AP Psych Intelligence Vocab

Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgements, and Decision Making Vocab


Concepts 

  • Mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Prototype

  • Mental image of the best example of a specific concept or category

  • Contains the essential aspect of the concept 

Critical Thinking

  • When we go beyond acquire new information using concepts, prototypes, and other cognitive activities and develop opinions and beliefs about that information

Schema

  • Mental representation of a set of connected ideas

Assimilation 

  • Allows us to make sense of new situations by related them to prior experiences and their existing schemas without changing those schemas

Accommodation

  • Creating new categories because our current classification is inadequate

  • Taking in new information and change the schema to incorporate that new information 

Executive functions

  • A set of cognitive processes that help us manage and coordinate our thoughts and actions and achieve goal-directed behavior

  • Include the ability to adapt to new situations, plan and organize activities, prioritize tasks, solve problems, control impulsive behaviors, and regulate emotions to achieve our goals

Problem solving

  • Trial and error, algorithms, and heuristics

Trial and error

  • A process by which we try different solutions until we find one that works

Algorithms

  • A specific set of step by step instructions designed to perform a task or solve a problem

Heuristics 

  • “Rules of thumb”

  • Simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently

  • Ex. agreeing with the views and positions of a political party and vote for candidates in that party w/o considering their individual positions 

Representativeness heuristic

  • When we judge how closely something represents, or matches, our prototype for a given category 

  • Ex. thinking that a person who is shy and withdrawn to work in a library rather than being a farmer

Availability heuristic

  • Estimated the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

  • Can lead to incorrect assumptions or conclusions 

  • Ex. overestimating the likelihood of a plane crash after seeing that a plane crash occur recently on the news

Decision-making 

  • Related to problem solving, the act of deciding to do, or not doing something, or choosing to do something

  • While you cannot solve a problem w/o making a decisions, not every decision involves a problem 

Mental Set

  • A tendency to approach decision-making in a particular way, based on past experiences, habits, or previously successful strategies

  • Cognitive framework that guides how we perceive, interpret, and respond to various stimuli

  • Influence decision-making process by directing attention toward information that is consistent w/ our existing beliefs or strategies while downplaying conflicting information and by using decision-making heuristics to simplify complex problems

Priming

  • Exposing people to certain stimuli that unconsciously influence subsequent behavior or decisions

Framing

  • Exerts a similar kind of influence on decision-making and behavior

  • It is a cognitive bias in which the way information is worked (the frame) influences how people perceive it and the decisions they make related to it

  • Framing involves presenting information in a way that emphasizes certain aspects or perspective while downplaying or omitting others 

Gambler’s Fallacy

  • A cognitive bias that occurs when people believe that the outcomes of random events are influenced by previous outcomes even when they are actually independent

  • People mistakenly believe that if a certain event hasn’t occurred recently, it is more likely to occur in the future, or vice versa

  • Ex. if a coin has landed on head five times, someone with gambler’s fallacy would believe that the next flip will be tails because “its due”

Sunk-cost fallacy

  • A cognitive bias that occurs when people continue investing time, money, or effort  into a project or endeavor because they have already invested significant resources, even when continuing to invest would not be rational based on the current circumstances

  • People are influenced by the sunk costs they have already incurred rather than an objective evaluation of the potential future costs and benefits

Creativity 

  • The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas within any discipline, including art, music, architecture, mathematics, science, and engineering 

Convergent thinking

  • A question invites only one correct answer, limits creativity 

Divergent thinking

  • Required when a question or problem can have several or many possible solutions or responses 

Functional Fixedness

  • Cognitive bias that limits a person's ability to see alternative uses for familiar objects or to think about problems in novel ways because they are fixated on the common use of function of those objects, as if they could have no other functions 

Intelligence and Achievement Vocab


Intelligence 

  • Believed to be related to success, others believe it reflects one's ability to successfully navigate day to day life, and yet others believe that intelligence refers to one's ability or solve novel problems or to be nimble in the face of new challenges 

Heritability (Galton)

  • Believed that intelligence is inherited rather that influenced by environment 

  • Had bias towards white males, created eugenics 

Factor Analysis (Spearman)

  • General intelligence (g) is all the specific skills (s) that comprised intelligence come together overall intelligence

  • Come to be known as the g-factor

  • SAT test, being tested on specific skills (s) and being given an overall score (g, general intelligence)

  • Factor analysis is the statistical procedure spearman created to analyze correlations between different measures

Multiple intelligences (Gardners)

  • Believed that there are multiple intelligences that are relatively independent of one another and combine to identify intelligence in numerous different settings

  • Eight different types of intelligence:

    • Musical

    • Bodily-kinesthetic

    • Interpersonal

    • Verbal linguistic 

    • Logical mathematical

    • Naturalistic

    • Interpersonal

    • Visual-spatial

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (Sternberg)

  • Proposed three larger categories which different types of intelligence could be categorized

    • Practical intelligences

    • Analytical intelligence

    • Creative intelligence

Intelligence tests

  • Measure individual difference by comparing ones results to those of others who have taken the same exam

Mental age

  • Cognitive performance level 

  • Ex. Metal age 9, actual age 6

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

  • Mental age divided by chronological age (actual age) multiplied by 100

  • Results show if children were ahead of or behind their peers

Psychometric princuples

  • Fundamental features that an assessment must meet to be considered as high quality

Standardized tests

  • Factors in the test regarding timing, directions, setting, seating, and monitoring should be the same for all test takers

Construct Validity 

  • how well a test or measurement tool accurately measures the concept or trait it's intended to measure

  • Required an assessment to be based on the entire range of theoretical concepts that underlie the subject 

Test-retest reliability

  • The degree to which an assessment yields similar individual results each time it is taken 

  • Ex. SAT, when people take it again they are likely to score higher, it has high test reliability

 Stereotype Lift

  • A phenomenon in which individuals from stereotyped groups perform better on tasks when positive stereotypes about their group are activated

  • When individuals experience a boost in performance due to positive expectations associated with their social groups

  • Ex. if African American students are exposed to positive reinforcements about their academic performance, they will perform better because the stereotypes are lifted

Socio Culturally responsive assessment

  • tests or evaluations that are designed to be fair and relevant to people from diverse cultural backgrounds

  • Done to prevent and reduce threat, stereotype lift, and other possible inequities 

Flynn effect

  • Identified that the phenomenon claims that people are getting “smarter” or at least increasing their quantitative scores over time

Achievement Tests

  • Identify what individuals know and test their skill levels in different areas

  • Ex. AP Psychology exam

Aptitude Tests

  • Measure ability in a certain area, such as numerical, verbal, mechanical reasoning, problem solving in work related situations, and spatial awareness