Thinking and Intelligence

8

Questions to Consider:

How Does the Mind Represent Information?

How Do We Make Decisions and Solve Problems?

How Do We Understand Intelligence?

How Does the Mind Represent Information?

Mental Images Are Analogical Representations

Concepts Are Symbolic Representations

Schemas Organize Useful Information about Environments

Learning Objectives

Explain the difference between analogical and symbolic representations and provide examples of each.

Describe how concepts and scripts can positively and negatively affect how we think.

How Does the Mind Represent Information?

Our thoughts consist of mental representations of the objects and events we learn about in our environments

The two basic types of representation are analogical and symbolic

Mental Images Are Analogical Representations

Thoughts can take the form of visual images Analogical representations have some

characteristics of actual objects Mental visual imagery involves the same

underlying brain processes involved in seeing the external world

Symbolic knowledge affects the ways we use visual imagery

(a) Analogical representations, such as this picture of a violin, have some characteristics of the objects they represent. (b) Symbolic representations, such as the word violin, are abstract and do not have relationships to the objects.

Concepts Are Symbolic Representations

Concepts are mental representations of subtypes of broad knowledge categories The concept of cat, for example, is a subcategory

of animals

Many categories have fuzzy boundaries We have no simple way of telling a cat from a dog or a

rat, for example, since conceptually they are similar (four-legged, hairy animals)

Concepts Are Symbolic Representations

Concepts may be formed by defining either attributes, prototypes, or exemplars

Defining attribute model Concepts characterized by a list of features necessary to

determine if an object is in a category Prototype model

Best example for that category Exemplar model

Any concept has no single best representation

We group objects into categories according to the objects’ shared properties.

In the defining attribute model, concepts are organized hierarchically, such that they can be superordinate or subordinate to each other. For example, horns and stringed instruments are subordinate categories of the superordinate category of musical instruments.

According to the prototype model, some items within a group or class are more representative (or prototypical) of that category than are other items within that group or class.

Schemas Organize Useful Information about Environments

We develop schemas based on our real-life experiences

Scripts are schemas that allow us to infer about the sequence of events in a given context

Scripts and schemas can be problematic Gender roles Dictated by culture

How Do We Make Decisions and Solve Problems?

People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics

Critical Thinking Skill: Understanding How the Availability and Representativeness Heuristics Can Affect Thinking

Problem Solving Achieves Goals

Learning Objectives

Distinguish among reasoning, decision making, and problem solving.

Explain how confirmation bias, affective forecasting, and framing can lead to errors in decision making.

People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

People often use deductive and inductive reasoning to draw valid conclusions

Deductive reasoning is from the general to the specific

Inductive reasoning is from the specific to the general

People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning:

Use logic to draw specific conclusions under certain assumptions

Syllogisms are formal structures of deduction For example: If all psychology textbooks are fun to

read and this is a psychology textbook, then this textbook will be fun to read

People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

Inductive Reasoning:

Determine the validity of a conclusion about a specific instance based on general premises For example: If you read many psychology textbooks

and find them interesting, you can infer that psychology books generally are interesting

Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics

In decision making, people use rules to choose among alternatives

Normative models (expected utility theory) view humans as optimal decision makers Always selecting the outcome that yields the

greatest reward

Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics

Descriptive models highlight reasoning shortcomings

Mental shortcuts (i.e., heuristics) that sometimes lead to faulty decisions

Algorithm vs. heuristic

Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics

Framing:

How information is presented can alter how people perceive it

We select information to confirm our conclusions, to avoid loss or regret or both, and to be consistent with a problem’s framing

Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics

Affective forecasting:

People are not good at knowing how they will feel about something in the future

People do not realize how poor they are at predicting their own feelings

Potential losses affect decision making more than potential gains do.

Critical Thinking Skill

Understanding how the availability and representativeness heuristics can affect thinking Availability heuristic is the tendency to rely on

information easy to retrieve Representativeness heuristic is used when we

base a decision on the extent to which each option reflects what we already believe

Being aware of heuristics we rely on can help us make more rational decisions

Problem Solving Achieves Goals

Problem solving involves reaching a goal Usually broken down into subgoals Insights come suddenly, when we see elements

of a problem in new ways Wolfgang Kohler Norman Maier

Restructuring aids solutions; mental sets and functional fixedness inhibit solutions

The Tower of Hanoi Problem Exercise

Problem Solving Achieves Goals

Conscious strategies help problem solve when we get stuck Working backward Finding an appropriate analogy

The paradox of choice—too much choice can be frustrating, unsatisfying, and ultimately debilitating Barry Schwartz

How Do We Understand Intelligence? Intelligence Is Assessed with Psychometric Tests Critical Thinking Skill: Recognizing and Avoiding

Reification General Intelligence Involves Multiple

Components Intelligence Is Associated with Cognitive

Performance Genes and Environment Influence Intelligence Group Differences in Intelligence Have Multiple

Determinants

Learning Objectives

List various ways of assessing intelligence, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Explain the nature/nurture controversy, and cite evidence for both sides.

Describe stereotype threat and explain how it may be a threat to validity.

How Do We Understand Intelligence?

Intelligence is humans’ ability to reason, solve problems, think quickly and efficiently, and adapt to environmental challenges

Intelligence Is Assessed with Psychometric Tests

The psychometric approach reveals multiple components to intelligence but also a central dimension that has been called general intelligence (g)

The Binet-Simon Intelligence Test Mental age

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

As discussed in Chapter 2, the statistical concept of standard deviation indicates how far people are from an average. The standard deviation for most IQ tests is 15, such that approximately 68 percent of all people fall within 1 standard deviation (they score from 85 to 115) and just over 95 percent of people fall within 2 standard deviations (they score from 70 to 130).

Intelligence Is Assessed with Psychometric Tests

The question of intelligence tests’ validity persists, and one significant criticism is cultural bias

All intelligence tests have been criticized on the basis of cultural bias

Other ways of assessing intelligence also have the potential for bias, as when interview questions are ambiguous.

Because it does not rely on verbal knowledge, this test is not culturally biased—or is it?

Critical Thinking Skill

Recognizing and Avoiding Reification

Reification is the tendency to think about complex traits as though they have a single cause and an objective reality

It’s important to recognize complexity in complex concepts

General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components

Charles Spearman concluded that a general intelligence component exists (g)

Fluid intelligence is involved when people solve novel problems

Crystallized intelligence is accumulated knowledge retrieved from memory

General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components

Multiple intelligences:

Howard Gardner Include linguistic, mathematical/logical, spatial,

bodily kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal abilities

Robert Sternberg has proposed that there are three types of intelligence: analytical, creative, and practical

General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components

Emotional Intelligence (EQ):

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand emotions and use them appropriately

Intelligence Is Associated with Cognitive Performance

Speed of mental processing (e.g., reaction time, inspection time) is part of intelligence

The relationship of working memory to intelligence seems to involve attention

The size and activity of the brain’s frontal lobes are related to qualities of intelligence But since brain size is altered by experience, we

cannot infer cause from this correlation

Genes and Environment Influence Intelligence

Behavioral genetics: Genes help determine intelligence but it’s

unclear to what extent

Environmental factors: Nutrition, parenting, schooling, and intellectual

opportunities seem to establish where IQ falls within the genetic limits

Shown are average IQ correlations for family, adoption, and twin study designs. Siblings raised together show more similarity than siblings raised apart. Parent and child are more similar when the parent raises the child than when the child is raised by someone else. The highest correlations are found among mono-zygotic twins, whether they are raised in the same household or not. Overall, the greater the degree of genetic relation, the greater the correlation in intelligence.

There is a clear correlation between birth order and IQ: Firstborns have an average IQ of 103. Second-born children have an average IQ very close to 100, except if the firstborn child has died, in which case the average IQ for second- born children is 103. Third-born children have an average IQ of 99, except if one of the older siblings has died (the third-borns’ average is 100) or if both older siblings have died (the third-borns’ average is 103). Apparently, having two older siblings grow up in the same household lowers the third child’s IQ.

Group Differences in Intelligence Have Multiple Determinants

One of the most contentious areas in psychology concerns group differences in intelligence.

Gender: Females and males score differently on different

measures of intelligence Some measures favor males and others favor

females There is no overall sex difference in intelligence.

Group Differences in Intelligence Have Multiple Determinants

Race:Differences in intelligence across races cannot be

assumed to be based on genetics

Important differences across racial groups’ environments are more likely to affect scores on intelligence tests.

Many scientists question the idea of race as referring to anything more than a small number of human differences, such as skin color

Stereotype threat may lead black students to perform poorly.