| Term | Definition |
| Intelligence | Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems and use knowledge to adapt to new situations |
| Charles Spearman | Intelligence theorist who used factor analysis to figure out what a "g" factor or generalized intelligence all are a part of people with intelligence |
| Thurston's Primary Mental Abilities | Seven primary mental abilities: word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, and memory |
| Factor Analysis | A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one's total score |
| General Intelligence "g" | A general intelligence factor that according to Spearman and others underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test. |
| Savant Syndrome | A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill such as computation or drawing |
| Howard Gardner | Came up with the multiple intelligence theory |
| Multiple Intelligence Theory | Believed in 8 types of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist |
| Robert Sternberg | Believed in multiple forms of intelligence but believed that everything could be boiled down to three types of intelligence and came up with the Triarchic Theory of intelligence |
| Triarchic Theory | Belief in 3 types of intelligence: analytic intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence |
| Emotional Intelligence | The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions |
| Creativity | The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas |
| 5 Components of Creativity | Expertise, Imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, a creative environment |
| Divergent thinking | Thinking outside of the box |
| Convergent thinking | Thinking along set patterns and processes |
| Intelligence test | A method of assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores |
| Alfred Binet | Frenchman who built the best intelligence test of its time. Paid to develop the test by the Paris, France school system in order to determine what students would need remediation. |
| Lewis Terman | American who took Binet's Paris test and translated it into English and changed some of the test items to fit American children. Renamed this version of the test the Stanford-Binet test. |
| Mental Age | A measure of intelligence devised by Binet, which gives a number relative to what an individual should know at a given age in their lives. |
| Chronological Age | A person's age in years. |
| Stanford-Binet Test | The widely used American revision of Binet's original intelligence test |
| Intelligence Quotient (IQ) | Mental age divided by chronological age and multiplied by 100. Average scores is 100 because the mental age is equal to the chronological age |
| Aptitude Tests | A test designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude assesses the capacity to learn (aPtitude = Predict future performance) |
| Achievement Tests | A test designed to assess what a person has learned up to that date, to assess your CURRENT knowledge (aChievement tests= Current knowledge) |
| Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) | The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test, contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests |
| Standardization | Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested standardization group |
| Normal Curve | A 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. 68, 95, 99.7 Rule. |
| 68-95-99.7 Rule | In a normal distribution 68% of data falls in 1 standard deviation on either side of the mean, and 95% of data falls in 2 standard deviations on either side of the mean, 99.7% falls in 3 standard deviations on either side of the mean. |
| 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 |
| Validity | The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. |
| Content Validity | The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest |
| 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 |
| Criterion | The behavior that a test is designed to predict; thus, the measure used in defining whether the test has predictive validity |
| Intellectual Disability | 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 |
| Down Syndrome | A condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome in one's genetic makeup |
| Stereotype Threat | A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype |
| Analytical Intelligence | Part of Sternberg's 3 Intelligences: Is assessed by intelligence tests which present well-defined problems as having a single right answer. |
| Creative Intelligence | Part of Sternberg's 3 Intelligences: Is demonstrated in reacting adaptively to novel situations and generating novel ideas |
| Practical Intelligence | Part of Sternberg's 3 Intelligences: Is required for everyday tasks with multiple solutions. |
| Social Intelligence | The know-how involved in successfully comprehending social situations |
| Cohort | A group of people from a given time period |
| Crystallized intelligence | Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age |
| Fluid intelligence | Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood |
| Heritability | The 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. |
