Chapter 17

Key Terms

Reliability: the extent to which an intelligence (or other) test gives consistent or similar findings on different occasions.

Validity: the extent to which an intelligence (or other) test measures what it is supposed to be measuring.

Standardised tests:  tests on which an individual’s ability (or personality) can be compared against scores obtained from a large, representative sample.

Intelligence quotient (IQ): a measure of general intelligence; the average IQ is 100 and most people have IQs between 85 and 115.

Selective placement: placing adopted children in homes resembling those of their biological parents in social and educational terms.

Flynn effect: the progressive increase in IQ in numerous countries over the past 50 or 60  years.

Hydrocephalus: a condition known non-technically as ‘water on the brain’ in which excessive cerebrospinal fluid crushes the cerebral cortex against the skull.

Factor analysis: a statistical technique used to find out the number and nature of the aspects of intelligence (or personality) measured by a test.

Emotional intelligence: an individual’s level of sensitivity his/her own emotional needs and those of others.

Weblinks

A biography of Alfred Binet
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/binet.htm

Full text of Alfred Binet’s (1905) classic paper “New methods for the diagnosis of the intellectual level of subnormals”
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Binet/binet1.htm

Take an online IQ test
http://www.allthetests.com/iq-test-intelligence.php3

Nature or Nurture? – A video about the study of twins to learn how much life experience has to do with academic strength and how much is inherent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egXIk_4-qMY

Video interview with the twins separated at birth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yTCShemS_0

TEDtalk with James Flynn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vpqilhW9uI

Howard Gardner explains his multiple intelligence theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2QtSbP4FRg

Howard Gardner’s home page
https://howardgardner.com/

Emotional Intelligence Test
http://psychologytoday.tests.psychtests.com/take_test.php?idRegTest=3203

TEDtalk with Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence
https://www.ted.com/speakers/daniel_goleman

Measuring emotional intelligence with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)
http://ei.yale.edu/publication/measuring-emotional-intelligence-mayer-salovey-caruso-emotional-intelligence-test-msceit/

Eysenck, M.W. (2009). Fundamentals of psychology. Chapter 11 of this textbook focuses on the topic of intelligence
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781841693729/