AP Psychology Thinking, Language, and Intelligence Modules 28-32
Belief perseverance:
clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
Confirmation bias:
tendency to search for info that confirms one's preconceptions
Functional fixedness:
tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving
Aptitude test:
test deigned to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn
Achievement test:
test designed to assess what a person has learned
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS):
the WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests
Overconfidence:
tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgments
Babbling stage:
the stage of speech development, beginning around 3-4 months, in which the infant spontaneously utter various sounds at first unrelated to the household language
Linguistic determinism:
Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think
Emotional intelligence:
ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.
Creativity:
ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
Two-word stage:
beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements
Criterion:
behavior (such as 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
Computer neural networks:
computer circuits that mimic the brain's interconnected neural cells, performing tasks such as learning to recognize visual patterns and smells
Savant syndrome:
condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing
Mental retardation:
condition not limited mental ability, lack of normal development of intellectual capacities
Down syndrome:
condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome in one's genetic makeup
Intelligence quotient (IQ):
defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca X 1000. On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.
Standardization:
defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested "standardization group"
Telegraphic speech:
early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—"go car"—using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting "auxiliary"(secondary or supporting) words
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
Validity:
extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to
Content validity:
extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest (such as a driving test that samples driving tasks)
Reliability:
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
General intelligence (g):
general intelligence factor that Spearman and others believed underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test
Fixation:
inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving
Representative 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 info
Mental age:
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
Cognition:
mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communication.
Concept:
mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Prototype:
mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to the prototype provides quick and easy method for including items in a category (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin)
Intelligence:
mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
Intelligence test:
method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores
Algorithm:
methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier—but also more error-prone-use of heuristics
Heritability:
proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary,, depending on the range of populations and environments studied
Syntax:
rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language
Artificial intelligence (AI):
science of designing and programming computer systems to do intelligent things and to simulate human thought processes, such as intuitive reasoning, learning, and understanding language
Stereotype threat:
self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype
Semantics:
set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning
Heuristic:
simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms
Phoneme:
smallest distinctive sound unit in a spoken language
Morpheme:
smallest unit that carries meaning in a language; may be a words or part of a word (such as a prefix)
Language:
spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning
One-word stage:
stage in speech development, from about age 1-2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words
Factor analysis:
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
Predictive validity:
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
Insight:
sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions
Normal curve:
symmetrical bell-shaped curve
Grammar:
system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate with and understand others
Belief bias:
tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid or valid conclusions seem invalid
Mental set:
tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially a way that has been successful in the past but may or may not be helpful in solving a new problem
Framing:
the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments
Stanford-Binet:
widely used American revision of Binet's original intelligence test