Chapter 11 Vocab Flashcards
(31 cards)
Reification
Viewing an abstract, immaterial concept as if it were a concrete thing.
Intelligence
Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.
Factor Analysis
A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test. Measures common abilities.
Charles Spearman
Helped develop factor analysis. First psychologist to come up with an intelligence test (g-factor).
General Intelligence
A general intelligence factor that according to Spearman and others underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.
L. L. Thurstone
Believed that intelligence comes in different packages. Argued that factor analysis revealed SEVEN independent mental abilities.
Howard Gardner
Studies people with exceptional abilities, including those who excel in only one. He notes that brain damage may diminish one type of ability but not others. Supports Thurstone’s idea that intelligence comes in multiple forms.
Savant Syndrome
A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill.
Robert Sternberg
Agrees with Gardner’s idea of multiple intelligences, but his triarchic theory distinguishes three, not eight, intelligences.
Emotional Intelligence
The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
Creativity
The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
Intelligence Tests
A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.
Alfred Binet
A French psychologist who invented the first practical intelligence test. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum.
Mental Age
A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance.
Lewis Terman
An American psychologist who is best known for developing tests designed to measure intelligence quotient (IQ). Revised Binet’s original IQ test by establishing new age norms and extending the upper end of the test’s range from teenagers to adults.
Stanford-Binet
The widely used American revision of Binet’s original intelligence test.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (IQ = ma/ca x 100)
Aptitude Tests
A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
Achievement Tests
A test designed to assess what a person has learned.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.
Standardization
Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested standardization group.
The Flynn Effect
The substantial increase in average scores on intelligence tests all over the world.
Normal Curve
The symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes.
Reliability
The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or retesting.
