AP Psych Unit 11

intellectual disability

(formerly referred to as 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.

Alfred Binet

Created the first known intelligence test and developed the concept of mental age.

Module 62 Ask Yourself

I don't know how I feel about mainstreaming children of all ability levels in the same classroom

Noam Chomsky

Linguist who theorized that humans are born with the innate ability to understand and produce language. The complexities of language are hard wired in us

Module 64 Ask Yourself

My expectations have definitely influenced my own test performance. I could definitely also take steps to control this influence

cohort

a group of people from a given time period

intelligence test

a method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

Which of the following is true of boys compared with girls?

boys are more likely to have extremely low intelligence scores

Which of the following can be used to demonstrate that only about 2 percent of the population scores are at least two standard deviations above the mean on an intelligence test?

normal curve

Explain three reasons why more intelligent people might live longer.

1. Intelligence facilitates more education, better jobs, and a healthier environment 2. Intelligence encourages healthy living: less smoking, better diet, more exercise 3. Prenatal events or early childhood illnesses might have influenced both intelligence and health. 4. A "well-wired body," as evidenced by fast reaction speeds, perhaps fosters both intelligence and longevity

Children are said to have an intellectual disability if they have difficulty adapting to the demands of independent living and have IQ scores below

70

What is the difference between a test that is biased culturally, and a test that is biased in terms of its validity?

A test may be culturally biased if higher scores are achieved by those with certain cultural experiences. That same test may not be biased in terms of validity if it predicts what it is supposed to predict. For example, the SAT® may be culturally biased in favor of those with experience in the U.S. school system, but it does still accurately predict U.S. college success.

What are the fundamental differences between achievement and aptitude tests?

Achievement tests are designed to assess what a person has learned. An aptitude test is designed to predict a person's future performance.

According to Robert Sternberg was kind of intelligence is assessed by traditional intelligence tests?

Analytical

B.F. Skinner

Believed that language was acquired through imitation and reinforcement.

What was the purpose of Binet's pioneering intelligence test?

Binet's original test and those built upon it were designed to predict school achievement. Binet hoped that by determining a child's mental age, or the age that typically corresponds to levelof performance, he could help children be placed appropriately in school classrooms with others of similar abilities.

David Wechsler

Created what is today the most popular IQ test.

Name and describe the two main types of evidence used to determine whether there is an intellectual decline as people age.

Cross-sectional evidence, which comes from studies that examine several age groups at once. Longitudinal evidence, which comes from studies that examine the same group of people over a long period of time.

Robert Sternberg

Developed the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Howard Gardner

Developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences

Shervin is a high school student who excels in academics and usually scores very high on academic standardized tests. His friend, Hany, struggles in his coursework and with standardized tests, but is a brilliant pianist and dancer. For each of the following intelligence theorists, briefly explain the psychologist's intelligence theory and identify how the theory might describe Shervin's and Hany's intelligence. Howard Gardner Robert Sternberg Charles Spearman

Gardner believed that there are eight intelligences: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily- kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist. Individuals with the condition of savant syndrome exemplify his theory because they may score low on traditional intel- ligence tests, but have an extraordinary skill such as musical ability. Gardner might describe Shervin as having high logical-mathematical and linguistic intelligence, and Hany as having high musical and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Sternberg's triarchic intelligence theory describes intelligence as a combination of three independent factors: creative, academic, and practical intelligence. Sternberg might predict that Shervin would score high in academic intelligence and Hany might score high in creative intelligence. According to Spearman's general intelligence theory, each individual has a general, underlying mental abil- ity that can be measured. Spearman defined (and measured) intelligence as this general ability, which expresses itself on different mental tasks. For example, if an individual is above average academically in English, then he will most likely be at least average, if not above average academically in other subjects as well (such as math). Spearman might predict that Shervin would score high on his test of general intelligence, but Hany would not since creativity in music and dance is not included as an aspect or expression of intelligence.

According to Charles Spearman and others, which of the following underlies specific mental abilities and is measured by every task on an intelligence test?

General Intellegence

Give a summary, a strength, and a weakness of Charles Spearman's idea of general intelligence.

General intelligence is basic intelligence that predicts our abilities in varied academic areas.A strength of this idea is that different abilities, such as verbal and spatial, tend to correlate. A weakness of this idea is that human abilities are too diverse to be explained by a single general intelligence factor.

Module 61 Ask Yourself

I don't think working to the potential reflected in your standardized test scores. Other things like aptitude could be affecting my school performance

Flynn Effect

Idea that over the course of history, intelligence has increased due to factors such as better diet and health and technological advancements.

Robert and Maya are having an argument about whether intelligence tests are biased. Robert thinks they are but Maya insists they are not. How can they both be right?

Intelligence tests can be considered biased because they, in part, measure experience. Therefore, people from a middle-class, or higher, background are at an advantage. Intelligence tests do a good job of predicting the future no matter what demographic group the test-taker is from. In other words, children who do well on intelligence tests are likely to do well in school no matter what their economic or ethnic background is. Likewise, children from all backgrounds who do poorly on the tests do poorly in school.

Which of the following is not a component of emotional intelligence ?

Inventing Emotions

Joseph, a Harvard Law School student, has a straight-A average, writes for the Harvard Law Review, and will clerk for a Supreme Court justice next year. His grandmother, Judith, is very proud of him, saying that he is way more intelligent than she ever was. But Joseph is also very proud of Judith: As a young woman, she was imprisoned by the Nazis. When the war ended, she walked out of Germany, contacted an agency helping refugees, and began a new life in the United States as an assistant chef in her cousin's restaurant. According to the definition of intelligence in this module, is Joseph the only intelligent person in this story? Why or why not?

Joseph is not the only intelligent person in this story. Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. Judith certainly demonstrates this quality as well, given all that she has accomplished.

Terman's Termites

Landmark longitudinal study on intelligence that put to rest many myths regarding genius

intelligence quotient (IQ)

Originally defined as the mental age divided by chronological age multiplied by 100 Developed by Louis Terman.

As society succeeds in creating equality of opportunity, it will also increase the heritability of ability. The heritability of intelligence scores will be greater in a society marked by equal opportunity than in a society of peasants and aristocrats. Why?

Perfect environmental equality would create 100 percent heritability—because genes alone would account for any remaining human differences.

Lewis Terman

Pioneer in the field of intelligence. Conducted the famous "termite" study, also created the Stanford-Binet test and the IQ formula.

heritability

Proportion of change that is due to genetic factors. For intelligence, it is about 50%. Estimates of heritability apply to groups, not individuals.

Explain three reasons why racial differences in intelligence might be caused by environmental factors.

Races are remarkably alike genetically. Race is a social category. Today's better prepared populations would outperform populations of the 1930s on intelligence tests. White and black infants tend to score equally well on tests predicting future intelligence. Different ethnic groups have experienced periods of remarkable achievement in different eras. There are some racial differences in intelligence scores, but these are due to environmental factors. High scoring individuals and groups are more likely to achieve higher levels of education and income.

Deviation IQ Scores

Replaced the old IQ formula. IQ scores are now determined based on a normal curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.

Triarchic Theory

Robert Sternberg's theory that intelligence is composed of Analytic Intelligence, Creative Intelligence, and Practical Intelligence.

Of the following, which term best describes the condition in which a person with limited mental ability excels at a specific skill such as computation?

Savant Syndrome

Charles Spearman

Saw intelligence as being composed of the g factor (ability to reason and solve problems) and the s factor (specific intelligence)

Name and briefly describe the three essential principals of test construction.

Standardization- implementing and developing technical standards Reliability- overall consistency of a measure Validity- test's ability to measure what it is supposed to measure

Professor Emic wants to first develop an intelligence test that can be used cross-culturally, and then to assess the reliability and validity of that test. Briefly explain how Professor Emic could examine the following characteristics about this new intelligence test: • Standardization • Reliability • Validity • Bias

Standardization: Professor Emic should provide all test-takers with the same set of instructions, thesame amount of time, and the same test conditions in order for the tests to be compared with oneanother at a later time. The professor can also give the test to a representative group of people who are similar to the actual test-takers, so that the test-takers' scores can be compared to the scores of those in the representative group. Reliability: Professor Emic could examine the reliability of the test in different ways. Some participantscould take the test more than once (possibly using an alternative form) to be sure that they receive close to the same score on more than one occasion (test-retest reliability). Or the test could be split in half, and the scores of each half could be examined to see if odd-question and even-question scores are similar (split-half reliability). Validity: The test should be examined for content validity. Does the test measure intelligence asdefined by Professor Emic? The test should assess specific, defined components of intelligence. Professor Emic could ask other intelligence researchers to review the test and comment oninclusiveness and appropriateness. In addition, Professor Emic could compare the results on this test toother established intelligence tests (predictive validity). Bias: Professor Emic might find that this test is biased if it does not predict the future performance of agiven group as accurately as it does for other groups. He could also ask other intelligence researchersto examine his test to see if there are culture-based assumptions in the language used in the questions.

Cultural bias

Tendency for IQ tests to reflect the language, culture, history, and customs of the people who designed the test.

mental age

The average age at which children could successfully answer a particular level of questions. a measure of intelligence devised by Binet; the age at which a person is mentally performing at. It can be higher, lower, or the same as their chronological age.

Explain whether each of the following comparisons indicates a greater influence of genetics on intelligence or a greater influence of environment on intelligence. The correlation of intelligence test scores for identical twins raised together is about +.85. For identical twins raised apart, the correlation is about +.72. The correlation of intelligence scores for identical twins raised together is about +.85. For fraternal twins raised together, it is about +.60.

The findings of the study indicate that intelligence is influenced more by environmental factors as the correlation coefficient is higher for identcal twins raised together

Module 60 Ask Yourself

The modern concept of multiple intelligences (as proposed by Gardner and Sternberg) assumes that the analytical school smarts measured by traditional intelligence tests are important abilities but that other abilities are also important. Different people have different gifts.

Explain two environmental interventions that might help poverty-level schoolchildren develop better cognitive skills.

The presence of more highly qualified teachers is positively correlated with higher student achievement. Nutritional supplements can help alleviate the effects of the poor nutrition that often accompanies economic poverty.

standardization

The process of giving the test to a large group of representative and randomly selected people to establish consistent methods administration.

Multiple Intelligences

Theory created by Howard Gardner that there are many types of intelligences such as musical, interpersonal, naturalist, and bodily-kinetics. Some critics say these are more abilities than intelligences

Critical Period Hypothesis

Theory that if one's Language Acquisition Device is not activated withing the first few years of life, the person will never fully acquire language. Likewise, if a second language is not introduced before puberty, the person's acquisition will be limited and they will speak that language with an accent.

The Smiths have enrolled their 2-year-old son in a special program that promises to assess his IQ and, if he places in the top 5 percent of test-takers, to create a plan that will guarantee his admission to a top university at age 18. Why is this endeavor of questionable value?

This is a waste of money at best. First, IQ tests given before age 3 are only modestly reliable predictors of adult intelligence. Second, admission to a top university depends on more than simple IQ. Third, there are no known training programs that could guarantee this result. The Smiths would do better to read to their child, which predicts early reading and love of reading.

The principal of a new elementary school wants to give an IQ test to all students when they enter the school. The students will then be placed in groups of students of similar IQ scores. The principal assures the community that this plan is supported by scientific research and will improve education for all students, regardless of their ability. Using evidence, present an argument for or against intelligence testing for children early in life. Using evidence, present an argument for or against schools that "track" children based on intelligence test scores, separating high scorers from students with lower scores. Using evidence, present an argument supporting the claim that environmental influences affect intelligence. Using evidence, present an argument supporting the claim that labeling or tracking students could lead to stereotype threat.

To support the argument for early intelligence testing, students might point out that research indicatesthat children's IQ scores seem to "stabilize" around age 4 (these scores are correlated with IQ scoreslater in their lives), which could be used to support an argument for testing students when they enterschool. To argue against this early intelligence testing, students could point out that enrichedenvironments seem to benefits all students no matter their IQ and providing a rich learningenvironment in school might be more important than separating early learners according to their IQ scores. Evidence indicating that IQ scores are relatively stable over time and may be highly heritable could beused to support the policy for IQ testing for students as they enter school. If IQ is "fixed," then it mightmake sense to test for and use IQ scores early in a student's schooling. However, Dweck's researchabout "fixed" and "growth" mind-sets could be used to argue against early IQ testing. Dweck'sresearch shows that developing growth mind-sets in students is much more valuable than encouragingthem to think about their abilities as fixed and unchanging, which might be one of the results of earlyIQ testing. The evidence that enriched learning environments, such as the studies about the impact of deprivationin Iranian or Romanian orphanages, offers powerful evidence that our environment strongly influences intelligence development. Students could also cite studies about the impact of parents reading to theirchildren on their vocabulary and later reading skills. Stereotype threat research indicates that students who are aware of and/or reminded of a negative stereotype about a group they belong to will perform worse during a testing situation because ofstereotype threat. Early IQ testing could exacerbate this problem: if students are aware they wereplaced in a lower academic group based on IQ scores, this expectation (stereotype) could influence their later performance on tests.

savant syndrome

a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

Down Syndrome

a condition of intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

Which of the following is a longitudinal study?

a group of kindergartners is given an intellience test. they are retested every other year for 30 years

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 a person's total score.

normal curve

a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (68 percent fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer near the extremes.

general intelligence

according to Spearman and others, this underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

Intellectual disability is defined by both IQ and which of the following?

adaptive ability

Which of the following is true of the mental similarities between adoptive children and their adoptive parents as they age?

adoptive children become much less similar to their adoptive familes over time

Name and describe Robert Sternberg's three intelligences.

analytical- Intelligence that is assessed by intelligence tests practical -Intelligence that is required for everyday tasks(e.g. street smarts) creative - Intelligence that makes us adapt to novel situations, generating novel ideas

The most widely used modern intelligence test was developed by

david wechsler

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions is called

emotional intelligence

Heritability relates to the

extent to which variability among individuals' intelligence scores can be attributed to genetic variation

Charles Spearman's g refers to

general intelligence

Module 63 Ask Yourself

genetic and environmental influences have definitely shaped my intelligence

The Flynn effect refers to the

gradual improvement in intelligence test scores over the last several decades

Which of the following best represents crystallized intelligence?

grandpa milt is good at crossword puzzles

According to Carol Dweck, students are often hampered by a "fixed mindset." This means they believe:

intelligence is biologically set and unchangeable

What would be true of a thermometer that always reads three degrees off?

it is reliable but not valid

stereotype threat

just being aware of negative stereotypes that apply to your group can negatively impact your performance on intelligence tests

Who conducted a famous study of high IQ children?

lewis terman

Achievement tests are to aptitude tests as

measurement is to prediction

The original formula for a child's intelligence quotient compared a child's

mental age to his or her chronological age

intelligence

mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. it is one's potential, not what they achieve.

fluid intelligence

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood

crystallized intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

grit

passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals

Which of the following provides the best evidence that race is more of a social construct than a biological category?

people of varying ancestry may categorize themselves in the same race

Recent research about brain size and function suggests that

people who are smarter use less energy when solving problems

Which of the following is one of Robert Sternberg's types of intelligence?

practical intelligence

Students who do well on college entrance exams generally do well in their first year of college. This helps establish that these exams have

predicitive validity

The purpose of Alfred Binet's early intelligence test was to

predict how children would do in school

Which of the following best describes the extent to which a test yields consistent results upon retesting?

reliability

A test-developer defines uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group. Which of the following best describes this process?

reliability testing

Howard Gardner found evidence of multiple intelligences in individuals who scored low on intelligence but had an area of exceptional ability—for example, to make complex calculations. These people have

savant syndrome

In general, males score higher than females on tests of

spatial ability

achievement tests

tests designed to assess what a person has learned. The AP Psychology Exam is an example

aptitude tests

tests designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn. SAT, and IQ test are examples

emotional intelligence

the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions. Daniel Goleman developed a theory concerning it that focused on the importance of self control, empathy, and awareness of one's own emotions.

Heritability of intelligence refers to

the amount of group variation in intelligence that can be attributed to genetics

validity

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. In order for a test to be valid it has to be reliable.

content validity

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest. The AP Psychology exam will measure your knowledge of Psychology, and not Chemistry.

reliability

the extent to which a test yields consistent results. a test can be reliable but not valid. Can determine by retesting or by comparing the consistency of scores on two halves of the test (split half reliability)

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

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. The SATs have predictive validity.

According to most experts, intelligence tests are not biased because

the tests do a pretty good job of predicting what they are supposed to predict

Stanford-Binet

the widely used American revision of Binet's original intelligence test. Louis Terman of Stanford University created it.

The correlation between the IQ scores of fraternal twins raised together is lower than IQ scores of identical twins raised together. What conclusion can be drawn from this data?

there is a genetic effect on intelligence