AP Psych Prep 11 - Testing and Individual Differences

8/13/2019 AP Psych Prep 11 - Testing and Individual Differences

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Testing and Individual

Differences(Intelligence)

AP Psych.Prep 11


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IntroductionTests of mental abilities, personality,

abnormal psychology, etc. are very common

in psychology, but tests are also very

common in our everyday lives.

This chapter will help us understand testsand testing, and then we will learn a bit

about intelligence, which has been tested

and explored a lot in psychology.


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Standardized TestsPsychometricians - people who make tests

designed to measure psych. concepts like

intelligence, stress, abnormality, etc.

Standardized Tests - tests whose items

have been tested with a sample

(standardization sample) from the population

you want to measure.

This way, standards of performance (Norms)

have been developed.


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Standardized Tests

This allows peoplewho take the test to

be compared to theother sample (andwe hope to the

population that thestandardization

sample represents)


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Standardized TestsMany standardized tests exist.

e.g. SAT - includes experimental section -

the test makers are testing questions to

create future tests; by trying them, theyknow how a general sample of the

population should do on those questions.


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Standardized TestsThey can throw out questions that are too

hard or two easy and make future tests that

have been normed with variable difficulty

questions (questions that can helpdifferentiate test takers from each other).


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Reliability and ValidityWe studied these two terms in Chapter 2

Reliability - test can be repeated and showsimilar results; consistentlyevaluates

people.


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ReliabilityThere are different ways to measure

reliability:

Split-half Reliability - compare two halves

(made randomly) and see if peoples scores

on those two halves are similar. If they aresimilar, it suggests the test is reliable.


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ReliabilityEquivalent-form Reliability - if theres more

than one form (version) for a test, you can

compare peoples performance on different

forms to see if they show a similar measure.

E.g. Korean Test: different testings, but allsupposed to be equivalent. If a person gets

a similar score on different tests, its reliable.


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ReliabilityTest-retest Reliability - measure of reliability

where you give someone the test more than

once, and see if the scores correlate with

each other.

E.g. If I write a test of career aptitude today,and one week from now, will it show a

similar result?


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ValidityEven if a test is shown to be reliable, we

dont know for sure if its measuring what its

supposed to measure. Maybe its reliably

measuring wrong.

Thats why we should also worry aboutValidity - if the test is measuring what its

trying to measure.


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Validity


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ValidityE.g. if a career test is properly measuring

which career you would do well in / enjoy,

then it is a valid career aptitude test.

If that career test is actually giving us a

measure of a different thing, like chemistryknowledge, degree of depressive

tendencies, etc., then it is not valid.


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ValidityThere are also multiple types of validity:

Content Validity - how well does a test

measure the rangeof content it should

measure.

E.g. a Korean test with no speaking part is

not covering all of a persons Korean skill,

so its content validity is low.


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ValidityFace Validity - is one example of contentvalidity. On the surface, does it look like itscovering all the important parts of the thing

you want to measure. (very basicevaluation)

Criterion-related Validity - does test measuresome criteria that we are interested in? Wecan check against other ways to measure

those criteria.


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ValidityThere are two kinds of criterion-related

validity:

Concurrent Validity - now /

current match with criteria.

E.g. Depression measure -

does it measure how

depressed the person

is now?


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ValidityPredictive Validity - the other kind of criterionvalidity; does the measure do a good job ofpredictingfuture.

E.g. a measure of depressive risk factors -does it really show us which people will havedepression problems later?

Predictive Validity is also important forthings like Career Aptitude tests.


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ValidityConstruct Validity - a strong way to check for

validity; does the measure correlate strongly

with some other (already shown to be valid)

measure?

If we have a good measure of stress now,you can see if your new stress measure

gives similar scores for the same people.


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ValidityVery strong, but problems with construct

validity:

How do we know the other measure is

valid? Are we sure its valid?

If we know the other is valid, why not just

use that measure instead of making a new

one?


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Types of TestsAptitude Tests - try to measure natural

ability or potential.

E.g. LSAT - Law School Admission Test;

tries to measure if someone would become

a good lawyer, not if they are a good lawyernow.

*Intelligence tests are usually aptitude tests.


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Types of TestsAchievement Tests - measure

accomplishment or what people have

learned.

Speed Test - try to measure how quickly

people can answer questions; give too manyquestions and see how many people can get

right in the time given.


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Types of TestsPower Test - try to measure the difficulty of

questions a person can answer. Give

enough time, but questions range from easy

to very difficult, so you can find the mostdifficult question the person can answer.


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Types of TestsGroup Tests - Where lots of people take the

test at once. Easy for the test administrators,

doesnt require a lot of interaction between

test takers and the people giving the test.

Most tests we take in school are group tests,SAT type tests, etc.


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Types of TestsIndividual Tests - test taker and test

administrator interact much more. Test taker

is alone, and the test administrator

concentrates on the test taker.

Many intelligence tests are individual tests,as are projective tests like the TAT or inkblot

tests.


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Types of TestsMany intelligence tests are individual tests,

as are projective tests like the Thematic

Apperception Test or Inkblot Tests.


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Theories of IntelligencePsychologists dont agree on one definition

of intelligence. We commonly think of it as

smartness, ability to use your mind (often

for academic uses), or ability to gather andsynthesize information in useful ways.

We will look at a few different Psych. ideas

about what intelligence is.


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Theories of IntelligencePsychologists sometimes differentiate

between two kinds of intelligence:

Fluid Intelligence - our more natural

intellectual skills; not based on stored

knowledge or experience.

For doing things like remembering, learning

new things, new skills, problem solving, etc.


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Theories of IntelligenceCrystallized Intelligence - where we use knowledge,information, skills, etc., that we have collected over our

lives. Involves use of our past experience.


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Theories of IntelligenceResearch suggests that fluid intelligence

might decline over our life span...

But as we get older and collect more

knowledge, skills, it seem that we can have

an advantage in crystallized intelligence.


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Crystallized vs Fluid Intelligence


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1. General Intelligence

The first theory of intelligence we will look at

comes from Charles Spearman, who thinksthat intelligence is one ability, and all our

intellectual abilities come from our single,

general intelligence. He called this g for

general.


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2. Multiple IntelligencesA different idea is that we have more thanone kind of intelligence, and different people

could have different amounts of each type.

Howard Gardner is a strong supporter of this

idea.

He listed 8 of our intelligences:


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2. Multiple IntelligencesLinguistic - language ability

Musical - ability to produce music, write

music, etc.Spatial - ability to think and solve problems

based on space info., maps, 3D info, etc.

Logical-mathematical - math and logical

problem solving skills


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2. Multiple IntelligencesBodily-kinaesthetic - knowing how to andbeing able to move body, gross and fine

motor control, etc. (e.g. Athletes)

Naturalist - knowledge and ability to work

with plants, animals, the environment, etc.

Someone with high Naturalist intelligence

might be able to survive in the wildernesswell.


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2. Multiple IntelligencesInterpersonal - inter = between; ability tounderstand relationships, get along with

others, etc. High interpersonal intelligence

people can probably help friends solverelationship problems, help act as diplomat

between people, etc.

I.e. Good social skills people.


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Multiple Intelligences

3 Emotional Intelligence


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3. Emotional Intelligence

(EQ)Psychologists like Daniel Goleman believewe have a separate emotional intelligence.

(similar to intrapersonal and interpersonal

intelligences of Multiple Int.)

Some think not just IQ, butalsoEQ is required for us to

succeed in our lives.


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4. Triarchic Theory

Robert Sternberg is a psych. who thinks wehave three types of intelligence:

Componential / Analytic Intelligence - usual

concept of intelligence: ability to analyze

problems, explain concepts, compare andcontrast things, etc.


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4. Triarchic Theory


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4. Triarchic Theory

Contextual intelligence suggests thatintelligence might partially depend on the

situation / context.

This means its not just something inside us,

but intelligence might depend on ourenvironment.


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4. Triarchic Theory

If this is true, it makes it very difficult tomake intelligence tests because its hard to

know how to test people in many contexts,

or know which contexts we should test themin.

*Most intelligence tests assume that

intelligence is just inside us, not contextual.


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Intelligence Tests

Stanford-Binet IQ Test:

Alfred Binet (of France) tried

to measure school childrens

intelligence to help teachers

better teach the students.

Based on the idea of mental age - higher

mental age = more intelligent


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Int. Tests - Stanford-Binet

Louis Terman (a Stanford professor), usedBinets work to develop the Stanford-Binet

test, and he made the measure we call IQ

IQ = Intelligence Quotient - because we use

quotients to find the IQ:


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Int. Tests - Stanford-Binet

IQ =

High mental age compared to chronological

age will mean a high IQ

Adults arbitrarily assigned a Chron. Age of

20 to avoid strange results.

Mental Age

Chronological Age100


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Int. Tests - Wechsler

More modern IQ tests: Wechsler IntelligenceScales.

Still called IQ, even though we dont use

quotients anymore....

Based on normed results arranged as a

Normal Distribution.


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Standardized Wechsler scores fall on anormal distribution with the mean/average at

100 (same as Stanford-Binet score if mental

age = chronological age).

The standard deviation for Wechslerdistributions is 15 points.


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There are different Wechsler tests:

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test (WAIS)

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

(WISC; 6-16 years old)

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of

Intelligence (WPPSI; 4-6 years old)


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Wechsler tests produce scores on multiplesub-scales.

E.g. WAIS - 6 for verbal intelligence, 5 for

performance intelligence = 11 sub-scales.


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Wechsler -Non-verbal

Example


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If someone has a very different score onverbal and performance scores, we might

suspect that the person could have a

learning disability (a particular difficulty insome aspect of intelligence / learning)

E.g. Dyslexia - difficulties with reading


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Bias in IQ Testing

Many psychologists worry that IQ tests couldbe biased towards certain types of people.

Some cultural, racial, economic factors

might put some people at a disadvantage on

IQ tests...


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Bias in IQ Testing

For example, in the U.S., African Americanstend to score on average10 points lower

than whites. Its thought that this is because

of bias in the tests, and other environmentalfactors (like lower average socio-economic

status - poorer on average)


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Bias in IQ Testing

IQ test scores do predict college gradeswell, but many psych. worry that BOTH IQ

tests and college grades are biased to make

it easier for white, middle or upper classmales to do well.

Tests might assume certain vocabulary,

experience, familiarity with test questiontopics, etc. that not all people are equally

familiar with (therefore bias)


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Bias in IQ Testing

This means IQ tests might not really bemeasuring academic potential well;

It could be that if the education system

generally was less biased, some people who

score lower on IQ tests because of bias

might do better in academics than the tests

predict.

I.e. their potential is actually higher than the

test says....

Intelligence: Nature vs


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Intelligence: Nature vs.

NurturePsychologists are curious about how muchof our intelligence comes from nature

(genes, biology, etc) and how much comes

from nurture (parenting, experience,environment, etc).


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Intelligence: Nature vs. Nurture

Heritability - a measure from 0 to 1 of how muchof our intelligence comes from genetics. (0 =none, 1 = all)

Can only be used for populations, notindividuals. E.g. It doesnt make sense tocompare different peoples heritability...


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Intelligence: Nature vs. Nurture

We cant do an experiment to test this. Itwould be unethical to assign some people to

good environments, and some to poor

environments; it would be difficult anddangerous to change peoples genetics,

etc...)

But we can find some evidence from other

areas:


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Intelligence: Nurture

Flynn Effect - that IQ test scores have beenincreasing over time.

Because of this, we have to re-norm our IQ

tests, so that the average score remains at

100.

Human genes have remained the same overthis time, so Flynn Effect suggests that

changes in environment are having an effect

on IQ scores (e.g. nutrition, eduction, etc)


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Interventions like help in eduction (especiallyearly eduction) seem to be able to help raise

IQ scores, at least temporarily.

This is more evidence that nurture can have

an effect on our intelligence...


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Intelligence: Nature

Twin studies show that identical twins(monozygotic) IQ scores tend to correlate

more closely than fraternal twins (dizygotic)

scores. Suggests a strong geneticcomponent to intelligence.

But remember: we cant get all the

confounding variables out of thesecorrelational studies, so we have to be very

careful about the conclusions we draw....


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Intelligence: Cautions

Some things to be careful / cautious about:

Important to remember that averagedifferences between groups of people (e.g.

men and women) will be much smaller than

the differences between individuals withinany group.

C


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Its easy to finda person from

the low average

group that scoreshigher than a

person from the

high averagegroup.

Average doesnt tell

us about individuals...

I lli C i


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E.g. some researchers have founddifferences between men and women in

spacial reasoning skills.

However, its easy to find many women who

are better than many men in this skill.

(Also, difference found might not be real:

problem with test, chance in that sample, etc

I t lli C ti


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Also, though we use tests a lot in our livesand in psychology, we need to understand

that they arent perfect.

As discussed, psychologists dont agree on

what intelligence is, its hard to measure,

tests might be biased, etc.

So we shouldnt put too much weight on test

scores like IQ tests, or other psych. tests.

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AP Psych Prep 11 - Testing and Individual Differences

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