| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Fluid Intelligence | one's reasoning ability, memory capacity, and seed of information processing |
| Stanford-Binet | Lewis Terman's widely used revision of Binet's original intelligence test |
| Intelligence | the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations |
| IQ | defined originally as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100 |
| Mental Retardation | having an IQ below 70 and difficulty adapting to normal demands of independent living |
| Mental Age | the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance |
| Aptitude Test | designed to predict future performance; mesures capacity to learn new information rather than measuring what is already known |
| Reliability | the extent to which a test produces consistent results |
| Test-Retest Reliability | a type of reliability estimated by comparing subjects' scores on two administrations of a test |
| Creativity | refers to an ability to generate novel or valuable ideas |
| Savant Syndrome | when a person has a very low intelligence score, yet possesses one exceptional ability, for example, in music or drawing |
| Achievement Test | measures a person's current knowledge |
| Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale | the most widely used intelligence test; it is individually administered, contains 11 subtests, and yields separate verbal and performance intelligence scores, as well as an overall intelligence score |
| Standardization | the process of defining meaningful scores on a test by pre-testing a large, representative sample of people |
| Test Norms | standards that provide information about where a score on a psychological test ranks in relation to other scores on that test |
| Reaction Range | genetically determined limits on IQ or other traits |
| Deviation Scores | scores that locate subjects precisely within the normal distribution, using the standard deviation as the unit of measurement |
| Content Validity | the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest |
| Convergent Thinking | narrowing down a list of alternatives to a single correct answer |
| Predictive Validity | the extent to which a test predicts what is supposed to predict |
| Stereotype Threat | the phenomenon in which a person's concern that he or she will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype is actually followed by lower performance |
| Crystallized Intelligence | one's ability to apply acquired skills and knowledge in problem solving |
| General Intelligence (g) | factor according to Spearman and others, underlies each of the more specific mental abilities identified through factor analysis |
| Criterion | the behavior the test is designed to predict |
| Validity | the degree to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to do |
| Eugenics | efforts to control reproduction to gradually improve hereditary characteristics in a population |
| Personality Tests | tests that measure various aspects of personality, including motives, interests, values and attitudes |
| Psychological Test | a standardized measure of a sample of a person's behavior |
| Emotional Intelligence | the ability to perceive, express, understand and regulate emotions |
| Normal Curve | bell-shaped curve that represents the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes |
| Divergent Thinking | trying to expand the range of alternatives by generating many possible solutions |
| Down Syndrome | severe retardation caused by an extra chromosome in person's genetic make-up; caused by a break in the 21st Chromosomal pair |
| Intelligence Tests | measure people's mental aptitudes and compare them to others' through numerical scores |
| Factor Analysis | a statistical procedure that identifies factors, or clusters of related items, that seem do define a common ability |
Combine with other sets
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace