Chapter 10: Intelligence, Problem Solving, & Creativity Key Terms Flashcards
Intelligence:
A set of cognitive skills that includes abstract thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and the ability to acquire knowledge.
Verbal intelligence:
The ability to solve problems and analyze information using language-based reasoning.
Spatial intelligence:
Defined as ability or mental skill to solve spatial problems such as navigating and visualizing objects from different angles.
Quantitative intelligence:
The ability to reason and solve problems by carrying out mathematical operations and using logic.
G-factor theory:
Spearman’s theory that intelligence is a single general (g) factor made up of specific components.
Multiple-factor theory of intelligence:
The idea that intelligence consists of distinct dimensions and is not just a single factor.
Fluid intelligence:
Raw mental ability, pattern recognition, and abstract reasoning that can be applied to a problem one has never confronted before.
Crystallized intelligence:
The kind of knowledge that one gains from experience and learning, education, and practice.
General intelligence:
One of Carroll’s three levels of intelligence; very similar to Spearman’s concept of “g.”
Broad intelligence:
One of Carroll’s three levels of intelligence; includes abilities such as crystallized and fluid intelligence, memory, learning, and processing speed.
Narrow intelligence:
One of Carroll’s three levels of intelligence; includes many distinct abilities.
Successful intelligence:
According to Sternberg, an integrated set of abilities needed to attain success in life.
Triarchic theory or intelligence:
Sternberg’s three-part model of intelligence, including analytic, creative, and practical intelligence.
Mental age:
The equivalent chronological age a child has reached based on his or her performance on an IQ test.
Reliability:
The consistency of a measurement, such as an intelligence test.
Test-retest reliability:
The consistency of scores on a test over time.
Internal reliability:
A characteristic of an intelligence test in which questions on a given subtest tend to correlate very highly with other items on the subtest.
Validity:
The degree to which a test accurately measures what it purports to measure, such as intelligence, and not something else, and the degree to which it predicts real-world outcomes.
Construct validity:
The degree to which a test measures the concept it claims to measure, such as intelligence.
Predictive validity:
The degree to which intelligence test scores are positively related to real-world outcomes, such as school achievement or job success, and thus have predictive value.
Cultural test bias:
The notion that group differences in IQ scores are caused by different cultural and educational backgrounds, not by real differences in intelligence.
Test bias:
A characteristic of a test that produces different outcomes for different groups.
Test fairness:
A judgment about how test results are applied to different groups based on values and philosophical inclinations.
Intellectual disability:
Significant limitations in intellectual functioning as well as in everyday adaptive behavior, which start before age 18.
Adaptive behavior:
Adjustment to and coping with everyday life.
Down syndrome:
A chromosomal disorder characterized by mild to profound intellectual disability.
Familial-cultural intellectual disability:
Occurs when environmental deprivation, such as neglect and poor nutrition, is to blame for some cases of milder intellectual disability. Genetics play no role in this form of disability.
Prodigy:
A young person who is extremely gifted and precocious in one area and at least average in intelligence.
Savant syndrome:
A very rare condition in which people with serious mental handicaps also show isolated areas of ability or brilliance.
Connectome:
The map of all neural networks in the human brain; the wiring diagram of the brain.
Reaction range:
For a given trait, such as IQ, the genetically determined range of responses by an individual to his or her environment.
Convergent thinking problems:
Problems that have known solutions and require analytic thinking and the use of learned strategies and knowledge to come up with the correct answer.
Divergent thinking problems:
Problems that have no known solutions and require novel solutions.
Algorithm:
A step-by-step procedure or formula for solving a problem.
Eureka insight (insight solution):
A sudden solution that comes to mind in a flash.
Thinking outside the box:
An approach to problem solving that requires breaking free of self-imposed conceptual constraints and thinking about a problem differently in order to solve it.
Fixation:
The inability to break out of a particular mind-set in order to think about a problem from a fresh perspective.
Mental set:
A tendency to continue to use problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past, even if better solutions are available.
Functional fixedness:
A mindset in which one is blind to unusual uses of common, everyday things or procedures.
Default mode network:
A brain network that consists of regions of the frontal and parietal lobes that are active when a person is not focused on anything in particular from the outside and becomes less active when a person is focused on a particular stimulus.
Ideational fluency:
The ability to produce many ideas.
Flexibility of thought:
The ability to come up with many different categories of ideas and think of other responses besides the obvious one.
Originality:
The ability to come up with unusual and novel ideas.
