questions from articles Flashcards
What are some examples of ethical issues in assessment?
Use of Assessments
-Must use assessments the way they were intended
-Must use assessments that are valid and reliable and only for the population noted
-Must use assessments that consider person’s language preference and competence
Informed Consent in Assessments
confidentiality, release of information
Test Construction
-use appropriate psychometric procedures and current scientific knowledge for test design, standardization, validation, reduction or elimination of bias, and recommendations for use.
Interpreting Assessment Results
-Must consider all testing factors (situational, test taking abilities) including cultural characteristics of client and potential bias
Assessment by Unqualified Persons - competency
-Must be qualified and if not, must be under supervision
Obsolete Tests and Outdated Test Results
Test Scoring and Interpretation Services
Explaining Assessment Results
Maintaining Test Security
What is the purpose of consent?
- The clinician must communicate the nature, risks, and benefits of the procedure, treatment, research or any other eventuality that the client is consenting to. This includes confidentiality, authorizing the clinician to release information
clients gets to ask questions and be engaged in dialogue about the assessment process.
What are the important parts of informed consent for an assessment?
- You must follow rules of informed consent EXCEPT - 1) testing is mandated by law or governmental regulation; 2) informed consent is implied because testing is conducted as routine (like in education or applying for a job); 3) one purpose of the testing is to evaluate decisional capacity - then informed consent includes an explanation of the nature and purpose of the assessment, fees, 3rd party involvement, and limits of confidentiality and with opportunity for client to ask questions
What are some reasons for intelligence tests?
- Intelligence tests were developed to assess the intellectual needs and talents of large populations. Military and civilians (workplaces) settings used mass cognitive ability tests. Still used today by large organizations for decision makers. Educators (for tracking what student need to learn), vocational counseling (career matching), and psychologists (diagnostic purposes). (bottom of p. 190)
What is the difference between latent traits versus measures of these traits?
- latent traits are psychological contructs that are not visible or observable; examples include abilities and intelligence
- Tests or measurements of these traits are standardised means of investigating samples of behaviour that will, if properly quantified and interpreted, reveal individual differences in the latent traits (abilities) or developed competencies (achievements) we wish to assess - meaning, no single measure of a latent trait (intelligence) is ever taken to be a perfectly accurate measure of that trait. Instead, different kinds of “measures” or “tests” are seen as “tapping into” the latent trait. Some measures may “tap into” a latent trait indifferent ways, capturing some aspects of the trait better than others. It is best to use multiple measures can provide “converging” evidence. Just because measures aren’t perfect, this doesn’t mean they can’t be useful or “good.”
- It is crucial to keep the construct (intelligence) and its measures (IQ assessments) separate.
What are three different ways to conceptualize the latest trend of intelligence?
Trend away from debating definitions toward debating discoveries - years and years of data collection settle the question of what is intelligence. It varies in its psychometric structure, functional utility, and biological basis. There is a ton of research to indicate that there are individual differences in cognitive ability in which we a ton of mental measurements but that these differences converge into only a few dimensions at the psychometric level (meaning they all converge into a few).
- Trend away from validating yardsticks according to intent, appearance, and similarity of results to validating the conclusions drawn from them
- Trend towards making tests more useful for individuals so moving away from institutional uses (like organizations) to serving individuals
- Trend away from eliminating bias toward promoting diversity - how people use iq tests and the racial bias it holds from the administration, to the process, to the items, to the scoring - all needs to be considered when using iq tests
- Trend away from debating whether psychometrics or psychobiology is the best approach to understanding intelligence toward joining the two approaches.
Explain Sternberg’s Triarchic theory
- Multifaceted description of intelligence
- The triarchic theory describes three distinct types of intelligence that a person can possess. Sternberg calls these three types practical intelligence, creative intelligence, and analytical intelligence. (from another source)
Explain Gardner’s multiple intelligences Theory
- Multifaceted description of intelligence
- the non-g components of broad abilities
- “we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences - the so-called profile of intelligences -and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains.” (from another source)
What is the Naglieri-Das Pass Model?
An alternative model to comprehensive assessments of IQ, the PASS model, reflects brain–behaviour relationships initially developed by Luria, is tapped by the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) (Naglieri, 2009; Naglieri & Das, 19). CAS is a test designed to provide a nuanced assessment of the individual’s intellectual functioning, providing information about cognitive strengths and weaknesses in each of the four processes - planning, attention, simultaneous, and successive/sequential processing
- Multifaceted description of intelligence - Naglieri-Das PASS model is based on the PASS theory that divides intelligence into four interrelated cognitive processes (i.e., planning, attention, simultaneous, and successive/
sequential processing) - NOT ABILITIES
(*helpful website - https://www.intelltheory.com/das.shtml)
What is Carroll’s Three Stratum Model?
John Carroll’s (1993) review and analysis of the large intelligence database resulted in a three-stratum model of human intelligence and cognitive abilities. This model is regarded by many as the best representation of the “structure of human cognitive abilities” because of the strength of its empirical foundation.
What is G?
- human intellectual functioning can be conceptualized by a single unitary quality that underlies all cognitive processes
- higher level common factor of intelligence; also known as general intelligence, general mental ability or general intelligence factor
- g = full scale IQ
- what most people are referring to when they think intelligence
Describe the difference between achievement and ability.
- Achievement – “can you spit back what you learned”, can directly measure by content (science, math curriculum). Scoring is norm referenced or criterion referenced (standing relative to external performance)
- ability – latent unseen traits , need to activate latent traits to measure, scoring is norm referenced (standing relative to others in a specific group).
Describe the difference between constructs and measures.
Phenomena versus the yard stick used to measure it. Constructs are the latent traits that we are trying to measure. Measures are created from tests. In ability testing, validity needs to show that the test produces the patterns of effects across tasks and individuals that we would expect the hypothesized to create. In achievement, validity is through whether the test looks like what is intended to test, test content matches task content within achievement domain.
What is predictive validity?
-Extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores, for example, how well the GRE predicts success in grad school.
What are the authors’ views on racial differences in intelligence?
unbiased tests are not fair tests. Tests are vetted for psychometric biases. There is a racial/ethnic gap that can have social consequences – job promotions, school selections. Could use a multimethod approach to assessment or use demographic factors to interpret test schores. They argue the way that tests are use are what is important (for example knowing tha affluence and education are linked with high FSIQ and factors like parent education, income, and expectations reduced the discrepancies between whites and blacks to 6 points and whites and latinos to 0 points on wisc.
What is the Flynn Effect?
finding that general populations average IQ scores have increased over the past several decades
How much does the IQ means increase in the general population each year?
3 points per decade
What are some purposes of the IQ test?
Special education, medical, disability evaluation, legal - criminal proceeding, employment, parental rights termination
Why do some people say IQ scores should be adjusted?
Because they are inflated scores if they test wasn’t normed within the last decade.
Why do some people say IQ scores should not be adjusted?
We don’t know whether the observed changes in group mean scores over time apply reliably to a specific individual.
What do most practitioners say about adjusting?
Most practitioners do not adjust scores. They stick to the manual for scoring.
What is the best standard of practice given that we do know the FE exists and that the tests are renormed frequently?
best standard of practice is to stick to the scoring manual and to describe the Flynn effect in your report if you feel it is an issue. continue to renorm the tests periodically
What is the range of heritability of g?
A meta-analysis of all the studies mentioned in the intro yielded a heritability estimate of 50%, but before that many studies yielded results from 40%-80%. Whatever number is shown, it is the percent by which one’s genetics explain g over one’s environment.
How does heritability change over time?
As more environmental factors are encountered, shape our actions and agency in the world, and activate and deactivate our genes, there is a period during childhood when the environment is having it’s most altering effects on our intelligence. As we age the genetic proponents at work lead us to select more desirable or achievable intelligence related goals so that we may prosper. This also means that what we are capable of is preferred by us and that we, potentially and actively, seek out stimuli that come more naturally to us.
This is why childhood is likely to most disproportionate to our parents intelligence (g) and then later on, such as in adolescence, it resembles their parents more.
The authors state, as a possibility, that, “they increasingly select, modify, and even create their own experiences in part on the basis of their genetic propensities”.
How do MZ twins compare to the same person being tested twice?
Monozygotic twins compare almost identically to the same person being tested twice. The g correlates, in a study done with 4672 pairs of MZ twins, showed that their correlates were .86, where the test and retest correlation is about .90.
Why are the findings from this study counter intuitive to assumptions you may make, given that life experiences accumulate over time?
that it was found that over time our intelligence corresponds more to our parents as we age. What common knowledge would indicate that at birth and our early years, our intelligence would be most like our parents because not much life experience (environmental factors) have we been exposed to yet. However, this study paints a different picture that at those early years we are most susceptible to the environment and that as we age, our preferences, based on our genotypic and phenotypic make up, are actively sought out, thereby reinforcing the genetic availability component of our g factor.
How much does genetic influence account for g variation by early adulthood?
Genetic influence accounts for 68% of variation by early adulthood.
Explain the G x E interaction.
Genes are activated by environmental factors that either “turn on or turn off” specific genes. Examples of environmental influences: nutrition, air quality, gestational exposure to substances, etc.
In this article they discuss that the potential reasonings for this pattern of data are that the brain’s marked transitions from major developmental periods can account for these concordant results.
What is Spearman’s g?
general intelligence factor that underlies individuals when they take intelligence tests and how well they are able to perform on them as a whole.
What did this study test? - Johnson, still just one g
This study sought to replicate the findings of a previous study whereby correlations administered to a single group found complete correlations in performance. They administered 5 test batteries this time around. They were looking for the correlations between each battery used and that particular person’s g factor given by one test in relation to the others.
Who were the participants in this study?
They administered 5 test batteries to 500 dutch seamen (gross) of varying ability
What were the main findings of this study?
The main findings were that most often they found the g factor correlation between batteries to be .95. For three test correlations they found less than .95, the lowest correlation being .77, although this is still a relatively high correlation.
What were the authors’ conclusions about g in terms of how comprehensively it captures all aspects of mental ability?
That the full g was not accurately captured by these batteries and that it was an intrinsically higher order concept, perhaps, not discernible by paper and pencil tests, even though components were able to measured with a high degree of efficiency with each successive test battery.
What is the M and SD of IQ tests?
The mean on conventional IQ tests is 100, and the Standard Deviation is 15.
What is the normal distribution?
90% of the population has an IQ score within 2 standard deviations of the mean
(70-130)
Where are the mean, median, and mode situated in the normal distribution?
The mean, median, and mode should all be the same because IQ scores form a
normal distribution (think back to the bell curve Grassetti drew on the board). The
mean is the average, the median is the middle score, and the mode is the most
frequent score.
