Chapter 7 - Thinking, Language and Intelligence

Standardization

THe administration of a test to a large, representative sample of people under uniform conditions for the purpose of establishing norms.

Linguistic relativity hypothesis

THe hypothesis that differences among language cause difference in the thoughts of the speakers.

Heritability

Teh percentage of variation within a given population that is due to heredity.

Validity

The ability of a test to measure what it is intended to measure.

Reliability

The ability of a test to produce consistent results when admistered on repeated occasions under similar conditions.

Intelligence

The global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the evironment.

Thinking

The manipulation of mental representations of information in order to draw inferences and conclusions.

Cognition

The mental activities involved in acquiring, retaining, and using knowledge.

Prototype

The most typical instance of a particular concept.

g factor or general intelligence

The notion of a general intelligence factor that is responsible for a person's overall performance on tests of mental ability.

Animal cognition

The study of animal learning, memory, thinking and language; also called comparative cognition.

Insight

The sudden realization of how a problem can be solves.

Mental Set

The tendency to persist in solving problems with solutions that have worked in the past.

Functional Fixedness

The tendency to view objects as functioning only in their usual or customary way.

Problem Solving

Thinking and behavior directed toward attaining a goal that is not readily available.

Normal Distribution

A bell-shaped distribution of individual differences in a normal population in which most scores cluster around the average score.

Creativity

A group of cognitive processes used to generate useful, orginal, and novel ideas or solutions to problems.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

A measure of general intelligence derived by comparing an individual's score with the score of others in the same age group.

Mental age

A measurement of intelligence in which an individuals mental level is expressed in terms of the average abilities of a given age group.

Concept

A mental category of objects or ideas based on properties they share.

Formal Concept

A mental category that is formed by learning the rules or features that define it.

Natural Concept

A mental caterogy that is formed as a result of everyday experience.

Mental Image

A mental representation of objects or events that are not physically present.

Heuristic

A problem-solving strategy taht involves following a general rule of thumb to reduce the number of possible solutions.

Trial and Error

A problem-solving strategy that involves attempting different solutions and eliminating those that do not work.

Algorithm

A problem-solving strategy that involves following a specific rule, procedure, or method that inevitably produces the correct solution.

Stereotype threat

A psychological predicament in which fear that you will be evaluated in terms of a negative stereotype about a group to which you belong creates anxiety and self-doubt, lowering performance in a particular domain that is important to you.

Representativeness heuristic

A strategy in which the likelihood of an event is estimated by comparing how similar it is to the prototype of the event.

Availability heuristic

A strategy in which the likelihood of an event is estimated on the basis of how readily available other instances of the event are in memory.

Language

A system for combining arbitrary symbols ro produce an infinite number of meaningful statements.

Aptitude Test

A test designed to assess a person's capacity to benefit from education or training.

Achievement Test

A test designed to measure a person's level of knowledge, skill, or accomplishment in a particular area.

Intuition

Coming to a conclusion or making a judgement without conscious awareness of the thought processes involved.

Exemplars

Individual instances of a concept or catergory, help in memory.

Triarchic theory of Intelligence

Sternber's theory that there are three distinct forms of intelligence: analytic, creative, and practical.