Deck 7: Individual and Group Differences in Mental Abilities

Question 1

The distribution of IQ scores is normal or bell-shaped.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Although they were originated for this purpose, intelligence tests are now seldom used in the diagnosis of mental retardation.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

There has been some attempt to eliminate derogatory labels in the diagnosis of mental retardation, but the classification systems of the National Association for Retarded Children and the American Psychiatric Association still employ the terms "moron, imbecile, and idiot."

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The American Association of Mental Retardation recommends using adaptive behavior in making a diagnosis of mental retardation.

Question 5

The definition and procedures for diagnosing mental retardation vary from state to state, but an IQ of 75 is generally considered to be a cutoff score in the diagnosis.

Question 6

A diagnosis of mental retardation is made on the basis of intelligence test scores and adaptive behavior.

Question 7

Cretinism, PKU, Tay-Sachs disease, hydrocephaly, and Down?s syndrome are attributed to major gene problems.

Question 8

Hyperactivity, inattentiveness, and deficiency in language functions suggest a diagnosis of mental retardation.

Question 9

Children who are diagnosed as having learning disabilities show deficiencies in rreading and/or other linguistic functions.

Question 10

Dyslexia and dyscalculia are specific learning disabilities.

Question 11

To be diagnosed as learning disabled in many California, a child?s intellectual ability must be at least one standard deviation above his or her level of achievement.

Question 12

The nature and extent of a child?s learning disability is most easily determined by a screening test.

Question 13

Children with learning disabilities are both dyslexic and dyscalculic.

Question 14

In a specific learning disability, the child?s level of achievement is lower that the level which the child?s ability level indicates she or he is capable of attaining.

Question 15

Social and emotional problems are rare in children with learning disabilities.

Question 16

The high expectations placed on gifted children can cause them to become depressed and develop other behavioral problems.

Question 17

In general, the beliefs that bright children are sickly, that they burn out early, and that genius is akin to insanity have proven to be true.

Question 18

Lewis Terman?s longitudinal study of mentally gifted persons found that they generally had serious adjustment problems both as children and adults.

Question 19

Julian Stanley found that mathematically-precocious children are generally well adjusted and highly motivated.

Question 20

Research is quite consistent in demonstrating that highly creative individuals have better personal and social adjustment than less creative individuals.

Question 21

Success in designing a valid test of creativity has been limited due to an inability to agree on a criterion of creative performance.

Question 22

Intelligence test scores are more stable during early and middle childhood than during adolescence and adulthood.

Question 23

A child?s IQ score on an individual intelligence test varies on the average by approximately five points from one administration of the test to another.

Question 24

Cross-sectional studies compare people of different cohorts.

Question 25

In longitudinal studies, mean intelligence test scores increase by small amounts during early adulthood and reach a plateau between the ages of 30 and 40.

Question 26

Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies reveal substantial declines in mental abilities during the 70s and 80s.

Question 27

Greater age-related declines in mental abilities have been found in longitudinal than in cross-sectional studies.

Question 28

The greatest age-related decline in intelligence has been found with the longitudinal method.

Question 29

A fairly consistent finding of research on cognitive abilities is that there is a terminal drop in intelligence after age 60 or 70.

Question 30

Mentally dull persons tend to come from larger families than mentally bright persons.

Question 31

Intelligence test scores are negatively correlated with family size.

Question 32

First-born children tend to be brighter than later-borns.

Question 33

Both intelligence and occupational status are correlated with social-class background, a fact that may account for the positive relationship between these two variables.

Question 34

Intelligence, social class, occupation, and education are all positively related, but the direction of causation among these variables is not clear.

Question 35

Children who live in rural areas tend to have lower mean IQs than children who live in urban areas.

Question 36

Immigrants to the United States from Northern and Eastern Europe are intellectually brighter than those from Southern and Western Europe.

Question 37

On the average, Black Americans score significantly lower than White Americans on intelligence tests.

Question 38

Research indicates that Japanese children have higher mean IQs than American children.

Question 39

Head size in infancy is not a significant predictor of later intellectual status.

Question 40

Brain size in infancy is positively related to intellectual development in early childhood.

Question 41

Evidence from PET scan data indicates that higher-order mental processes take place in the frontal lobes of the brain.

Question 42

Damage to the right temporal lobe disrupts verbal-symbolic performance more than perceptual-spatial performance.

Question 43

PKU, Tay-Sachs, and galactosemia are all genetic disorders associated with low intelligence.

Question 44

Prenatal and postnatal nutrition has a significant effect on intellectual developme.

Question 45

Lead-related mental defect in childhood persists into adulthood.

Question 46

The effects of environment on intelligence are almost as great as those of heredity.

Question 47

The fact that the correlation between the IQs of identical twins reared together is higher than that of identical twins reared apart is interpreted as demonstrating the importance of heredity in determining intelligence.

Question 48

The heritability coefficient for intelligence is an index of the percentage of variance in an individual?s IQ that is due to heredity.

Question 49

According to the classification system of the American Association of Mental Deficiency, a child whose IQ falls in the 50-70 range is __________ retarded.

A) mildly
B) moderately
C) profoundly
D) severely

Question 50

In the classification system of the American Psychiatric Association, the category "severe mental retardation" designates individuals whose IQs are in the __________ range.

A) below 20 or 25
B) 20-25 to 35-40
C) 35-40 to 50-55
D) 50-55 to 70

Question 51

PKU, galactosemia, and Tay-Sachs disease are all classified as

A) chromosomal abnormalities.
B) diseases contracted during infancy.
C) genetic-dependent conditions.
D) major gene problems.

Question 52

A mentally retarded adult who can follow daily routines and contribute to self-maintenance, but who requires direction and close supervision in a controlled environment would fall in the __________ retarded category

A) mildly
B) moderately
C) profoundly
D) severely

Question 53

Dyslexia is to dyscalculia as

A) reading is to arithmetic.
B) reading is to writing.
C) spelling is to arithmetic.
D) spelling is to reading.
E) writing it to arithmetic

Question 54

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142), which became law in 1975, mandated that handicapped children should be

A) evaluated for mental, behavioral, and physical disabilities.
B) be provided with appropriate educational opportunities.
C) both A and B.
D) A but not B.
E) B but not A.

Question 55

Which of the following is most characteristic of learning disabled children?

A) cultural deprivation
B) gross brain damage
C) language deficits
D) mental retardation
E) sensory disabilities

Question 56

A child is diagnosed as "learning disabled" if his or her ability level, as measured by a general intelligence test, is __________ his or her level of achievement.

A) 1 standard deviation above
B) 1.5 standard deviations above
C) 1 standard deviation below
D) 1.5 standard deviations below
E) 2 standard deviations above

Question 57

Compared with children of average mental ability, the gifted children studied by Lewis Terman grew up to be adults who were superior to other persons in all of the following except

A) fame as artists and composers.
B) marital happiness.
C) physical and mental health.
D) personal and social adjustment.

Question 58

Which of the following was (were) true of Terman?s gifted children (the "termites")?

A) They were better adjusted and had a lower rate of mental disorders.
B) They had greater occupational success than individuals of average intelligence.
C) They were physically superior to other children.
D) all of the above
E) none of the above

Question 59

Which of the following was not a finding of a famous longitudinal study of mentally gifted persons?

A) Bright children are healthier than average children.
B) Bright children are less prone to mental illness than dull children.
C) Bright people tend to have children who are even brighter than they are.
D) Bright people do not cease to be bright when they grow older.

Question 60

The results of cross-sectional studies suggest that general intelligence increases up through age __________, after which it declines.

A) 10-12
B) 16-18
C) 25-30
D) 50-55

Question 61

Whether a rise or a fall in a person?s measured intelligence occurs in later adulthood depends mainly on the

A) kinds of experiences relevant to test performance the person has.
B) sex and socioeconomic status of the person.
C) the person?s ordinal position and family size.
D) type of research methodology (longitudinal or cross-sectional) employed.

Question 62

Concerning the matter of a terminal age of intellectual development, the most reasonable conclusion is that intellectual growth

A) stops rather abruptly at age 15.
B) begins slowing down at age 15 and stops sometime in the early 20s.
C) continues only if the individual remains in school.
D) varies with the particular intellectual task.

Question 63

In contrast to the results of cross-sectional investigations, longitudinal studies have found increases in scores on __________ tests occurring well into the sixth decade of life.

A) information and reasoning
B) numerical and reasoning
C) verbal and information
D) verbal and numerical

Question 64

Altus and other investigators have reported substantial evidence that, on the average,__________ children are brighter than other children.

A) first-born
B) middle
C) last-born
D) only

Question 65

Research studies have shown that, compared with later -born children, first-born children are more

A) athletic.
B) easy-going.
C) imaginative.
D) studious.

Question 66

Extensive data on the relationship between mental ability and occupation were obtained from testing large groups of military inductees during World War II with the

A) Army Examinations Alpha and Beta.
B) Armed Forces Qualification Test.
C) Army General Classification Test.
D) Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

Question 67

Of the following, a finding in the area of individual differences that is best substantiated is the significant relationship between IQ and

A) nationality.
B) season of birth.
C) socioeconomic status.
D) urban vs. rural residence.

Question 68

The Rosenthal and Jacobson study of changes in the IQs of pupils in a South San Francisco elementary school was concerned with the effects of __________ on measures of ability and personality

A) pupil acceleration
B) standardized IQ tests
C) teachers? expectations
D) the track system

Question 69

Early studies of nationality differences in intelligence in the United States found higher IQs among immigrants from

A) Northern and Eastern Europe.
B) Northern and Western Europe.
C) Southern and Eastern Europe.
D) Southern and Western Europe.

Question 70

All of the following groups except __________ attain lower mean IQ scores than native-born white Americans on standardized intelligence tests.

A) American Indians
B) American Blacks
C) Japanese Americans
D) Mexican Americans

Question 71

Regarding the relationship of mental ability to race, it has been proven that

A) blacks are genetically inferior to whites in measured ability.
B) the mean score of blacks is usually lower than that of whites on intelligence tests that have not been culturally adjusted.
C) lower IQs in blacks and whites are due to heredity.
D) lower IQs in blacks and whites are due to environment.

Question 72

Research findings indicate that damage to the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain is more likely to affect performance on __________ tasks, whereas damage to the right cerebral hemisphere affects performance on __________ tasks.

A) divergent-inductive, convergent-deductive
B) mathematical-reasoning, mechanical-spatial
C) perceptual-clerical, linguistic-abstract
D) verbal-symbolic, perceptual-spatial

Question 73

Research results indicate that males tend to be superior to females in all of the following except

A) linguistic skills.
B) mathematical reasoning.
C) mechanical reasoning.
D) problem solving.

Question 74

PKU, Tay-Sachs disease, and galactosemia have in common the fact that they are all

A) accompanied by sudden decreases in IQ during adolescence.
B) forms of mental retardation produced by poor maternal diet during pregnancy.
C) genetically-based disorders accompanied by low intelligence.
D) the results of hormonal deficiencies prenatally or during infancy.

Question 75

Extensive investigations of the relationships of scores on intelligence tests to degree of kinship have found the highest correlation between the IQs of

A) fraternal twins reared apart.
B) fraternal twins reared together.
C) identical twins reared apart.
D) identical twins reared together.

Question 76

Studies which find that the correlation between the IQs of identical twins is between .77 and
)88 demonstrate that intelligence is the product of

A) environment.
B) heredity.
C) heredity and environment.
D) neither heredity nor environment.

Question 77

The heritability index (h₈), which Arthur Jensen estimated as approximately .80 for intelligence, is equal to

A) variance due to environment/variance due to heredity.
B) variance due to heredity/variance due to environment.
C) variance due to heredity/variance due to heredity and environment.
D) variance due to environment/variance due to heredity and environment.

Question 78

How is mental retardation diagnosed, and what diagnostic categories are advocated by various organizations? What behaviors are characteristic of individuals falling in each category?

Question 79

How are learning disabilities in school children defined, identified, and diagnosed by classroom teachers and psychologists?

Question 80

Discuss the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), including the five developmental domains for which criteria are listed in the Act, the meaning of learning disability defined in the Act, and the provision of Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for children diagnosed as learning disabled.