intelligence unit

Directions: Please define these terms in your own words, they will help you to gain mastery for this unit.

• Intelligence - The ability to learn, solve problems, and adapt to new situations. It includes skills such as reasoning, memory, creativity, and social understanding.

• G (general intelligence factor) - A concept developed by Charles Spearman that suggests intelligence is a single, overall ability that influences performance across tasks.

• Factor Analysis - A statistical method used to identify patterns in data by finding underlying factors that explain relationships between variables.

• Howard Gardner - A psychologist who is known for developing the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which suggests intelligence is not a single ability but is made of multiple types, like linguistic, spatial or musical intelligence.

• Robert Sternberg - A psychologist who created the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, which divides intelligence into 3 categories: analytical (problem-solving), creative (innovation), and practical (real-world application).

• L.L. Thurston: suggests that intelligence is composed of seven primary mental abilities: verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and reasoning. These abilities are independent of each other.

• Emotional intelligence - The ability to recognize, understand, and manage your own emotions while also having the ability to perceive and respond to the emotions of others. 

• Social Intelligence: is the ability to understand one's own and others' actions.

• Alfred Binet - A psychologist who developed the first modern intelligence test to help identify students who needed more support for academics. 

• Stanford-Binet & Wechsler - 2 widely used intelligence tests. The Stanford-Binet test, based on Binet’s work, measures cognitive abilities. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale provide a broader assessment of intelligence, including verbal and performance abilities. 

• IQ - A score extracted from standardized intelligence tests that measure cognitive ability in relation to the average population.

• Validity - The extent to which a test actually measures what it claims to measure. A test with high validity produces accurate results.

• Reliability - The consistency of a test’s results over time. A reliable test will give similar scores when taken multiple times. 

• Standardization - The process of administering and scoring a test in a consistent manner to ensure the results are comparable across different people/groups. 

• Normal distribution - A bell shaped curve that represents how traits, like intelligence scores, are spread in a population, with most people scoring near average and fewer people in the extremes. 

• Stereotype Threat - The psychological phenomenon where individuals underperform on tests/tasks due to anxiety about confirming negative stereotypes related to their social/cultural group.  

• Savant Syndrome: a rare condition in which persons with various developmental disorders, including autistic disorder, have an amazing ability and talent

• Creativity: the mental processes leading to a new invention, idea or solution to a problem

• Creative Intelligence: ability to produce new products, ideas, or inventing a new, novel solution to a problem

• Practical Intelligence: the ability that individuals use to find a more optimal fit between themselves and the demands of the environment through adapting, shaping, or selecting a new environment in the pursuit of personally valued goals

• Aptitude Test: a measure of your ability to learn or perform required tasks and succeed in a particular environment

• Achievement Test: any measurement process or instrument whose purpose is to estimate an examinee's degree of attainment of specified knowledge or skills

• Analytic Intelligence: relates to the mental mechanisms individuals utilize to plan and undertake academic and problem-solving tasks

• Flynn Effect: the observed rise over time in standardized intelligence test scores

• Criterion: a standard or measure that is used to evaluate or assess something

• Content Validity: whether a measurement includes all the essential elements it needs to cover, taking into account practical considerations and other factors

• Predictive Validity: the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure

• Mental Retardation: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, which is accompanied by significant limitations in adaptive functioning

• Down Syndrome: a genetic condition that happens when a child is born with an extra chromosome. The extra chromosome affects the way the child's brain and body develop, leading to developmental delays, intellectual disability, and an increased risk for certain medical issues

• Mental Age: the age level of an individual's mental ability

• Conditioning: a type of learning, any relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of practice or experience. Changes due to growth or maturation are not learning (ex. as we grow our humor changes)

  How we simulate learning: 

  • Rewards: operant conditioning

  • Punishments: the infliction or removal of punishments

  • Classical conditioning: works well for biological functions

  Classical conditioning: you take a natural process and connect it to a neutral stimulus

  Stimuli: 

  • Neutral stimulus: at first does not elicit a response 

  • Unconditioned stimulus: elicits a predictable response without any training

  • Unconditioned response: automatic or natural response

  • Conditioned stimulus: elicits a response due to being paid with an unconditioned stimulus

  Conditioned response: the learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus