Psychology - Chapter 9 Intelligence and IQ Testing - Important Terms

An individual who displays astounding intellectual achievements at an early age.

Diagnostic tool designed to measure overall thinking ability

Include reasoning, understanding and judgement.

The capacity to understand hypothetical concepts, rather than concepts in the here and now.

abstract

Hypothetical factor that accounts for overall differences in intellect among people.

Particular ability level in a narrow domain

Capacity to learn new ways of solving problems.

Accumulated knowledge of the world acquired over time.

- ex: answering trivia

Idea that people vary in their ability levels across different domains of intellectual skill

The ability to grasp deep philosophical ideas, like the meaning of life.

Model of intelligence proposed by Robert Sternberg positing three distinct types of intelligence:

analytical

practical

creative

The ability to reason logically.

i.e. booksmarts

Aka tacit intelligence

The ability to solve real-world problems, especially those involving other people

i.e. street smarts

Creativity

Our ability to come up with novel and effective answers to questions

Stupid people think they are smarter than they actually are

Knowledge of our own knowledge

Intelligence test based on the measure developed by Binet and Simon, adapted by Lewis Terman of Standford University

Intelligence quotient

Systematic means of quantifying differences among people in their intelligence

Divide mental age by chronological age and multiply the resulting number by 100

Age corresponding to the average individual’s performance on an intelligence test.

Expression of a person’s IQ relative to his or her same-aged peers

- used when computing IQ for adults

Movement in the early 20th century to improve a population’s genetic stock by encouraging those with good genes to reproduce (positive eugenics) and discouraging those with bad genes from reproducing (negative eugenics), or both.

Most widely used intelligence test for adults today, consisting of 15 subtests to assess different types of mental abilities.

Abstract reasoning measure that doesn't depend on language and is often believed to be less influenced by cultural factors than other IQ tests.

The ability to focus on difficult problems for long periods of time.

The ability to understand health-related information, such as instructions from doctors or on drug labels.

Implies that above a certain level of IQ, intelligence is no longer predictive of important real-world accomplishments.

Distribution of scores in which the bulk of the scores fall toward the middle, with progressively fewer scores towards the "tails" or extremes

The tendency of individuals with similar genes to have children.

Condition characterized by:

onset prior to adulthood

IQ below 70

inability to engage in adequate daily functioning

Study which allow us to examine the extent to which a trait runs or goes together in intact families.

genes

| environment

Adoption agencies often place children in homes similar to those of the biological parents.

Finding that average IQ scores have been rising at a rate of approximately 3 points per decade

Extent to which the variability of a trait within a group is genetically influenced.

Extent to which the difference in a trait between groups is genetically influenced.

Tendency of a test to predict outcomes better in one group than another.

Fear that we may confirm a negative group stereotype

Capacity to generate many different solutions to a problem.

Capacity to generate the single, best solution to a problem

The ability to understand our emotions and those of others, and to apply this information to our daily lives.