Chapter one - measuring intelligence Flashcards
Innate
Relating to a behaviour, ability, disposition or characteristic that is present from birth rather than being acquired through experience
Craniometry
The study of people’s intellectual abilities based on the shape and size of their head.
Neurology
The scientific study of the brain and the nervous system
Confirmatory bias
When a scientists expectations unconsciously influence the outcome of their research. This occurs because of the tendency to pay most attention to those features of a phenomenon that appear to confirm prior expectations
Psychometrics
A field of study in psychology concerned with psychological measurement of things like attitudes, personality traits, mood or intelligence.
Personality
A persons stable and enduring traits and characteristics (e.g.- whether they are outgoing, assertive, perceptive or emotional) which lead them to behave in a steady way over time
Individual differences
Any characteristics that are susceptible to variation between individuals; for example, personality or intelligence
Battery of tests
A series of tests aimed at measuring the same thing, such as intelligence
Scale
A term which, in the context of intelligence research, is often used instead of the word ‘test’. In psychology the word ‘scale’ refers to any set of questionnaire items of tasks which combine to measure a bigger construct that cannot be measured directly, such as intelligence or personality.
Test norms
Benchmarks used to assess an individuals performance on intelligence tests. They offer insight into how a persons test score compares with the scores of other test takers from the same population.
Test standardisation
The process of establishing test norms by administering the test to a large sample of the population for which the test is intended
Correlation
A measure of an association between two events or things. In the case of intelligence test, this means that those who perform well on one task will also do well on another
G, or general intelligence
The factor believed to underpin performance on different tasks in an intelligence test
Intelligence quotient (IQ)
A score on an intelligence test which indicates how a persons intellectual ability compares to the general population
Normal distribution
The assumption that characteristics which vary between people will be distributed across the population in such a way that values at or close to the average will be more frequent than extreme ones.
