Intelligence

Question 1

First explored by Francis Galton to assess whether a person’s intelligence and success in life were determined by genetics or experience.

Answer 1

Nature vs. nurture

Question 2

A fertilized egg in which the chromosomes from each parent have combined.

Answer 2

zygote

Question 3

The developing human organism from about two weeks after fertilization through the second month. Formed when the blastocyst attaches to the uterine wall by secreting enzymes that eat away part of the lining.

Answer 3

embryo

Question 4

Develop from a single fertilized egg that splits into two, creating two genetically identical organisms.

Answer 4

Identical twins

Question 5

Develop from separate eggs. Genetically, no closer than brothers and sisters, but they share a fetal environment and grow up as peers, and so are more closely matched with regard to experience than other siblings.

Answer 5

Fraternal twins

Question 6

The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes in the debate about the extent that a trait is caused by innate factors. This term may vary, independent of its dependence on genes, depending on the range of (amount of variability in) populations and environments studied.

Answer 6

Heritability

Question 7

The branch of social philosophy which advocates improvement of human hereditary traits through social intervention. In theory, if a large portion of personality is dependent upon genetic inheritance, then genetic trait selection could lead to a more intelligent, productive, and obedient society. Thus this promoted the breeding of people with ‘superior’ abilities. However, it also advocated that inferior people be prevented from having children.

Answer 7

Eugenics

Question 8

The study of human physical characteristics through the measurement of such features as head length, width of middle finger, etc. Francis Galton made important contributions to this field, which has application in almost any case involving the design of an item for human use.

Answer 8

Anthropometry

Question 9

Charles Spearman suggested that fluency in specific cognitive areas such as verbal, spatial, and mathematical intelligence are all regulated by an overseeing this term. Spearman, followed by some people today, argued that this term is a what one wants as a characterization of intelligence.

Answer 9

General intelligence, g

Question 10

The ability to process visual information, such as one’s location in relation to objects in a room or relative location of two objects (either in a picture or one’s environment), and use this spatial information to solve problems. This concept is part of Sternberg’s specific intelligences.

Answer 10

Spatial intelligence

Question 11

The ability to perceive, think about, and effectively use the emotions of oneself and others. This is also one of Sternberg’s specific intelligences and is a relatively recent and somewhat controversial concept.

Answer 11

Emotional intelligence

Question 12

After the performances of large numbers of children of different ages are collected, it is possible to describe the average performance of a given age group. This terms is then specified by the chronological age of the group whose average performance matches that of the individual child.

Answer 12

Mental age

Question 13

Dominated intelligence measurement in the Twentieth Century. It was so named because the Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman adjusted Binet’s earlier intelligence tests to better evaluate the American population. The test consists of a battery of assessment of diverse skills needed for academic success, which is predicts better than other tests. There are a number of ethical questions concerning the misuse of IQ testing in immigration and educational policy.

Answer 13

Stanford-Binet IQ test

Question 14

Attempt to measure one’s current understanding of a specific content area. Whereas an aptitude test asks how likely you are to be able to comprehend music theory (even if you have little exposure to it), this type of test asks how much you already know about music theory.

Answer 14

Achievement test

Question 15

The process of developing tests and measures by identifying questions and/or tasks that effectively discriminate among people with different abilities and lead to accurate predictions of future performance. An important part of the process is that the development involve representatives of all populations the test is intended to evaluate. Failure to do so leads to test bias.

Answer 15

Standardization

Question 16

Occurs when the test is slanted in a way that causes one group to perform better or worse than another because of factors that are not intended to be evaluated. For example, literacy tests were given with questions in English about U.S. culture to immigrants in the early 1900’s. Such questions were appropriate for U.S. citizens, but were not standardized to the foreign populations to which they were applied, and so failed to provide a valid evaluation of the immigrant’s abilities.

Answer 16

[test] bias

Question 17

Involves the issue of how much repeated testing produces a repeat of the results. A good test will produce the same results over and over.

Answer 17

Reliability

Question 18

Concerns whether the proposed concept is a true representation. It was once believed that a flood represented the sentient river being angry. The emotional state of the river would generally be discredited as lacking this term.

Answer 18

Construct validity

Question 19

Concerns the extent to which a test assesses the dimension that it is intended to measure. For example, a driving test takes a measure of driving skills and not how well one throws a football and thus has high this term.

Answer 19

Content validity

Question 20

Concerns the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is intended to predict. This term is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior.

Answer 20

Predictive validity

Question 21

Concerns whether the test or experiment lacks obvious credibility, without regard to whether it has other types of validity

Answer 21

Face validity

Question 22

Described by Galen as the four cardinal bodily fluids, the balance of which was believed to determine a person’s temperament or personality. An imbalance would account for a strong personality type and, in extreme, an ‘illness.’

Answer 22

Humors

Question 23

A characteristic behavior or disposition to feel or act. These theories of personality try to describe personality, not explain it. Used to describe a person and try to fit them into a category.

Answer 23

Trait

Question 24

In the Nineteenth century, personality traits, cognitive abilities, and other human characteristics were all considered to be this term. We would now consider all of them to be invalid as accounts of the basis of behavior.

Answer 24

Faculties

Question 25

Flourished in the Nineteenth century as an objective, scientific way to evaluate personality and cognitive abilities. It stated that personality and mental abilities (faculties) were associated with specific brain areas. Professionals of this term believed that bumps and recesses on the skull reflected the development (or lack) of these brain areas, thereby permitting an assessment of the personality and cognitive factors governed by those areas.

Answer 25

Phrenology

Question 26

Simple, innate, biological mechanisms that help an organism. Generally, these are implemented at low levels of the nervous system. A key feature of this term is that is executed mechanistically, without any influence of higher-level neural processes, i.e. your peripheral nervous system makes a reflexive action and then sends information anout the action to the brain. This term is executed before the brain knows about the action.

Answer 26

Reflex

Question 27

Genetically encoded instructions for the execution of complex behaviors that are rigidly patterned throughout a species and, being innate, are unlearned. These are behaviors that someone does involuntarily because of innate mechanisms. They almost always help the individual, but cannot be attributed to a choice by the individual.

Answer 27

Instincts

Question 28

The branch of zoology concerned with the study of animal behavior, particularly in its natural setting. Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch received the Nobel Prize for their work in this field. The described fixed action patterns, apparently goal-directed, voluntary behaviors that re in fact instinctual actions that are not goal-directed but must be executed as a whole whether the goal is achieved or not.

Answer 28

Ethology

Question 29

An instinctual form of learning in some infant animals in which they form an attachment to and physically follow the first moving object they see immediately after birth (hatching). The exposure to the first moving object must occur when the animal can first observe the world (critical period). This term shoes the operation of an innate mechanism for learning; no concept of mind is needed to account for this behavior.

Answer 29

Imprinting

Question 30

The time during which the experience must occur if the characteristic is to develop; if the experience does not occur during the critical period, the characteristic never develops no matter what later experiences they obtain.

Answer 30

Critical period

Question 31

The school of psychology developed by John Watson that insisted that a science of psychology must focus on objective observable variables, exclusively– no mind or mental states. This school of psychology insisted that all behavior, except reflex behavior, of all organisms was a consequence of conditioning (life experiences). Thus aligned with the epidemiological school of empiricism, with which it shared a concerned with the formation of associations, the basis of conditioning.

Answer 31

Behaviorism

Question 32

Alters ‘voluntary’ behavior by manipulating the consequences of the behavior.

Answer 32

Operant conditioning

Question 33

Causes involuntary behavior (reflex) to be triggered by stimuli that would not naturally have an effect.

Answer 33

Classical conditioning

Question 34

In classical conditioning, this is the response made to the conditioned stimulus, CS, alone after repeated pairing of that arbitrary stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus, US, that reflexively produces a response, the unconditioned response or UR. This term is not identical to the UR and it should not be given that it is not being produced as the reflexive response to a stimulus, but is a response in anticipation of the US.

Answer 34

Conditioned response

Question 35

In classical or operant conditioning, this is the process

Answer 35

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