Module 27: Intelligence and Its Assessment Flashcards
Intelligence
The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.
General Intelligence (GI)
underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task
on an intelligence test.
Savant Syndrome
a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.
Emotional Intelligence
the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
Intelligence Test
a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using
numerical scores.
Achievement Test
a test designed to assess what a person has learned.
Aptitude Test
a test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
Mental age
a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the level of performance typically associated
with children of a certain chronological age. Thus, a child who does as well as an average 8-year-old is said
to have a mental age of 8.
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 ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ =
ma/ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a
score of 100.
Calculating IQ
IQ = Mental age(ma)/ Chronological age (ca) × 100
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
the WAIS and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; they contain
verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.
Standardization
defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a
pretested group.
Normal Curve
the bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most
scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.
Reliability
the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves
of the test, on alternative forms of the test, or on retesting.
Validity
the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.
Predictive Validity
the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the
correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. (Also called criterion-related validity.)
Intellectual Disability
a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence test score of 70 or below and difficulty
adapting to the demands of life.
Cohort
a group of people sharing a common characteristic, such as being from a given time period.
Cross-sectional study
research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time.
Longitudinal Study
research that follows and retests the same people over time.
Crystallized Intelligence
our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
Fluid Intelligence
our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood.
Howard Gardner
identified eight relatively independent intelligences,
including the verbal and mathematical aptitudes assessed by standardized tests. Has also
proposed a ninth possible intelligence—existential intelligence—the ability
“to ponder large questions about life, death, existence.”
