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Thinking and intelligence
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OverviewThought: Using what we know
Reasoning rationally
Barriers to reasoning rationally
Intelligence
The origins of intelligence
Animal minds
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Elements of cognitionConceptMental category that groups objects, relations, activities, abstractions, or qualities having common properties
Basic concepts have a moderate number of instances and are easier to acquire.
A prototype is an especially representative example.
PropositionA meaningful unit, built of concepts, expressing a single idea
SchemaAn integrated mental network of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations concerning a particular topic.
ImageA mental representation that resembles what it represents
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Your turn
“To get a hamburger, go to a fast-food restaurant and wait in line behind the counter. When it is your turn, tell the person by the cash register that you want a hamburger. He/she will tell you how much it costs. Give him/her enough money. In a few minutes someone behind the counter will give you a hamburger.” This kind of mental representation is best described as a:
1. Concept
2. Proposition
3. Schema
4. Image
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Your turn
“To get a hamburger, go to a fast-food restaurant and wait in line behind the counter. When it is your turn, tell the person by the cash register that you want a hamburger. He/she will tell you how much it costs. Give him/her enough money. In a few minutes someone behind the counter will give you a hamburger.” This kind of mental representation is best described as a:
1. Concept
2. Proposition
3. Schema
4. Image
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How conscious is thought?
Subconscious processesMental processes occurring outside of conscious awareness but accessible to consciousness when necessary
Nonconscious processesMental processes occurring outside of and not available to consciousness
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Types of conscious processes
Implicit learningWhen you have acquired knowledge about something without being aware how you did so, and without being able to state exactly what you have learned
MindlessnessMental inflexibility, inertia, and obliviousness in the present context
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Reasoning
The drawing of conclusions or inferences from observations, facts, or assumptions
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Algorithms and logic
Deductive reasoningA tool of formal logic in which a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises.
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Algorithms and logic
Inductive reasoningA tool of formal logic in which a conclusion probably follows from a set of premises.
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Heuristics and dialectical thinking
HeuristicA rule of thumb that suggests a course of action or guides problem solving but does not guarantee an optimal solution
Dialectical reasoningA process in which opposing facts or ideas are weighed and compared, with a view to determining the best solution or resolving differences
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Reflective judgment
Skills Question assumptions Evaluate and integrate evidence Relate evidence to theory or opinion Consider alternative interpretations Reach defensible conclusions Reassess conclusions in face of new evidence
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Stages of reflective judgment
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Thinking—Creativity• Divergent thinking (ability to produce many
alternatives or ideas) is linked to creativity (e.g., reordering these letters “grevenidt” to form many new words).
• Convergent thinking (attempting to find one correct answer) is linked to conventional, non-creative thinking (e.g., 2 + 2 = ?).
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Barriers to rational reasoning
Exaggerating the improbable
Avoiding loss
Biases due to mental set
The confirmation bias
The hindsight bias
The need for cognitive consistency
Overcoming our cognitive biases
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Exaggerating the improbable
Availability heuristicThe tendency to judge the probability of an event by how easy it is to think of examples.
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Avoiding loss
People try to minimize risks and losses when making decisions.
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Biases due to mental set
Mental setTendency to solve problems using procedures that worked before on similar problems
Mental sets make learning and problem solving more efficient.
Not helpful when problem calls for new approach
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The nine-dot problem
Connect all 9 dots.Use only 4 lines.Do not lift your pencil from the page after you begin drawing.
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The fairness bias
The Ultimatum Game: Your partner gets $10 and must decide how much to share with you. You can accept or reject the offer, but if you reject it, neither of you gets any money.It is rational to accept any offer: you always end up with more money if you accept than if you reject the offer.
In industrial societies, offers of 50% are typical.
Offers below 20–30% are commonly rejected.
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Thinking—Five Key Barriers to Problem Solving
• 2. Functional Fixedness (thinking of an object as only functioning in its usual way)
• Can you use these supplies to mount the candle on the wall so that it can be lit in a normal way without toppling over?
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Thinking—Five Key Barriers to Problem Solving
(Functional Fixedness Continued)
• To overcome functional fixedness, you must think of the matchbox, tacks, and candle all functioning in new ways.
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The hindsight bias
The tendency to overestimate one’s ability to have predicted an event once the outcome is known.The “I knew it all along” phenomenon
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The confirmation bias
The tendency to pay attention only to information that confirms one’s own beliefs
Test this rule: If a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other side.
Which 2 cards to turn over?
1. Cards 6 and 7
2. Cards J and 6
3. Cards J and 7
4. Cards E and 6
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Need for cognitive consistency
Cognitive dissonanceA state of tension produced when a person holds two contradictory cognitions or when a person’s belief is inconsistent with his/her behavior
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Conditions which may reduce dissonance
When you need to justify a choice or decision you freely made
When you need to justify behavior that conflicts with your view of yourself
When you need to justify the effort put into a decision or choice
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Justification of effort
The tendency of people to increase their liking for something they have worked hard for or suffered to attain
A common form of dissonance reduction
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Defining intelligence
IntelligenceAn inferred characteristic of an individual, usually defined as the ability to profit from experience, acquire knowledge, think abstractly, act purposefully, or adapt to changes in the environment
g factorA general intellectual ability assumed by many theorists to underlie specific mental abilities and talents
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What is Intelligence?
• Intelligence is generally considered to be the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt to new situations.
• Psychologists debate whether intelligence is one general ability or several specific abilities.
• More recently, some theorists have expanded the definition of intelligence to include social intelligence, especially emotional intelligence.
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Intelligence
• Intelligence is necessary for creativity, beyond that level, the correlation is weak.
• Psychologists have linked people’s intelligence to brain anatomy and functioning as well as to cognitive processing speed.
What Is Intelligence?
Historical views of intelligence:
1. Single ability or general factor called “g” (Spearman)
2. Multiple abilities (Thurstone and Guilford)
3. Single ability with two types of g, fluid and crystallized intelligence (Cattell)
4. Multiple abilities (Gardner and Sternberg)
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Intelligence Models• Gardner • Sternberg
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Sternberg’s triarchic theory
Componential (analytic)Comparing, analyzing, and evaluatingThis type of process correlates best with IQ
Experiential (creative)Inventing solution to new problemsTransfer skills to new situations
Contextual (practical)Applying the things you know to everyday contexts
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Four Aspects of Emotional Intelligence
• Distinct from academic intelligence is emotional intelligence. The four components of emotional intelligence:
(1) the ability to perceive emotions (to recognize them in faces, music, and stories),
(2) to understand emotions (to predict them and how they change and blend),
(3) to manage emotions (to know how to express them in varied situations), and
(4) to use emotions to enable adaptive or creative thinking.
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Four Aspects of Emotional Intelligence
• Those who are emotionally smart often succeed in careers, marriages, and parenting where other academically smarter (but emotionally less intelligent) people fail.
• Critics of the idea of emotional intelligence argue that we stretch the idea of intelligence too far when we apply it to emotion.
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Creativity and Intelligence • In general, people with high
intelligence scores do well on creativity tests. But beyond a score of about 120, the correlation between intelligence scores and creativity disappears.
• Studies suggest five other components of creativity: expertise, imaginative thinking skills, venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and a creative environment.
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Creativity and Intelligence
• The brain regions supporting the convergent thinking tested by intelligence tests (requiring a single correct answer) differ from those supporting the divergent thinking that imagines multiple solutions to a problem (such as words beginning with the letter s).
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Intelligence and Brain Anatomy
• The direction of the relationship between brain size and intelligence remains unclear.
• Larger brain size may enable greater intelligence but it is also possible that greater intelligence leads to experiences that exercise the brain and build more connections, thus increase its size.
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Correlations Between Perceptual Speed, Neural Processing Speed, and Intelligence.
• People who score high on intelligence tests tend to retrieve information from memory more quickly.
• Research also suggests that the correlation between intelligence score and the speed of taking in information tends to be about +.4 to +.5. Those who perceive quickly are especially likely to score higher on tests based on perceptual rather than verbal problem solving.
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Correlations Between Perceptual Speed, Neural Processing Speed, and Intelligence.
• The brain waves of highly intelligent people register a simple stimulus such as a flash of light more quickly and with greater complexity.
• The evoked brain response also tends to be slightly faster when people with high intelligence rather than low intelligence scores perform a simple task, such as pushing a button when an X appears on the screen.
Psychometrics
The measurement of mental abilities, traits, and processes
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The invention of IQ tests
Binet believed we should measure a child’s mental age.
Binet and Simon developed a test which measured memory, vocabulary, and perceptual discrimination.
Mental age was divided by chronological age and multiplied by 100 to get an intelligence quotient.
Now IQ scores are derived from norms provided for standardized intelligence tests.
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The psychometric approach
IQ scores distributed normallyBell-shaped curve
Very high and very low scores are rare.68% of people have IQ scores between 85 and 115.99.7% between 55 and 145
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Wechsler tests performance tasks
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Can IQ tests be culture free?
Attempts to make IQ tests culture fair or culture free have backfired because different cultures have different problem-solving strategies.
Culture affects a person’s. . .Attitude toward examsComfort in settings required for testingMotivationRapport with test providerCompetitivenessEase of independent problem solving
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Expectations and IQ
Scores are affected by expectations for performance
Expectations are shaped by stereotypes
Stereotype threatBurden of doubt one feels about his/her performance due to negative stereotypes about his/her group
Stereotype threat affects African-Americans, Latinos/Latinas, low-income people, women, and the elderly.
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Stereotype threat
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Domains of intelligenceEmotional intelligenceAbility to identify your own and other people’s emotions accuratelyAbility to express your emotions clearlyAbility to manage emotions in self and others
Appears to be biologically based (Damasio, 1994)
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Motivation and intelligence
Comparing 100 most successful men with 100 least successful, researchers found that motivation, not IQ, made the difference.
Motivation to work hard at intellectual tasks differs as a function of culture.
American children are as knowledgeable as Asian children on general skills.
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