module 61 Flashcards
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.
Ex. a child who does as well as an average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8
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 versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; they contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.
Standardization
defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group
Normal curve
the bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes.
Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.
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 measures or predicts what it is supposed to
Content Validity
the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.
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.
Also called criterion-related validity.
Francis Galton
fascinated with measuring human traits, wondered if it might be possible to measure “natural ability” and encourage people with high ability to mate with each other (eugenics)
Lewis Terman
promoted the widespread use of intelligence testing to “take account of the inequalities of children in original endowment” by assessing their “vocational fitness,” believed high intelligence was due to genetics
