Chapter 1. How Smart Are Intelligence Tests?

1. The best synonym for the quality of an intelligence test called “reliability” is ________.

2. Nancy wants to know what her weight is since she has been on a plan of eating healthy and exercising. She goes the bathroom, and finds that she now weighs 13 pounds more than she did just 3 days ago! She starts to get upset, but then thinks rationally and finds her children. “Have you two been playing with the bathroom scale,” she asks? They admit that they have and that they change the setting so that it shows someone to be heavier than they are. Nancy was right to remember that a scale showing that a person on a healthy eating and exercising program is probably not ________ if it shows them to have gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time.

3. On the Wechsler tests of one’s intelligence quotient, what number is used to indicate an “average” IQ?

4. Jonah’s parents are absolutely thrilled when they find out that their 8-year old son scored 138 on his intelligence test. “Do you know what this means,” Jonah’s mother says. “Jonah is in the top ____ percent of IQs in the entire population!” Jonah’s father knows that she is right, because he too has studied the normal curve and knows where the percentages lie.

5. Erika takes the state achievement tests for all tenth grade students, and it demonstrates that she knows about 85% of the questions she is asked. Because Erika has been earning a B in her math class all year, this agreement between the standardized test and other measures of Erika’s math abilities suggests that the test is, in fact, ________.

6. Dr. Herkowitz came to the United States when he was a teenager because his parents wanted him to have an excellent education, and they knew him to be very bright. He often tells the story of how, when he first came to the USA, he was placed into remedial classes in his school. “They thought I was not bright because the tests they used to assess me were all in English, and I did not speak the language very well!” This is a good example of how a given test may not be ________ for all of the people to whom it is administered.

7. Of the following qualities, which do you think might be lest immediately important in determining the quality of an intelligence test?