Psychological Test

Standard measure of a sample of a person's behavior

Intelligence Tests

measure general mental ability

Aptitude tests

Assess specific types of mental abilites

Achievement tests

Gauge a person's mastery and knowledge of various subjects

Personality tests

Measure various aspects of personality, include motives, interests, values, and attitudes

Standardization

Refers to the uniform procedures used in the administration and scoring of a test

Test norms

Provide information about where a score on a psychological test ranks in relation to other scores on that test

Percentile

Score indicates the percentage of people who score at or below the score one has obtained

Reliability

Refers to the measurement consistency of a test (or of other kinds of measurement techniques)

Correlation coefficient

Numerical index of the degree of relationship between two variables

Validity

Refers to the ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure

Content validity

Refers to the degree to which the content of a test is representative of the domain it's supposed to cover

Criterion-Related validity

Estimated by correlating subjects' scores on a test with their scores on an independent criterion (another measure) of the trait assessed by the test

Construct Validity

The extent to which evidence shows that a test a measures a particular hypothetical construct

Sir Francis Galton

(Person)

Concluded that success runs in families because great intelligence is passed from generation to generation through genetic inheritance

Alfred Binet

(Person)

Published the first useful test of general mental ability

Mental age

Indicated that he or she displayed the mental ability typical of a child of that chronolgical (actual) age

Lewis Terman

(Person)

Incorporated a new scoring scheme based on "intelligence quotient"

Intelligence quotient

A child's mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100

David Wechsler

(Person)

Published the first high-quality IQ test designed specifically for adults, came to be known as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

Normal distribution

Synmetric, bell-shaped curve that represents the pattern in which many characteristics are dispersed in the population

Deviaiton IQ scores

Locate subjects precisely within the normal distribution, using the standard deviation as the unit of measurement

Mental retardation

Refers to subaverage general mental ability accompained by deficiencies in adaptive skills, originating before age 18

Ellen Winner

(Person)

The concept of giftness is applied to two very different groups

(Winner says)   

A sizable gap exists between these two groups

Heritability ratio

Estimate of the proportion of trait variability in a population that is determind by variations in genetic inheritance

Sandra Scarr

(Person) 

Herrdity may set certain limits on intelligence and that environmental factors determine where individuals fall within these limits

Reaction range

Refer to these genetically determined limits on IQ (or other traits)

Arthur Jensen

(Person) 

Racial differences in average IQ are largely the result of heredity

CLaude Steele

(Person)

Argued that derogatory stereotypes of stigmatized groups' intellectual capabilities create unique feelings of vulnerability in the educational arena

Howard Gardner

(Person)

IQ test have generally emphazied verbal and mathematical skills, to the exclusion of other important skills

Emotional intelligence

Consists of the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion

Convergent thinking

One tries to narrow down a list of alternatives to converge on a single correct answer

Divergent thinking

One tries to expand the range of alternatives by generating many possible solutions