting at a later date (test-retest ).

Validity

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

Face Validity

the extent to which questions on a test APPEAR to measure the construct of interest.

Content Validity

extent to which a test actually measures the construct of interest.

Predictive Validity

the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict. This is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior (also called criterion-related validity).

Mental Retardation

a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an IQ score below 70 and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound.

Down Syndrome

a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra

Heritability

the proportion of variation among individuals on a particular trait that can be attributed to the differences in their genes. Genetics play somewhat of a role, but environmental similarities matter much more.

Flynn Effect

steady increase of overall intelligence scores over the past few decades