Intelligence testing WK2

Screening: Evidence of cognitive impairment? (based on cutoff score) Refer for evaluation, brief, not used for diagnosis, Sensitivity>Specificity 

Testing: Administration, scoring, and labeling of tests, based on normative data, 1+ cognitive domains, can inform specific treatment goals

Evaluation: Comprehensive breadth & depth, interpretive: in context, Integrative: Multiple sources


Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE): screening measure to track cognition over time, or to infer dysfunction in various cognitive domains based on item-level responses. Largely verbal and No executive or processing speed areas. 

Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA): screening measure, has executive functioning. 

Intelligence: general mental ability, ability to learn from experience, engage in complex reasoning, and adapt to the environment. 

Spearman’s g: g=all mental abilities, revised later to include g+specific factors

Throndike: no g factor, multiple intelligences

Cattell: 

-Fluid intelligence (Gf)-new learning, abstract reasoning, problem solving→declines with aging, very vulnerable 

-Crystalized intelligence (Gc)-consolidated knowledge & skills→preserved with aging, more robust

Cattell, Horn, & Carroll:

Added-processing speediness (Gs), visualization (Gv), tertiary storage & retrieval (TSR)

Wechsler: Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully

-Characterizes behavior as a whole

General intelligence→domains of intelligence→specific abilities

IQ is not g, IQ is a score

White Matter: 

Gray Matter: bodies of neurons

Axons: allow neurons to communicate

-IQ is correlated to total brain volumes and with gray matter > white matter

-Frontal and fronto-parietal areas are correlated to executive functioning

-Corpus callosum is correlated to inter-hemispheric integration of info

-Verbal comprehension stems from networks in dominantly left hemisphere involving frontal and temporal lobes

-Visual spatial stems from networks in R hemisphere

-Fluid Reasoning is broad and might be related to functioning that structure (prefrontal and frontal-parietal networks. 

-Working memory: prefrontal areas, typically in both hemispheres. Dense connections to parietal areas

-Processing speed: dependent on integrity of white matter tracts throughout the brain. 

Heritability: caused by many genes of small effect 

*We are misinterpreting SES effects as ethnoracial effects 

Disability = an interaction between the individual and the environment. 

IDD: disorder with inset during developmental period that includes deficits in intellectual fx and adaptive fx (conceptual, social, practical). Can be congenital(at birth) or acquired. 

-To diagnose intellectual fx deficits you will need assessments, standardized intelligence testing. Score typically 2+ standard deviations below the mean (for IQ 2 SD below the mean=70, accounting for error usually 65-75 range). 

-Adaptive fx deficits that result in failure to meet dev. & sociocultural standards for personal independence and social resp., deficits limit fx in daily life. 

-Instrumental DL activities are complex, Basic DL activities are less complex. 

Giftedness: not a dx or condition, found per state. Might need support for social-emotional development. Gifted and disability=”twice exceptional”