Psych Exam

Intelligence

the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

General intelligence

underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

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.

Savant Syndrome

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

Achievement Test

a test designed to assess what a person has learned

Aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding).

Aptitude Test

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

Broca's Area

helps control language expression—an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech

Babbling Stage

Beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

Cohort

a group of people sharing a common characteristic, such as from a given time period

Content Validity

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

Cross-Sectional Study

a study in which people of different ages are compared with one another

Crystallized Intelligence

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

Down Syndrome

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

Fluid Intelligence

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

Grit

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

Grammar

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language's set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically correct sentences

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.

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

Intelligence Test

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

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

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

Language

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Linguistic Determinism

the strong form of Whorf's hypothesis—that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us

Longitudinal Study

research that follows and retests the same people over time

Mental Age

a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the level of performance typically associated with children of a certain chronological age. Thus, a child who does as well as an average 8 year old is said to have a mental age of 8.

Morpheme

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Normal Curve

the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average (about 68% fall within 1 standard deviation), and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

One-word stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Phoneme

in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

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.

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

Standford-Binet

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

Standardization

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

Stereotype threat

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

Telegraphic speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—"go car"—using mostly nouns and verbs.

Two-word stage

beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements

Validity

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

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

the WAIS and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests

Wernicke's Area

a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

Richard Atkinson

Worked with Shiffrin to explain our memory forming process with a 3 stage model. (1. Record as sensory memory 2. process into short-term memory 3. finally it moves to long-term memory)

Hermann Ebinghaus

Forgetting curve - the more times one spends memorizes on the first day the less time it will take to relearn the next day

Noam Chomsky

theorist who believed that humans have an inborn or "native" propensity to develop language - Theory of generative grammar

Benjamin Whorf

Created Linguistic Relativity - the way we think about the world is shaped by the structure of our native langauge

Elizabeth Loftus

Malleability of human memory - specifically the misinformation effect, eyewitness memory, and the creation of false memories.

Paul Broca

discovered area in the brain (named for him) in the left frontal lobe responsible for language production. Founder of modern neuropsychology

Carl Wernicke

an area of the brain (in the left temporal lobe) involved in language comprehension and expression was named for him because he discovered it

Robert Sternberg

devised the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (academic problem-solving, practical, and creative), and the triangular theory of love(what the main compponents of feelings are)

Charles Spearman

intelligence; found that specific mental talents were highly correlated, concluded that all cognitive abilities showed a common core which he labeled 'g' (general ability)

Howard Gardner

devised theory of multiple intelligences: logical-mathematic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, linguistic, musical, interpersonal, naturalistic

Alfred Binet

pioneer in intelligence (IQ) tests, designed a test to identify slow learners in need of help-not applicable in the U.S. because it was too culture-bound (French)

David Weschler

established an intelligence test especially for adults (WAIS); also WISC and WPPSI

Automatic Processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

Availability Heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Algorithm

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier-but also more error-prone-use of heuristics.

Anterograde Amnesia

an inability to form new memories

Belief Perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Confirmation Bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Concept

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Convergent Thinking

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Divergent Thinking

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

Deja Vu

that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

Encoding

the processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.

Explicit Memory

retention of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare"

Effortful Processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Echoic Memory

a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds

Episodic Memory

explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems (other is semantic memory)

Flashbulb Memory

a clear, sustained memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Fixation

(1) in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving. (2) in personality theory, according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved

Framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

Heuristic

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms

Hippocampus

a neural center located in the limbic system; helps process for storage explicit (conscious) memories of facts and events

Implicit Memory

retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection (Also called nondeclarative memory)

Iconic Memory

a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Insight

a sudden realization of the solution to a problem; contrasts with strategy-based solutions

Intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Long term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Long-term potentiation

an increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory

Memory

the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information

Mood-Congruent Memory

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood

Mnemonics

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

Mental Set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Misinformation Effect

occurs when misleading information has distorted one's memory of an event

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

Parallel Processing

the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response

Proactive Interference

the forward-acting disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information - when old information blocks the learning and remembering of new information

Recall

A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test.

Relearning

a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time

Retrograde Amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past

Retroactive Interference

the backward-acting disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information - when new information blocks the retrieval of old information

Repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Representativeness Heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

Storage

the process of retaining encoded information over time

Sensory Memory

the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

Short-Term Memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten

Spacing Effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Semantic Memory

explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is episodic memory)