Psy Testing Flashcards
Importance of Psychological Tests (5)
Decisions for:
- Early School Placement
- College Entrance Decisions
- Military Job Selections
- Career Choices
- Psychological Adjustments
Characteristics of Psychological Tests (3)
- Sample of behavior
- Obtained under standardized conditions
- Established scoring rules for obtaining quantitative information from behavior sample
Why is standardization vital?
- Referential in nature - performance is measured relatively to everybody else’s performance
- Reduces between subject variability due to extraneous variables.
- Administered in mass
Difference between subjective and objective scoring rules
Objective Scoring Rules: Most mass produced tests fall into this category. Different qualified examiners will all come to the same score for an identical set of responses.
Subjective Scoring Rules: When the judgment of the examiner is an important part of the test, different examiners can legitimately come to different conclusions concerning the same sample of behavior. There conclusions should be similar, however.
Categories of Psychological Tests (3)
- Specific Task Performance Tests
- Observations of the Subject’s behavior within a particular context
- Self-report measures
What are specific tasks performance tests
Referred to as “Tests of maximal performance”; designed to uncover what an individual can do, given the specific test conditions.
- Two underlying assumptions:
- The subject understands what is required of the test.
- The subject exerts maximal effort to succeed.
What is an observation of the subject’s behavior within a particular context?
Examiner might observe subject having a conversation or some other social interaction.
What are self-report measures?
Subject describes their feelings, attitudes, beliefs, or interests.
Frequently subject to self-censorship.
Items are frequently included to measure the extent to which people provide socially desirable responses s/t self-serving bias
History: Circa 1000 BC (Chinese)
Chinese introduced written tests for civil service positions
History: 1850 (US)
US begins civil service examinations
History: 1890 (Cattell)
Mental test for college students - strength, resistance to pain and reaction time
History: 1905(Binet-Simon)
Scale of mental development used to classify mentally retarded children in France
History: 1914 (US)
WWI army recruitment - Alpha and Beta test
History: 1916 (Terman)
Develops Stanford-Binet Test and coined IQ
History: 1920-1940
Factor Analysis, Projective tests and Personality Inventories
History: 1941-1960
Vocational interest measured
History: 1961-1980
Item response theory and neuropsychological testing developed
History: 1980 - present
Computerized testing
Examples of Fluid Attributes
Mood
Attitude
Opinions
Personal values
Example of Stable Attributes
Intelligence
Interest
Example of Relative Attributes
Ability
Interest
Personality
Reasons why intelligence is a valid and useful construct
- wide variety of mental processing tasks show systematic individual variation.
- related to success in a wide variety of life tasks: school performance, training programs, and work behaviors.
What is General Mental Ability/Intelligence?
performance of tasks involving the manipulation, retrieval, evaluation , and/or processing of information which shows individual differences.
What are the 7 primary mental abilities according to Thurstone (1938)?
- Verbal Comprehension - vocabulary, reading, verbal analogies
- Word Fluency — anagrams, rhyming tests
- Number – mathematical operations
- Space - spatial visualizations and mental transformation.
- Associative Memory – rote memory
- Perceptual Speed – quickness in noticing similarities and differences
- Reasoning - skill in inductive, deductive, and math problems