thinking and intelligence 8. questions to consider: how does the mind represent information? how do...
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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.