THINKING, LANGUAGE &

INTELLIGENCEUnit 7B

THINKING Cognition

mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Concept mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas,

or people Prototype

mental image or best example of a category Algorithm

methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

The Friendship Algorithm

THINKING Heuristic

simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently Representativeness Availability

THINKINGUnscramble

S P L O Y O C H Y G

THINKING Insight

sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem

Confirmation Bias tendency to search for information that confirms

one’s preconceptions Fixation

inability to see a problem from a new perspective

THINKING Mental Set

tendency to approach a problem in a particular way

Functional Fixedness tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions

THINKING Overconfidence

tendency to be more confident than correct

tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgments

Framing how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

THINKING Belief Bias

the tendency for one’s preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning

sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid or valid conclusions seem invalid

Belief Perseverance clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis

on which they were formed has been discredited

LANGUAGE Language

our spoken, written, or gestured works and the way we combine them to communicate meaning

Phoneme in a spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

LANGUAGE Morpheme

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning

Grammar a system of rules in a language that enables us

to communicate with and understand others

LANGUAGE Semantics

the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language

also, the study of meaning Syntax

the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language

LANGUAGE Linguistic Determinism

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

ANIMAL THINKING AND LANGUAGE

Gestured Communication

ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING

Intelligence Test a method of assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them to those of others, using numerical scores

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?

Intelligenceability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE? Factor Analysis

statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test

used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one’s total score

General Intelligence (g) factor that Spearman and others believed

underlies specific mental abilities measured by every task on an intelligence test

ARE THERE MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES? Savant Syndrome

condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill

Daniel Tammet

ARE THERE MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES?

Social Intelligence the know-how involved in comprehending social situations and managing oneself successfully

Emotional Intelligence ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions

INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY

Creativity the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas expertise imaginative thinking skills venturesome personality intrinsic motivation creative environment

ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING

Mental Age a measure of intelligence test performance

devised by Binet chronological age that most typically

corresponds to a given level of performance

child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8

ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING

Stanford-Binet the widely used American revision of Binet’s original intelligence test revised by Terman at Stanford

University

ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) defined originally the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 IQ = ma/ca x 100)

on contemporary tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100

ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE

Aptitude Test a test designed to predict a person’s future performance

aptitude is the capacity to learn Achievement Test

a test designed to assess what a person has learned

ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) most widely used intelligence test

subtests verbal performance (nonverbal)

ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE: SAMPLE ITEMS FROM THE WAIS

From Thorndike and Hagen, 1977

VERBALGeneral Information Similarities Arithmetic ReasoningVocabularyComprehensionDigit Span

PERFORMANCE

Picture Completion Picture ArrangementBlock DesignObject AssemblyDigit-Symbol Substitution

ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE Standardization

defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested “standardization group”

Normal Curve the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes

the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes

most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes

THE NORMAL CURVE

ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE Reliability

the extent to which a test yields consistent results

assessed by consistency of scores on: two halves of the test alternate forms of the test retesting

Validity the extent to which a test measures or predicts

what it is supposed to

ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE

Content Validity the extent to which a test samples the

behavior that is of interest driving test that samples driving tasks

Criterion behavior (such as college grades) that a test

(such as the SAT) is designed to predict the measure used in defining whether the

test has predictive validity

ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE

Predictive Validity success with which a test predicts the

behavior it is designed to predict assessed by computing the correlation

between test scores and the criterion behavior

also called criterion-related validity

THE DYNAMICS OF INTELLIGENCE Mental Retardation

a condition of limited mental ability indicated by an intelligence score below 70 produces difficulty in adapting to the demands of

life varies from mild to profound

Down Syndrome retardation and associated physical disorders

caused by an extra chromosome in one’s genetic makeup

GENETIC INFLUENCES

The most genetically similar people have the most similar scores

GENETIC INFLUENCES

Heritability the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes

variability depends on range of populations and environments studied

GENETIC INFLUENCES