Mental Abilities Flashcards
What are mental abilities?
Capacity to perform the higher mental processss of reasoning, remembering, understanding and problem solving.
What did Blackwell et al look at in relation to 7th graders?
Learning trajectories - belief that intelligence is malleable - upward trajectory in graders while a belief that intelligence is fixed - predicted flat trajectory.
What are the three factors of implicit theories?
- verbal intelligence
- problem solving
- practical intelligence.
Why don’t theories cover all intelligence?
Define scope psychological construct - whole remain or useful subtract.
What did Alfrad Binet commission?
Techniques for identifying children who needed special education.
What was Binets scale?
Age level assigned to each reasoning task - mental age
What was Binets goal?
Identification and education - identifying students in need of remedial education.
What were Binets stipulations and how do this differ from those by American Goddard?
Scores are a practical device
Scale is rough
Low scores DO NOT mark children as innately incapable
Goddard - score as a measure of a single innate entity used to prevent immigration of morons.
What did Lewis Terman do with Binets test?
Revised as the Stanford-Binet test
Average us mental age 16 - standard for which others were validated.
What was the main problem with the Stanford-Binet test?
Difficult to compare intellectual performance across age levels.
Only works if mental age increases proportionally with chronological age.
What is the formula for deviation IQ?
Z = X-M/SD
What are the two levels of intelligence as a construct?
Observable variables - what we can see
Unobservable variables - what we infer.
What are constructs?
Theoretical terms which cannot be directly observed but assumed to exist because they give rise to measurable phenomena.
What are the four subsets of cognitive ability?
Verbal reasoning
Abstract/visual reasoning
Quantitative reasoning
Short-term memory
What is the layout of the IQ test?
Vocab test - entry level to other tests
Establishment of basal and ceiling level
What is the raw score calculates from?
Item number of highest test administered minus total number of attempted items failed.
According to the Gf-Gc Theory by cattell what is fluid intelligence and what is crystallised intelligence?
Fluid (Gf) - ability to grass between things
Crystallised - acquired knowledge and skills
What are some examples of gf and gc?
Gf - sequential reasoning, quantitive reasoning
Gc - verbal comprehension, spelling ability, foreign language aptitude
What are the developmental trends of gf-gc theory?
Fluid - rises to young adulthood and then falls with age.
Crystallised - rises and plateaus
What are the two components of theory?
True score and an error component.
What are the types of errors?
Test construction
Test administration
Errors in scoring
Interpretation subjectivity
What is reliability?
Ratio of the true score variance to observed score variance.
