Chapter 10 - Ability

Question 1

What is ability?

Answer 1

Relatively stable capabilities people have to perform a particular range of different but related activities (aka, what you can do).

Question 2

What is ability a function of?

Answer 2

Both genes and environment, with the amount attributable to each source varying depending on the nature of the ability.

Question 3

How are cognitive ability differences dependent on nature-nurture?

Answer 3

-Differences due to the environment become less apparent with age.
-Quantity of schooling, occupational choice, and biological factors (malnutrition, toxin exposure, prenatal alcohol exposure) affect ability.

Question 4

What differs skill from ability?

Answer 4

Skills can be improved over time, with training and experience.

Question 5

What is cognitive ability?

Answer 5

The capabilities related to the acquisition and application of knowledge in problem solving.

Question 6

What are the sub-categories of cognitive ability?

Answer 6

-Verbal ability: Capabilities associated with understanding and expressing oral and written communication;
-Quantitative ability: Mathematical capabilities;
-Reasoning ability: Capabilities associated with sensing and solving problems using insights, rules, and logics;
-Spatial ability: Capabilities associated with visual and mental representation and manipulation of objects in space;
-Perceptual ability: Capabilities associated with perceiving, understanding, and recalling patterns of information.

Question 7

When is verbal ability most important?

Answer 7

Jobs in which effectiveness depends on understanding and communicating ideas and information to others.

Question 8

What are the sub-components of verbal ability?

Answer 8

-Oral/written comprehension: Understanding spoken/written words and sentences;
-Oral/written expression: Communicating ideas through speech/writing.

Question 9

What are the sub-components of quantitative ability?

Answer 9

-Number facility: Ability to perform simple mathematical operations;
-Mathematical reasoning: Ability to choose and apply formulas to solve problems involving numbers.

Question 10

What are the sub-components of reasoning ability?

Answer 10

-Problem sensitivity: Ability to sense a problem in the moment, or likely to occur in the future.
-Deductive reasoning: Using general rules to solve problems and make effective decisions.
-Inductive reasoning: Considering several specific pieces of information, and reaching a generalized conclusion on how those pieces are related.
-Originality: Developing clear and novel ways to solve problems.

Question 11

What are the sub-components of spatial ability?

Answer 11

-Spatial orientation: Understanding where one is relative to other things in the environment.
-Visualization: Imagining how separate things will look when put together in a particular way.

Question 12

What are the sub-components of perceptual ability?

Answer 12

-Speed and flexibility of closure: Picking out patterns of information quickly in the presence of distracting information, and filling in the gaps.
-Perceptual speed: Ability to examine and compare numbers, letters, and objects quickly.

Question 13

What is the g-factor?

Answer 13

An area common across the specific types of cognitive abilities, a general ability level, with the overlap depicting the ability for one’s brain to process information effectively.

Question 14

What is emotional intelligence?

Answer 14

Capabilities that enable effectiveness in a wide variety of social contexts, even those foreign to the individual.

Question 15

What are the sub-components of emotional intelligence?

Answer 15

-Self-awareness: Appraising and expressing one’s own emotions; understanding, acknowledging, and expressing emotions.
-Other-awareness: Appraising and recognizing others’ emotions.
-Emotion regulation: Recovering quickly from emotional experiences.
-Use of emotions: Harnessing and employing emotions to improve one’s chance of being successful in whatever they seek to do.

Question 16

When is emotional intelligence most important?

Answer 16

-Recruitment: Recruiters with high EQ are more effective, by projecting positive emotions and appropriately sensing and responding to others’ emotions.
-Sales: Salespeople with high EQ better understand client needs.

Question 17

How can emotional intelligence be a method of compensation?

Answer 17

When people have lower levels of cognitive intelligence, EQ can render in still satisfactory job performance.

Question 18

What types of behaviours is emotional intelligence positively correlated with?

Answer 18

Those counterproductive in nature. With high EQ, it is easy to influence how others feel.

Question 19

How is EQ assessed?

Answer 19

-SAT-style tests that require for the subject to describe, predict, and identify emotions and emotional responses.
-Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I).

Question 20

What is strength (physical ability) and its sub-components?

Answer 20

Degree to which the body is capable of exerting force.

-Static: Ability to lift, push, pull very heavy objects.
-Explosive: Ability to exert short energy bursts to move the body or an object.
-Dynamic: Ability to exert force for a prolonged period of time, without becoming overly fatigued/giving out.

Question 21

What is stamina (physical ability)?

Answer 21

Ability of a person’s lungs and circulatory system to work efficiently, while engaging in prolonged physical activity.

Question 22

What is flexibility (physical ability)?

Answer 22

Ability to bend, stretch, twist, reach.

-Extent: Ability to engage in extreme ranges of motion.
-Dynamic: Ability to engage in repeated, quick bends, stretches, twists, reaches.

Question 23

What is coordination (physical ability)?

Answer 23

Quality of physical movement.

-Gross body coordination: Ability to synchronize movement of body, arms, legs, to do something while the entire body is in motion.
-Gross body equilibrium: Ability to maintain body balance in unstable/direction-changing contexts.

Question 24

What is psychomotor capability and its sub-components?

Answer 24

Capacity to manipulate and control objects.
-Fine manipulative: Ability to keep arms and hands steady while doing precise work on small/delicate objects.
-Control movement: Ability to make precise adjustments.
-Response orientation: Ability to choose the right action quickly, in response to several different signals.
-Response time: Ability to respond to signalling information after it occurs.

Question 25

What is sensory ability, and its sub-categories?

Answer 25

Capabilities associated with vision and hearing.
-Near/far vision: Ability to see things up close and at a distance.
-Night vision: Ability to see in low-light contexts.
-Visual colour discrimination: Ability to perceive colours.
-Depth perception: Ability to judge relative distances between things accurately.
-Hearing sensitivity: Ability to hear and discriminate sounds varying in loudness and pitch.
-Auditory attention: Ability to focus on a single sound in the presence of interfering ones.
-Speech recognition: Ability to identify and understand others’ speech.