Unit 2 Part 2 Flashcards
Factor analysis
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
Fluid intelligence
Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood
Crystallized intelligence
Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age
Savant syndrome
A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing
GRIT
In psychology, passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals
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
Psychometrics
The scientific study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits
Standardization
Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group
Normal curve
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.)
Flynn effect
The rise in intelligence test performance over time and across cultures
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 or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to
Content validity
The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
Construct validity
How much a test measures a concept or trait
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
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
Stanford-Binet
The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.
Intelligence quotient
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
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
The WAIS and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; they contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests
Cocktail party effect
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.
Inattentional blindness
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere
Change blindness
Failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional blindness
Relative clarity
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
Relative size
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
Linear perspective
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.
Interposition
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
Gambler’s fallacy
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
Sunk-cost fallacy
Our tendency to follow through with something that we’ve already invested heavily in, even when giving up is clearly a better idea
Procedural memory
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
Prospective memory
Remembering to do something in the future, such as taking one’s medicine later
Basal ganglia
A group of nuclei deep within the cerebral hemispheres of the brain that are involved in the generation of goal-directed voluntary movement
Flashbulb memory
A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event
Episodic buffer
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
Intermediate processing
A memory strategy that involves actively connecting new information to existing knowledge in order to enhance long-term retention and recall
Stereotype threat
A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype
Closure
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
Proximity
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
State dependent memory
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
Forgetting curve
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
Nonsense syllable
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
Tip of the tongue phenomenon
The experience of attempting to retrieve from memory a specific name or word but not being able to do so
Decay theory
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.
Source monitoring error
A memory mistake where someone incorrectly attributes the origin or source of a memory
Reality monitoring error
The mistake of incorrectly identifying whether a memory originated from an actual experience or from one’s own imagination
Deviation IQ
The absolute measure of how far an individual differs from the mean on an individually administered IQ test
Culture-fair IQ test
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
Stereotype lift
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
Test-retest reliability
A measure of how consistent a test’s results are over time
Split-half reliability
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
Method of loci
A mnemonic technique in which the items to be remembered are converted into mental images and associated with specific positions or locations
Peg word mnemonic system
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,”
Self reference effect
The widespread tendency for individuals to have a superior or enhanced memory for stimuli that relate to the self or self-concept
Massed practice
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.
Distributed practice
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
Primacy effect
The tendency for facts, impressions, or items that are presented first to be better learned or remembered than material presented later in the sequence
Recency effect
A memory phenomenon in which the most recently presented facts, impressions, or items are learned or remembered better than material presented earlier
Von Restorff effect
The finding that people tend to have superior memory for odd or unusual information
Maintenance rehearsal
Repeating items over and over to maintain them in short-term memory
Elaborative rehearsal
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
Context dependent memory
The phenomenon where information is best recalled when the retrieval environment closely matches the context in which it was originally learned
