Exam #1 Flashcards
Psychological Assessment
The systematic effort to understand and predict the behaviour of others.
Modern Psychological assessment began with the assessment of intelligence.
Define a psychological test
+ What are the key components of a test?
An objective and standardized measure of a sample of behaviour.
- Objective- an accurate and unbiased response to what is measured. Not subjective.
- Standardized- Administered and scored by following a specific protocol.
- A sample of behaviour- Test is a snapshot in time. The person may be having a bad day, tired, errors in test administration, scoring and interpretation
What are the 4 main purposes of psychological tests?
1) Classification. Ie someone may be cognitively gifted, another might be psychopathic.
2) Self-understanding- Ie evaluating career interests
3) Program evaluation- A screening tool can determine autism and the treatment protocol based on severity
4) Scientific Inquiry
Two examples of psychological constructs measured by psychometric testing
1) Personality
2) Intelligence
What is eugenics?
Efforts to selectively control reproduction in order to gradually improve hereditary characteristics in a population
Founder of intelligence testing who believed in eugenics
Galton
What was Galton interested in? What were his beliefs?
Intelligence testing- 1)interested in correlations between intelligence and sensory/motor functioning, reaction time, visual acuity and physical strength.
2) interested in how genius runs in families
Galton was in favor of eugenics
Galton wanted to discourage people of lesser intelligence from having children
Coined the term “mental test”
James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell
Coined the term “mental test”
Wundt
1) Father of modern psychology
2)Had the first psychology lab
3)created the *Nomothetic approach
Wundt was the first to start testing individuals and comparing results
- Father of modern psychology
- Had the first psychology lab
- created the *Nomothetic approach
- First to start testing individuals and then comparing results
Wundt
Emil Kraepelin
- First to come up with categorical classification
- Developed the word association test to distinguish people with mental health issues from controls. This was the first practical psychometric device for identifying emotionally disturbed individuals.
Abnormality on the word association test was a function of excessively long reactions, failures to respond, misunderstandings of words.
First practical psychometric device for identifying emotionally disturbed individuals
Word Association Test
Developed by Emil Kraepelin
Developed the concept of IQ
Stern
Stern
Developed the concept of IQ
Equation for IQ
IQ= (MA/Chronological age) *100
MA stands for mental age
Published the first useful test of mental ability
Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet
published the first useful test of mental ability
test identified youngsters in need of special training
Binet emphasized abstract reasoning rather than sensory skills- as did galton
Woodworth Personal Data Sheet
First self-report personality questionnaire
Developed to assess the ability of a WW1 soldier to adjust to the strains of military life
grandfather of all personality inventories
First self-report personality questionnaire
Woodworth Personal Data Sheet
Thematic Apperception Test
Individuals make up stories to fairly well developed pictures
Key: person projects aspect of self onto their percept
Modern Intelligence Testing was conceived by?
David Weschler
What is a norm and what/how is it used?
The norm is the typical test performance of a standardized sample.
Ie a particular test is given to a large group of people. based on this sample a mean and a standard deviation will be generated . Now the individual can be compared to this group
A person’s data, assuming they are also from this population- if they are not from the population in which the inventory was normed on then we cannot come to a conclusion.
When do you use Spearman’s Rho?
The Spearman’s Rho correlation coefficient is appropriate when either of the following conditions are met:
1) One variable is an ordinal scale and the other is an ordinal scale or higher
2) One of the distributions is markedly skewed ( not normally distributed)
What do we need to know before we can calculate statistical significance?
Alpha Level = 0.05
What is the most common measurement scale used in psychology?
Ordinal
Pearson correlation coefficient
linear relationship between two continuous variables