week2-1_testing (1).ppt

• 01/18/24 Defining & Measuring Psychological Attributes • Major types of tests 1 Psychological attributes & decisions Ways of classifying the the psychological testing. Is the attribute relatively stable or fluid? Adult intelligence is stable  Attitudes and moods are fluid  Stable attrib...

• 01/18/24 Defining & Measuring Psychological Attributes • Major types of tests 1 Psychological attributes & decisions Ways of classifying the the psychological testing. Is the attribute relatively stable or fluid? Adult intelligence is stable  Attitudes and moods are fluid  Stable attributes are most likely to be relevant for making long-term decisions about individuals (e.g., college admissions).  01/18/24 2 Psychological attributes & decisions 3 domains that are most relevant to decision making. Ability Interest Personality They all represent stable attributes. 01/18/24 3 Intelligence-General Mental Ability  What is intelligence? (+) correlated with any other measure that involves cognitive ability.  Difficult to arrive at a widely acceptable definition of intelligence.  First, intelligence is a construct.  What an intelligent person does.  APA definition: the ability to derive information, learn from experience, adapt to the environment, understand, and correctly utilize thought and reason  Second, intelligence can’t be defined in terms of one type of behavior.  Last, intelligence should be related to success in a variety of cognitively demanding task.  01/18/24 4 Intelligence-General Mental Ability Some theories were developed to identify the different types of mental abilities. Two-factor theory introduced by Spearman. Scores on any two cognitively demanding tasks show a (+) correlation.  A good measure of general intelligence will successfully predict all cognitive performance.   01/18/24 Spearman introduced the general intellectual factor, g. A test with a high g loading predict a wide range of ‘intelligent’ behaviors. 5 Two-factor theory  While a good intelligence test is expected to be highly g loaded, each test has also its own S (specific factor).  Each test measured some specific factor (S) which was unique to each test. And this is, on the other hand, independent of individual’s general intelligence. 01/18/24 6 Two-factor theory  Intelligence can be viewed in terms of one general underlying factor (g) and a large number of specific factors (S1, S2, …, Sn).  Intelligence can be viewed in terms of g (general mental ability) and S (specific factors) 01/18/24 7 Thurstone and group factors  There are group factors (high correlation within each group tests), but not identical to, general intelligence factors.  Seven group factors (1938):  Verbal comprehension (e.g., vocabulary, reading comprehension, verbal analogies tests)  Word fluency  Number  Space  Associative memory  Perceptual speed  Reasoning  So, not a single general factor (g), 7 different group factors. These are also called primary mental abilities. 01/18/24 8 Thurstone and group factors  Group factors 01/18/24 9 Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence  introduced by Cattell (1963).  Fluid: ability to see relationships, as in letter and number series and analogies. Reasoning ability.  Crystallized: refers to one’s acquired skills and knowledge (store of factual knowledge).  They show different developmental trends. 01/18/24 10 Hierarchical Models of Intelligence introduced by Carroll (1993) Both a general intelligence factor as well as some major group factors exist. 01/18/24 11 Hierarchical Models of Intelligence Tests that measure both g and specific aspects of intelligence are acceptable. One can choose to use a test which measures g, other can use a test which measures mechanical abilities. It depends on the thing that you are interested in and on the purpose of testing. 01/18/24 12 Guilford’s structure of intellect model Guilford did not accept the g factor. Intelligence is classified in 3 dimensions: Operations  What an individual does.  Contents  The material on which operations are performed.  Products  The form in which information is stored and processed.  This model has some problems in terms of both theoretically and practically (180 types of intelligence). 01/18/24 13 Guilford’s structure of intellect model 01/18/24 14 The first scale on intelligence The first scale to provide a practical and reasonably valid measure of intelligence was developed by Binet and Simon (1905). This scale contained 30 items for the use of language, reasoning and comprehension, arranged in order of difficulty (advantage of the scale). The disadvantage is the lack of scoring the test and interpreting the scores.  01/18/24 Was a score of 22/30 good? bad? 15 The first scale on intelligence 01/18/24 16 Binet’s tests were developed to be used with children. Wechsler developed one to be used with adults. The popular one:Wechsler adult intelligence scale  Developed another for assessing children’s intelligence.  01/18/24 17 Interest What is interest? A response of liking to an object or activity (Strong, 1943).  Interest are different from abilities.  Interest can be used to predict choices.  01/18/24 A person who loves to work with figures is more likey to choose a career in accounting. 18 Interest Expressed vs. inventoried interest? People might be unaware of their interests or could not verbalize them.  The development of complex, indirect methods of interest measurement.  Interest inventories could help to clarify interests so they serve a useful purpose.  01/18/24 19 Strong’s Interest Inventory 01/18/24 20 Personality What is personality? Peoples are unique.  Peoples do not behave similarly in all situations.  On the other hand, there are commonalities in behavior.  It is believed that behavior should be considered as stable to allow measurement. 01/18/24 21 Personality 2 principles in evaluating a personality inventory Interpretability  Results must convey information about a person that can be interpreted reliably by various users.  Stability  Reliable relationship between the behavior and the score.  Bahavior must show some consistency over a specific situations.  01/18/24 22 Personality ‘Big five’ refers to  01/18/24 five personality factors found in most personality inventories. 23