| Term | Definition |
|---|
| 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 (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one’s total score. |
| 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. |
| savant syndrome | a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing. |
| emotional intelligence | the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions. |
| creativity | the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas. |
| intelligence test | a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores. |
| mental age | a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the 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. |
| aptitude test | a test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn. |
| achievement test | a test designed to assess what a person has learned. |
| Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale | 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. |
| normal curve | the symmetrical 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 alternate forms of the test, or on retesting. |
| validity | the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (See also content validity and predictive validity.) |
| content validity | the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest (such as a driving test that samples driving tasks). |
| criterion | the behavior (such as future college grades) that a test (such as the SAT) is designed to predict; thus, the measure used in defining whether the test has predictive validity. |
| 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.) |
| mental retardation | a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound. |
| Down syndrome | a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome in one’s genetic makeup. |
| stereotype threat | a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. |
| cognition | all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. |
| concept | a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people. |
| prototype | a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin). |
| algorithm | a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier-- but also more error-prone—use of heuristics. |
| heuristic | a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms. |
| insight | a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions. |
| confirmation bias | a tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions. |
| fixation | the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving. |
| mental set | a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past. |
| functional fixedness | the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving. |
| representativeness heuristic | judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore other relevant information. |
| availability heuristic | estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common. |
| overconfidence | the tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgments. |
| framing | the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments. |
| belief bias | the tendency for one’s preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid. |
| belief perseverance | clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited. |
| language | our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning. |
| phoneme | in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit. |
| morpheme | in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix). |
| grammar | in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. |
| syntax | the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language. |
| babbling stage | at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language. |
| telegraphic speech | early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram--"go car"--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words. |
| linguistic determinism | Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think. |
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