mental age

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mental age

n. Abbr. MA

A measure of intellectual development as determined by an intelligence test, expressed as the age at which that test score is typically attained. It was formerly used in calculating intelligence quotients but is now generally used only for children and people with intellectual disability.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

mental age

(Psychology) psychol the mental ability of a child, expressed in years and based on a comparison of his test performance with the performance of children with a range of chronological ages. See also intelligence quotient

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

men′tal age′

the level of mental ability of an individual, usu. a child, expressed as the chronological age of the average individual at this level of ability, as determined by an intelligence test.

[1910–15]

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Noun

mental age - the level of intellectual development as measured by an intelligence test

age - how long something has existed; "it was replaced because of its age"

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et... mentale

mental age

n → età f inv mentale

References in periodicals archive ?

First, and most obviously, this level of intellectual functioning is far broader than that contemplated under the Supreme Court's "profound and severe theory." (249) The definition of idiocy that the Court used--the definition that emerged from Goddard's IQ breakdown in the eugenics movement--held that idiots were people who "could not develop full speech and had mental ages below three." (250) This is plainly not the severity of disability contemplated by Hale's fourteen-year-old rule.

Other capital cases similarly cite defendants' low mental ages, but courts often struggle to determine the legal relevance of such evidence.

Despite the paucity of the colonial trial records, there is evidence that the notion of a mental age comparison--equating idiocy with childhood--was conceptually intuitive for the colonists.

A reassessment of common law protections for "idiots"

There are many reasons for this disparity between our physical and mental ages. This may happen due to medical disorders, or just be literally ' in our heads.' Anti- ageing experts say that while getting older is inevitable, ageing doesn't have to be.

You are not alone if your mental age does not match your chronological one.

When the child in you refuses to grow up

Last year the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College, Dublin, did a similar experiment on 3,000 people aged 65 and over and found that just 10 sessions of brain power training made their mental ages younger by up to 14 years.