KEY CONCEPTS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL
TESTING
• Psychological test : a standardized measure of a sample of a person’s behavior
• Measure individual differences that exist among people in abilities, aptitudes, interests, and aspects of personality

• Most common
• Include intelligence tests : measure general mental ability---assess intellectual ability
• Aptitude tests : assess specific types of mental abilities
• Achievement tests : gauge a person’s mastery of knowledge and various subjects

• DEF: measure various aspects of personality, including motives, interests, values, and attitudes

• Standardization : refers to the uniform procedures used in the administration and scoring of a test
• Test norms : provide info about where a score on a psychological test ranks in relation to other scores on that test
• Percentile score : indicates the percentage of people who score at or below the score one has obtained

• Refers to the measurement consistency of a test
• Test-retest, split-half reliability
• Reliability estimates require computation of correlation coefficients : a numerical index of the degree of relationship btwn 2 variables

• Refers to the ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure
• Content validity : degree to which the content of a test is representative of the domain it’s supposed to cover
• Criterion-related validity : estimated by correlating subjects’ scores on a test with their scores on an independent criterion of the trait assessed by the test
• Construct validity : the extent to which there is evidence that a test measures a particular hypothetical construct

GALTON’S STUDIES OF HEREDITARY
GENIUS
• Sir Francis Galton
• Found that success and eminence ran in families
• Wrote Hereditary
Genius in 1869
• Coined the term nature vs. nurture
• Invented concepts of correlation and percentile test scores

• Alfred Binet asked to devise a test to identify mentally sub-normal children
• Worked with Theodore
Simon
• The Binet-Simon scale expressed a child’s mental age : displays the mental ability typical of a child of a chronological age

TERMAN AND THE STANFORD-BINET
• Lewis Terman of
Stanford expanded and revised Binet’s test
• 1916: Stanford-Binet
Intelligence Scale
• Included intelligence quotient (IQ) : a child’s mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100

• David Wechsler wanted a test for adults
• Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale
(WAIS) published in
1939
• Less dependent on verbal ability
• Discarded IQ in favor of normal distribution

• 2 categories:
• Individual tests and group tests
• Individuals are time consuming and costly
• Schools use Otis-
Lennon School Ability
Test and Lorge-
Thorndike Intelligence
Test

• Fairly diverse
• Information, vocabulary, demonstrate memory
• Manipulate words, numbers, and images through abstract reasoning

WHAT DO MODERN IQ SCORES
MEAN?
• Normal distribution : a symmetric, bell-shaped curve that represents the pattern in which many characteristics are dispersed in the population
• Scores translated into deviation IQ scores : locate subjects precisely within the normal distribution, using the standard deviation as the unit of measurement
• Scores indicate exactly where you fall in the normal distribution of intelligence

DO INTELLIGENCE TESTS MEASURE
POTENTIAL OR KNOWLEDGE?
• Intelligence tests are intended to measure intellectual potential
• Reality: they measure both

DO INTELLIGENCE TESTS HAVE
ADEQUATE RELIABILITY?
• Correlations range into the .90s
• They are reliable, but represent a sample
• Test anxiety can shift scores