Psychology - Chapter 9: Intelligence and IQ testing - important terms

Question 1

What is a child prodigy?

Answer 1

An individual who displays astounding intellectual achievements at an early age.

Question 2

What is an intelligence test?

Answer 2

Diagnostic tool designed to measure overall thinking ability

Question 3

What are higher mental processes?

Answer 3

Include reasoning, understanding and judgement.

Question 4

What is abstract thinking?

Answer 4

The capacity to understand hypothetical concepts, rather than concepts in the here and now.

Question 5

Most experts agree that whatever intelligence is, it has something to do with ______ thinking.

Answer 5

abstract

Question 6

What is general intelligence (g)?

Answer 6

Hypothetical factor that accounts for overall differences in intellect among people.

Question 7

What are specific abilities (s)?

Answer 7

Particular ability level in a narrow domain

Question 8

What is fluid intelligence?

Answer 8

Capacity to learn new ways of solving problems.

Question 9

What is crystallize intelligence?

Answer 9

Accumulated knowledge of the world acquired over time.

- ex: answering trivia

Question 10

What are multiple intelligences?

Answer 10

Idea that people vary in their ability levels across different domains of intellectual skill

Question 11

What is existential intelligence?

Answer 11

The ability to grasp deep philosophical ideas, like the meaning of life.

Question 12

What is the triarchic model?

Answer 12

Model of intelligence proposed by Robert Sternberg positing three distinct types of intelligence:

• analytical
• practical
• creative

Question 13

What is analytical intelligence?

Answer 13

The ability to reason logically.

i.e. booksmarts

Question 14

What is practical intelligence?

Answer 14

Aka tacit intelligence
The ability to solve real-world problems, especially those involving other people
i.e. street smarts

Question 15

What is creative intelligence?

Answer 15

Creativity

Our ability to come up with novel and effective answers to questions

Question 16

What is the double curse of incompetence?

Answer 16

Stupid people think they are smarter than they actually are

Question 17

What is metacognition?

Answer 17

Knowledge of our own knowledge

Question 18

What is the Stanford-Binet IQ test?

Answer 18

Intelligence test based on the measure developed by Binet and Simon, adapted by Lewis Terman of Standford University

Question 19

What is IQ?

Answer 19

Intelligence quotient

Systematic means of quantifying differences among people in their intelligence

Question 20

How is IQ calculated?

Answer 20

Divide mental age by chronological age and multiply the resulting number by 100

Question 21

What is mental age?

Answer 21

Age corresponding to the average individual’s performance on an intelligence test.

Question 22

What is deviation IQ?

Answer 22

Expression of a person’s IQ relative to his or her same-aged peers
- used when computing IQ for adults

Question 23

What is eugenics?

Answer 23

Movement in the early 20th century to improve a population’s genetic stock by encouraging those with good genes to reproduce (positive eugenics) and discouraging those with bad genes from reproducing (negative eugenics), or both.

Question 24

What is the Wechsler adult intelligence scale?

Answer 24

Most widely used intelligence test for adults today, consisting of 15 subtests to assess different types of mental abilities.

Question 25

What are culture-fair IQ tests?

Answer 25

Abstract reasoning measure that doesn’t depend on language and is often believed to be less influenced by cultural factors than other IQ tests.

Question 26

What is mental energy?

Answer 26

The ability to focus on difficult problems for long periods of time.

Question 27

What is health literacy?

Answer 27

The ability to understand health-related information, such as instructions from doctors or on drug labels.

Question 28

What is the threshold effect?

Answer 28

Implies that above a certain level of IQ, intelligence is no longer predictive of important real-world accomplishments.

Question 29

What is a bell-curve?

Answer 29

Distribution of scores in which the bulk of the scores fall toward the middle, with progressively fewer scores towards the “tails” or extremes

Question 30

What is assortative mating?

Answer 30

The tendency of individuals with similar genes to have children.

Question 31

What is an intellectual disability?

Answer 31

Condition characterized by:

• onset prior to adulthood
• IQ below 70
• inability to engage in adequate daily functioning

Question 32

What are family studies?

Answer 32

Study which allow us to examine the extent to which a trait runs or goes together in intact families.

Question 33

Family studies do not allow us to distinguish the effects of _______ from those of the _______.

Answer 33

genes

environment

Question 34

What is selective placement?

Answer 34

Adoption agencies often place children in homes similar to those of the biological parents.

Question 35

What is the Flynn effect?

Answer 35

Finding that average IQ scores have been rising at a rate of approximately 3 points per decade

Question 36

What is within-group heritability?

Answer 36

Extent to which the variability of a trait within a group is genetically influenced.

Question 37

What is between-group heratibility?

Answer 37

Extent to which the difference in a trait between groups is genetically influenced.

Question 38

What is test bias?

Answer 38

Tendency of a test to predict outcomes better in one group than another.

Question 39

What is stereotype threat?

Answer 39

Fear that we may confirm a negative group stereotype

Question 40

What is divergent thinking?

Answer 40

Capacity to generate many different solutions to a problem.

Question 41

What is convergent thinking?

Answer 41

Capacity to generate the single, best solution to a problem

Question 42

What is emotional intelligence?

Answer 42

The ability to understand our emotions and those of others, and to apply this information to our daily lives.