Intelligence and Psychological Testing
Psychological tests are measures of behavior
Percentile scores indicate the percentage of people who score at or below specific scores
Validity refers to the ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure
Content validity refers to the degree to which the content of a test is representative of the domain that it is supposed to cover
Criterion related validity is estimated by corellating subjects scores on a test with their scores on an independent measure of the trait
Construct validity refers to the extent to which there is evidence that a test measures a specific hypothetical construct
Francis Galton- intelligence is inherited
Binet scale tested a child's mental age (1905), was revised in 1916 and renamed the Stanford-Binet and introduced the IQ
Weschler, 1939, produced an improved measure of intelligence and a new scoring system
Mental Retardation- subaverage mental ability (IQ scores below 70-75)
Giftedness- accelerated mental ability (IQ scores above 130)
* If you score at the 75th percentile on a test, it means that 75% of those who took the test scored the same or less then you did
* If a test has a good test-retest reliability then the test yields similar scores if taken at 2 different times
* Francis Galton felt that intelligence is largely determined by heredity
* On modern IQ tests a score of 115 would be one standard devistion above the mean
* IQ tests have proven to be good predictors of school performance
* Most gifted children do not go on to make genius level, major contributions to society that earn them eminence
* Most school districts consider children who score in the upper 2%-3% of the IQ distribution to be gifted
* Greatest similarity in IQ would be found between identical twins
* Upbring affects one's IQ because siblings reared together are more similar then siblings reared apart
* When assessing intelligence...