Thinking, Language & Intelligence

1. Thinking, Language & Intelligence Unit 7B

2. 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

3. Thinking • Heuristic • simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently • Representativeness • Availability

4. Thinking Unscramble S P L O Y O C H Y G

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. Language • Linguistic Determinism • Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

13. Animal Thinking and Language • Gestured Communication

14. 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

15. What is Intelligence? • Intelligence • ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

16. 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

17. Are There Multiple Intelligences? • Savant Syndrome • condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill Daniel Tammet

18. 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

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

20. 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

21. Origins of Intelligence Testing • Stanford-Binet • the widely used American revision of Binet’s original intelligence test • revised by Terman at Stanford University

22. 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

23. 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

24. Assessing Intelligence • Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) • most widely used intelligence test • subtests • verbal • performance (nonverbal)

25. PERFORMANCE VERBAL General Information Similarities Arithmetic Reasoning Vocabulary Comprehension Digit Span Picture Completion Picture Arrangement Block Design Object Assembly Digit-Symbol Substitution From Thorndike and Hagen, 1977 Assessing Intelligence: Sample Items from the WAIS

26. 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

27. The Normal Curve

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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

32. Genetic Influences • The most genetically similar people have the most similar scores

33. Genetic Influences • Heritability • the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes • variability depends on range of populations and environments studied

34. Genetic Influences