UNIT 11

Intelligence: The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

General Intelligence (g): According to Spearman and others, underlies all 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.

Grit: Those who become highly successful tend to also be conscientious, well-connected, and doggedly energetic. A personality trait characterized by perseverance and passion for achieving long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously to overcome challenges and maintaining effort and interest over time despite failures, adversities, and plateaus in progress.

Emotional Intelligence: The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

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

Achievement Test: A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

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

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

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

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.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS): The WAIS, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; they contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

Standardization: Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a protested group.

Normal Curve: (Normal Distribution) a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (about 68% fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer 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 alternative forms of the test, or on retesting.

Validity: The extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

Content Validity: The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

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. (also called Criterion-Related Validity).

Cohort: A group of people sharing a common characteristic, such as from a given time period.

Crystallized Intelligence: Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tend to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence: Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood.

Cross-Sectional Study: Observational Studies that analyze data from a population at a single point in time. They are often used to measure the prevalence of health outcomes, understand determinants of health, and describe features of a population.

Longitudinal Study: Longitudinal studies employ continuous or repeated measures to follow particular individuals over prolonged periods.

Intellectual Disability: A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence test score of 70 or below and difficulty adapting to the demands of life. (formerly referred to as mental retardation).

Down Syndrome: A condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physcial disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosomes.

Heritability: A statistical measure that estimates the proportion of variation in a particular trait within a population that can be attributed to genetic differences, essentially indication how much of the difference between individuals in a trait is due to their genes rather than enviornmental factors.

Stereotype Threat: The risk of confirming negative sterotypes about one’s racial, ethnic, gender, or cultural group. This phenomenon can lead to heightend stress, anxiety, and cognitive overload, which divert mental resources away from acadmeic focus, performance, and relationship-buildi