Unit 2 Part 2

Question 1

Factor analysis

Answer 1

A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score

Question 2

Fluid intelligence

Answer 2

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood

Question 3

Crystallized intelligence

Answer 3

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

Question 4

Savant syndrome

Answer 4

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing

Question 5

GRIT

Answer 5

In psychology, passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals

Question 6

Emotional intelligence

Answer 6

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Question 7

Intelligence test

Answer 7

A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores

Question 8

Achievement test

Answer 8

A test designed to assess what a person has learned

Question 9

Aptitude test

Answer 9

A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn

Question 10

Mental age

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Psychometrics

Answer 11

The scientific study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits

Question 12

Standardization

Answer 12

Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group

Question 13

Normal curve

Answer 13

A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (about 68 percent fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes. (Also called a normal distribution.)

Question 14

Flynn effect

Answer 14

The rise in intelligence test performance over time and across cultures

Question 15

Reliability

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Validity

Answer 16

The extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to

Question 17

Content validity

Answer 17

The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest

Question 18

Construct validity

Answer 18

How much a test measures a concept or trait

Question 19

Predictive validity

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Cross sectional study

Answer 20

Research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time

Question 21

Longitudinal study

Answer 21

Research that follows and retests the same people over time

Question 22

Stanford-Binet

Answer 22

The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.

Question 23

Intelligence quotient

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

Answer 24

The WAIS and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; they contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests

Question 25

Cocktail party effect

Answer 25

The ability to attend to one of several speech streams while ignoring others, as when one is at a cocktail party. Suggested that the unattended messages are not processed, but later findings indicated that meaning is identified in at least some cases.

Question 26

Inattentional blindness

Answer 26

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

Question 27

Change blindness

Answer 27

Failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional blindness

Question 28

Relative clarity

Answer 28

A monocular depth cue where objects that appear sharp and clear are perceived as closer than objects that appear hazy or blurry, meaning that the more distinct an object looks, the closer it seems to be due to the way light travels through the atmosphere; hazy objects are seen as farther away

Question 29

Relative size

Answer 29

A monocular depth cue where we perceive the distance of an object based on how its size compares to other objects of a known size, meaning that if two similar objects appear different sizes, the smaller one is perceived as farther away because we assume they are actually the same size in reality; essentially, judging distance by comparing the relative sizes of objects in a scene

Question 30

Linear perspective

Answer 30

One of the monocular depth cues, arising from the principle that the size of an object’s visual image is a function of its distance from the eye. Thus, two objects appear closer together as the distance from them increases, as seen in the tracks of a railroad that appear to converge on the horizon.

Question 31

Interposition

Answer 31

A monocular depth cue occurring when two objects are in the same line of vision and the closer object, which is fully in view, partly conceals the farther object

Question 32

Gambler’s fallacy

Answer 32

A failure to recognize the independence of chance events, leading to the mistaken belief that one can predict the outcome of a chance event on the basis of the outcomes of past chance events

Question 33

Sunk-cost fallacy

Answer 33

Our tendency to follow through with something that we’ve already invested heavily in, even when giving up is clearly a better idea

Question 34

Procedural memory

Answer 34

Long-term memory for the skills involved in particular tasks. Procedural memory is demonstrated by skilled performance and is often separate from the ability to verbalize this knowledge

Question 35

Prospective memory

Answer 35

Remembering to do something in the future, such as taking one’s medicine later

Question 36

Basal ganglia

Answer 36

A group of nuclei deep within the cerebral hemispheres of the brain that are involved in the generation of goal-directed voluntary movement

Question 37

Flashbulb memory

Answer 37

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Question 38

Episodic buffer

Answer 38

A temporary multimodal store that combines information from the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad subsystems of working memory with information about time and order to form and maintain an integrated, detailed representation of a given stimulus or event that can then be deposited into long-term memory as necessary

Question 39

Intermediate processing

Answer 39

A memory strategy that involves actively connecting new information to existing knowledge in order to enhance long-term retention and recall

Question 40

Stereotype threat

Answer 40

A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype

Question 41

Closure

Answer 41

One of the Gestalt principles of organization. It states that people tend to perceive incomplete forms (e.g., images, sounds) as complete, synthesizing the missing units so as to perceive the image or sound as a whole—in effect closing the gap in the incomplete forms to create complete forms

Question 42

Proximity

Answer 42

One of the gestalt principles of organization. It states that people tend to organize objects close to each other into a perceptual group and interpret them as a single entity

Question 43

State dependent memory

Answer 43

A condition in which memory for a past event is improved when the person is in the same biological or psychological state as when the memory was initially formed

Question 44

Forgetting curve

Answer 44

A graphic depiction of the amount of forgetting over time after learning has taken place. Ebbinghaus was the first to show that there is generally a sudden drop in retention shortly after learning, followed by a more gradual decline thereafter. Also called Ebbinghaus curve

Question 45

Nonsense syllable

Answer 45

Any three-letter nonword used in learning and memory research to study learning of items that do not already have meaning or associations with other information in memory

Question 46

Tip of the tongue phenomenon

Answer 46

The experience of attempting to retrieve from memory a specific name or word but not being able to do so

Question 47

Decay theory

Answer 47

The theory that learned material leaves in the brain a trace or impression that autonomously recedes and disappears unless the material is practiced and used.

Question 48

Source monitoring error

Answer 48

A memory mistake where someone incorrectly attributes the origin or source of a memory

Question 49

Reality monitoring error

Answer 49

The mistake of incorrectly identifying whether a memory originated from an actual experience or from one’s own imagination

Question 50

Deviation IQ

Answer 50

The absolute measure of how far an individual differs from the mean on an individually administered IQ test

Question 51

Culture-fair IQ test

Answer 51

Designed to assess intelligence without being hindered by cultural and environmental factors. It relies upon non-verbal questions rather than the language and math skills that are tested in more conventional IQ tests

Question 52

Stereotype lift

Answer 52

The phenomenon where individuals not targeted by a negative stereotype perform better on a task due to the awareness of that negative stereotype being applied to another group

Question 53

Test-retest reliability

Answer 53

A measure of how consistent a test’s results are over time

Question 54

Split-half reliability

Answer 54

A measure of the internal consistency of surveys, psychological tests, questionnaires, and other instruments or techniques that assess participant responses on particular constructs. The closer the correlation between results, the greater the internal consistency

Question 55

Method of loci

Answer 55

A mnemonic technique in which the items to be remembered are converted into mental images and associated with specific positions or locations

Question 56

Peg word mnemonic system

Answer 56

A mnemonic strategy used to remember lists whereby each item is associated in imagination with a number–word pair. For example, if the pegs are the rhyming pairs “one is a bun, two is a shoe,”

Question 57

Self reference effect

Answer 57

The widespread tendency for individuals to have a superior or enhanced memory for stimuli that relate to the self or self-concept

Question 58

Massed practice

Answer 58

A learning procedure in which practice trials occur close together in time, either in a single lengthy session or in sessions separated by short intervals. Often found to be less effective than distributed practice.

Question 59

Distributed practice

Answer 59

A learning procedure in which practice periods for a particular task are separated by lengthy rest periods or lengthy periods of practicing different activities or studying other material, rather than occurring close together in time. Distributed practice is more effective than massed practice

Question 60

Primacy effect

Answer 60

The tendency for facts, impressions, or items that are presented first to be better learned or remembered than material presented later in the sequence

Question 61

Recency effect

Answer 61

A memory phenomenon in which the most recently presented facts, impressions, or items are learned or remembered better than material presented earlier

Question 62

Von Restorff effect

Answer 62

The finding that people tend to have superior memory for odd or unusual information

Question 63

Maintenance rehearsal

Answer 63

Repeating items over and over to maintain them in short-term memory

Question 64

Elaborative rehearsal

Answer 64

An encoding strategy to facilitate the formation of memory by linking new information to what one already knows. For instance, when trying to remember that someone is named George, one might think of five other things one knows about people named George

Question 65

Context dependent memory

Answer 65

The phenomenon where information is best recalled when the retrieval environment closely matches the context in which it was originally learned