Chapter 11- Intelligence Flashcards
Reification
Viewing an abstract, immaterial concept as if it were a concrete thing. (She has an IQ of 120. Referring to an IQ as something someone has.)
Intelligence
Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.
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 ones total score.
Charles Spearman
Helped develop factor analysis; believed there is also a general intelligence, or g factor that underlies the various clusters.
General intelligence (g)
A general intelligence factor that according to Spearman and others underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.
L.L. Thurstone
Rejected g-factor. Didn’t rank his subjects on a single scale of general aptitude. Argued that factor analysis revealed seven independent mental abilities.
Howard Gardner
Stated that people have specific intellectual potentials, or intelligences, each involving a set of problem-solving skills. (Linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, etc.)
Savant syndrome
A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.
Robert Sternberg
Triarchic theory distinguishes and intelligences; analytical (academic problem- solving) intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence.
Emotional intelligence
The ability to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions.
Creativity
The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
Intelligence Tests
A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.
Alfred Binet
Started the modern intelligence- testing movement by developing questions that helped predict children’s future progress in the Paris school system. (Tells us which kids need Special Ed)
Mental age
A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically correspond to a given level of performance. (9 year olds have a mental age of 8)
Lewis Terman
A Stanford university professor, Terman revised bidet’s original IQ test by establishing new age norms and extending the upper end of the tests range from teenagers to “superior adults”. Supports the nature side of the debate.
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 ration of a mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (IQ=ma/ca*100). On contemporary intelligence tests, average score is 100.
Aptitude Tests
A test designed to predict a persons future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
Achievement Tests
A test designed to assess what a person has learned.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) sub tests.
Standardization
Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretext we standardization group.
The Flynn Effect
Intelligence test performance has been improving.
Normal Curve
The symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores are average and few are extreme.
Reliability
The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test,on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting.
