PSYC1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Unobservable

• School: University of Sydney
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC1002
• Professor: Caleb Owens

Document Summary

Mental abilities: capacity to perform the higher mental processes of reasoning, remembering, understanding and problem solving. Intelligence as a construct: observable (manifest) variables: what we can see (behaviour, test, response, unobservable (latent) variables: constructs (abilities, traits, states) Constructs: theoretical (hypothetical) terms which cannot be directly observed, but are assumed to exist because they give measurable phenomena, description of behavioural & performance data, basis for prediction of behaviour, defined by: Explicit theories: data collected from people performing tasks that require intelligent cognition, theories are supported by mostly indirect evidence, age level assigned to each reasoning task able to complete the task. Binet"s stipulations: scale is rough standardisation sample passed the task. The youngest age at which a child of normal intelligence should be. Determined by the age at which majority of (cid:498)normal(cid:499) children in the. Empirical guide to identifying mildly retarded and learning disabled: scores are a practical device children. Not a device for ranking normal children.