Psychology: Thinking, language, and Intelligence

Learning Disorders

Dyslexia: A learning disorder characterized by impaired ability to read.

Intellectual disability: A generalized deficit or impairment in intellectual and social skills. 

dysgraphia: have a learning disability that results in a struggle to write legibly

Nature & Nurture

IQ scores of identical twins tend to be more similar than those between other siblings, but whether identical twins are raised together or apart also has a bearing on how similar their IQ scores are likely to be.

Evidence indicates that genetic and environmental factors interact in complex ways in shaping intelligence.

heritability: The degree to which heredity accounts for variations on a given trait within a population.

 

Increasing evidence points to environmental, rather than genetic, factors in explaining racial or ethnic group differences in IQ

 

Learning Theorists: see language as developing according to laws of learning. refer to concepts of imitation, observation, and reinforcement.

Nativist theory: innate factors which make up children's nature cause children to attend to and acquire language in certain ways

Psycholinguistic theory: the view that language learning involves an interaction between environmental factors and an inborn tendency to acquire language

Language acquisition device (LAD): neural "prewiring" that facilitates the child's learning of grammar

 

Intellectual functioning appears to be influenced by interaction of genetic factors, health, personality, and sociocultural factors

Thinking, language, and Intelligence

Thinking

The process of mentally representing and manipulating information. mental image A mental picture or representation of an object or event.

 

cognitive psychology: The branch of psychology that focuses on such mental processes as thinking, problem solving, decision making, and use of language.

 

Creativity: a form of thinking in which we combine information in new ways that provide useful solutions to problems. 

•  George de Mestral created Velcro
•  Arthur Fry created adhesive used on post it notes

divergent thinking: The ability to conceive of new ways of viewing situations and new uses for familiar objects.

• Tests that tap divergent thinking were originated by psychologist J. P. Guilford and his colleagues.
• The Alternate Uses Test: instructs subjects to list as many possible uses as they can for a common object. The person’s score is based on the number of acceptable responses the person is able to generate

convergent thinking: The attempt to narrow down a range of alternatives to converge on the one correct answer to a problem. 

 

 cognitive processes 

•  An analogy is a comparison between two things based on their similar features or properties
• conceptual combinations: Combinations of two or more concepts into one concept, resulting in the creation of a novel idea or application. 
• conceptual expansion: Expanding familiar concepts by applying them to new uses.

brainstorming: A method of promoting divergent thinking by encouraging people to propose as many solutions to a problem as possible without fear of being judged negatively by others, no matter how farfetched their proposals may be.
 

Apply skills of problem solving to become a creative problem solver include adopting a questioning attitude, gathering information, avoiding getting stuck in mental sets, generating alternatives, sleeping on it, and test out possible solutions. 

 

mental image: a mental picture or representation of an object or event

• Many of Albert Einstein's insights derived from the use of mental imaging in the form of thought experiments

 

concepts: Mental categories for classifying events, objects, and ideas on the basis of their common features or properties.

• helps us respond more quickly to events by reducing the need for new learning each time we encounter a familiar object or event
•  helps us to make sense of the world and prepares us to anticipate or predict events.

Types of Concepts

logical concepts: Concepts with clearly defined rules for membership.

natural concepts: Concepts with poorly defined or fuzzy rules for membership

Problem solving: a cognitive process in which we employ mental strategies to solve problems. 

Problem Solving Strategies

algorithm: A step-by-step set of rules that will always lead to a correct solution to a problem.

• Systematic random search: an algorithm for solving problems in which each possible solution is tested according to a particular set of rules

heuristic: A rule of thumb for solving problems or making judgments or decisions. 

• means–end heuristic: we evaluate our current situation and compare it with the end result we want to achieve. We then develop a plan to reduce the distance between the two, step by step.
• backward-working heuristic: we start with a possible solution and then work backward to see if the data support the solution. 
• creating subgoals: we break a larger problem down into smaller, more manageable problems.

Problem Solving Road Blocks

mental set: The tendency to rely on strategies that worked in similar situations in the past but that may not be appropriate to the present situation.

functional fixedness: The tendency to perceive objects as limited to the customary functions they serve.

decision making: A form of problem solving in which we must select a course of action from among the available alternatives.

• Motivated Reasoning: making decisions and judgments on the basis of emotion rather than careful evaluation of all the available evidence
• Anchoring and adjustment heuristic: a decision making heuristic in which a presumption or first estimate serves as a cognitive anchor; as we receive additional information, we make adjustments but tend to remain in the proximity of the anchor

confirmation bias: The tendency to maintain allegiance to an initial hypothesis despite strong evidence to the contrary.

representativeness heuristic: A rule of thumb for making a judgment that assumes a given sample is representative of the larger population from which it is drawn.
availability heuristic: The tendency to judge events as more likely to occur when information pertaining to them comes readily to mind.

insight: in Gestalt psychology, a sudden perception of relationships among elements of the mentally represented elements of a problem that permits its solution

incubation: in problem solving, a process that may sometimes occur when we stand back from a frustrated problem for a while and the solution "suddenly" appears

Language

 A system of communication composed of symbols (words, hand signs, and so on) that are arranged according to a set of rules (grammar) to form meaningful expressions. 

Language is a communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another.

 

Components of Language:

Lexicon: refers to the words of a given language

grammar: The set of rules governing how symbols in a given language are used to form meaningful expressions. 

phonemes: The basic units of sound in a language.

morphemes: The smallest units of meaning in a language.

syntax: The rules of grammar that determine how words are ordered within sentences or phrases to form meaningful expressions.

semantics: The set of rules governing the meaning of words.

 

Language Development

infinite creativity: the capacity to combine words into original sentences

displacement: the quality of language that permits one to communicate information about objects and events in another time and place

language acquisition device:  Noam Chomsky’s concept of an innate, prewired mechanism in the brain that allows children to acquire language naturally.

linguistic relativity hypothesis: The proposition that the language we use determines how we think and how we perceive the world (also called the Whorfian hypothesis).

• Created by Benjamin Whorf

 

Development of Grammar

holophrases: initial utterances of children; a single word used to express complex meaning

Telegraphic speech: end of second year, two word sentences; cut out "unnecessary" words

Overregularization: the application of regular grammatical rules for forming inflections to irregular verbs or nouns

Intelligence

The capacity to think and reason clearly and to act purposefully and effectively in adapting to the environment and pursuing one’s goals.

 

Emotional intelligence: the ability to recognize and manage emotions

 

Measuring Intelligence

 

Alfred Binet  & Theodore Simon 

• mental age: A representation of a person’s intelligence based on the age of people who are capable of performing at the same level of ability. 
  •  subtracted the child’s mental age from his or her actual age

 

German psychologist, William Stern

• intelligence quotient (IQ): A measure of intelligence based on performance on tests of mental abilities, expressed as a ratio between one’s mental age and chronological age or derived from the deviation of one’s scores from the norms for those of one’s age group
  •  Stern divided mental age by chronological age, yielding a “mental quotient.” 

 

• Adopted by Binet & Simon

 

Henry Goddard

• brought the Binet-Simon intelligence test to the United States, also held another important distinction. He briefly served as coach of the USC football team. He remains to this day the only undefeated head coach in USC history.

 

Stanford University psychologist, Lewis Terman

• adapted the Binet-Simon test for American use, adding many items of his own and establishing criteria, or norms, for comparing an individual’s scores with those of the general population. The revised test, known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (SBIS), was first published in 1916. 

norms: The standards used to compare an individual’s performance on a test with the performance of others.

standardization: The process of establishing norms for a test by administering the test to large numbers of people who constitute a standardization sample.

 

David Wechsler

Wechsler scales: group test questions into a number of subtests. Each subtest measures different intellectual tasks. Highlights individual weaknesses and strengths.

 

Characteristics of a Good Intelligence test

reliability: The stability of test scores over time.

validity: The degree to which a test measures what it purports to measure.

• predictive validity: the degree to which test scores accurately predict future behavior or performance

culture-fair tests: Tests designed to eliminate cultural biases. 

mainstreaming: The practice of placing children with special needs in a regular classroom environment.

 

Theories of Intelligence

 

Spearman’s “g"

 British psychologist Charles Spearman observed that people who scored well on one test of mental ability tended to score well on other tests. He believed that there is an underlying general factor of intelligence that allows people to do well on mental tests.  He also believed that intelligence includes specific abilities that, along with “g,” contribute to performance on individual tests

 

Spearman’s “s"

Spearman's symbol for specific factors, or s factors, which he believed accounted for individual abilities

 

Psychologist Louis L. Thurstone

• did not believe that any one large, dominating factor like “g” could account for intelligence. Rather, his studies pointed to a set of seven primary mental abilities: verbal comprehension, numerical ability, memory, inductive reasoning, perceptual speed, verbal fluency, and spatial relations 

 

 

Psychologist Howard Gardner

 

Multiple Intelligence Theory:

• rejects the view that there is a single entity called “intelligence.” Rather, he believes there exist different types of intelligence, multiple  intelligences, that vary from person to person. Gardner identified eight different intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist
• According to Gardner’s model of multiple intelligences, we possess separate intelligences that we rely on to perform different types of tasks.

 

Psychologist Robert Sternberg

• emphasizes how we bring together different aspects of our intelligence to meet the demands we face in our daily lives. Sternberg proposes a triarchic theory of intelligence, which holds that intelligence has three aspects: analytic (academic ability), creative ( Cope with situations and find many solutions to problems), and practical("street smarts").