AP Psychology Module 61

Standardization

Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.

Normal Curve

the symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

Mental Age

A measure of intelligence test performance devised b 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-years-old is said to have mental age of 8.

Achievement Test

A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude Test

A test designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100. On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100, with scores assigned to relative performance above or below average.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

The WAIS is th most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performane (nonverbal) subtests.

Validity

The extent to which a test measures or predicts what if is supposed to.

Content Validity

The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

Reliability

The 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.

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.

Stanford-Binet

The widely used American revision of Binet's original intelligence test.