Transcript Slide 1

AP PSYCH UNIT 4
MODS 29-33
Thinking, Language, & Intelligence
AP Unit 4 (mods 29-33):
Thinking, language, and intelligence
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Thinking=cognition consists of:
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processing
understanding
remembering
communicating
Neuropsychologists are concerned with cellular processes of
transduction, neural communication, functions of different regions of
the brain related to cognition at both unconscious and conscious
levels
Cognitive psychologists are concerned with:
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how one’s brain juggles past experience, present, and future possibilities
how people “file” or process new information and retrieve it later
how people problem solve
how people communicate and use language to think
Developmental Cognitive Theories: Piaget
 children develop schemas (like a
sorting/filing system in the
brain—each folder has a set of
rules for organizing and
interacting with sensory stimuli)
by
 exploring, manipulating
objects, listening, observing,
tasting, etc
 assimilating (filing new
concepts and objects into
existing schema) and
 accommodating (making
changes to schema to
assimilate things that don’t
quite fit existing schema;
developing subsets of
categories within hierarchies)
AGE
18
17
Formal Operational
16
abstract, able to
test hypothesis
15
14
13
12
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10
9
8
Concrete
Operational
7
Able to manipulate symbols,
perform basic observations,
principle of conservation
emerges
6
5
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4
3
2
1
Birth
Pre-Operational
starting to learn symbols, very
egocentric view of world
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Sensorimotor
all learning enters via sensory
stimuli
lack object permanence until
about 8 mo.
New findings challenge some of Piaget’s theory
Sensorimotor stage:
Piaget asserted babies have no concept of object permanence until 8 mo.
•New studies of brain show even younger babies may notice something has been
hidden
•Karen Wynn’s experiments upend Piaget by showing even infants have concepts
of math; show surprise and longer attention when math rules violated
Preoperational stage:
•Piaget asserts thinking is egocentric YET candles in the crayon box experiment
(AKA “false belief test” click for video) demonstrates children develop “theory of
mind” by age 4
•Alison Gopnik’s study “Goldfish or broccoli?” shows even babies may have a
theory of mind! (see video snippet) start @ 1:40
•DeLoache study shows complex symbolic thinking by age 3 (a couple years earlier
than Piaget would have thought) when kids able to pass hidden object in model
room test
Formal operational
•New studies indicate even young children (thought to be preoperational) engage in
testing hypotheses See video snippet of Alison Gopnik’s work (start @ 10 min)
Prototypes
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Prototypes=schema mental representations into
which we file “like” concepts, objects
Corneille “ethnically mixed faces” study
demonstrates how people shift their memories to fit
preexisting prototypes
 e.g.
shown an image of a photo-shopped Caucasian
man that has been 30% blended with a Japanese man,
a person will place the image in a Caucasian prototype
and later remember the image as more Caucasian than
it really was
How do people solve problems?
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Trial and error
Algorithms: step-by-step solution
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Heuristics: solving problems via short-cuts due to past
learnings
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flaw: time consuming, laborious
flaw: often inaccurate!
Tversky & Kahneman (1974) identified 2 kinds of flawed
thinking: representativeness and availability heuristics
Insight: “Ah ah!” moments
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Jung-Beeman, Kounnious, Bowden have studied fMRIs of people
to determine insight takes place in right temporal lobe
Why is our reasoning so often flawed?
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Confirmation Bias: The Fox News vs. CNN rule
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People tune out information that does not coincide with
their own beliefs and seek out information that
confirms they are right
Functional fixation:
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People find it hard to think outside of the box. We are used to an
object being used in a certain way (having a specific function) that we
fail to see other uses of the object
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e.g. I really need a paper clip to fasten some papers together. I only have a
hair pin. I do not see how hair pin could do same thing because my brain assigns
hair pin only one function—holding back hair
Mental set
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We fixate on solutions that have worked for us in the past and are
unable to approach problems in novel ways
Why is our reasoning so often flawed?
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Representativeness heuristic
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causes us to fail to consider statistical and other relevant
information
we rely on our prototypes based on past experience to
judge the likelihood of something
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See video snippet: how media creates biased representativeness
heuristic for criminals and terrorists
Availability heuristic
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We falsely judge the likelihood of an event as more likely
IF that kind of event is easily recalled by memory
often tied to emotionally vivid events
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e.g. Person may believe likelihood of being attacked by a shark
while in ocean is very high because news keeps showing stories
about it happening – person is ignoring fact that millions of
others swam in ocean that day that were NOT attacked by a
shark!
Why is our reasoning so often flawed? New science of neuroeconomics (behavioral
economics)
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Anchoring heuristic, present bias, fear of losing video snippet (start at
12:30)
Framing matters (Glass half full or empty?)
 We interpret the meaning of exact same data differently, depending
upon how it is framed
 When deciding whether or not to take a prescribed medication, which
would you rather hear?
10% of people taking the medicine experience severe discomfort
B.
90% of the people taking the medicine experience no side effects
Would you be more likely to buy a skirt for $100 that’s been marked down
from $150 or a skirt for $100?
Would you be more likely to buy the $50 microwave, the $150 microwave, or
the $500 microwave if they are all sitting right net to each other on the shelf?
A.
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Why is our reasoning so often flawed?
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Overconfidence
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Kahneman and Tversky (1979) quiz
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Answers:
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1. 3.6 million sq miles
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2. 19.7 million
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3. 385 deaths
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4. 219,000 female engineers
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5. 441 nuclear plants
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Leads us to stubbornly insist we are right and fail to investigate alternative possibilities
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Leads us to underestimate the difficulty or amount of time a task will take/overestimate
our own abilities
Why is our reasoning so often flawed? (note how these next 2 are similar to
overconfidence and confirmation bias)
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Belief bias—our own opinions are “clearly more
logical!”
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are more likely to see the flaws of an argument or
statement that disagrees with our own beliefs and less
likely to see flaws of an argument that concurs with our
beliefs
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Belief perseverance
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ignore evidence and arguments that go against our
beliefs and in fact become more steadfast in our
opinion when presented with arguments against it
Language: How humans get meaning from sounds
_______: the rules
for the order of
words a sentence
within
__________ : the rules
for making morphemes
change their meaning
(e.g. creating past
tense)
___________: most
basic sounds
including consonant
blends, vowel blends
e.g. bl, e, st, oo
English has 40
_____________: smallest
unit of language that has
meaning
includes prefixes, suffixes,
words
Simplified typical progression of human of
language acquisition
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Birth-3 months vocalization is created by crying and cooing
3 months-12 months babbling in progressively more refined ways
 random
 rhythmic
 imitation of “mother tongue”
12 months-18 months holophrastic stage; receptive language
improving
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18 months-2 years telegraphic stage
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2 years + productive language improving
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overgeneralization/overregularization may appear from age 2early elementary age
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adding “ed” to irregular verbs for past tense; calling all 4 legged furry
creatures dogs
Simplified
Simplifiedtypical
typicalprogression
progressionofofhuman
humanofof
language
languageacquisition
acquisition(cont.)
(cont.)
How many words and what kind?
what is most common body language/gesture?
How many words? a. 150
b. 300 c. 450
How many words now?
What is “favorite” (most used) word?
About how many words now?
a. approx. 2000
b. about 3000
c. about 5000
d. more than 1,000
Language Theories
With which idea do you more agree for how/why people acquire
language?
A.We learn language through imitation and social reinforcement.
B.We learn language due to an innate brain mechanism (AKA a
language acquisition device) that once stimulated by the sound of
others’ speech is designed to pick up grammar rules.
C.Both A and B.
Behaviorist perspective: Skinner, Watson
Noam Chomsky’s theory
Provide an example to support Whorf’s assertion, the linguistic relativity
hypothesis, that language limits thinking.
What other name is this theory given?
•linguistic determinism
Statistical analysis studies
Thinking in images
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brain image studies show that the same part of
brain that is active when person DOING an activity
is also active by merely imagining doing it or
watching someone else do it
visualization before a performance can enhance
performance quality
visualize the process that will get you there; NOT
the end goal/reward
 soccer
coaching example
What is going on in the brain when
we speak or listen to language?
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Video short brain imaging related to language
(start at 1:00; stop at 5:43)
Video short #2: noticing mistakes in language (start
at 12:50)
What can we learn about language acquisition and the nature or
nurture question by studying deaf children and other animals?
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window for cochlear implant begins to close at age 4 (oral speech quality
diminishes)
deaf children exposed to sign after age 2 show less activity in right
hemisphere and less fluency than those exposed from birth
deaf children “babble” with gestures
academic achievement and intelligence test scores are higher for dear
children exposed to sign at early age
Chimps and gorillas have been taught to use communication boards with
Kanzi
demonstrating receptive language
icons for words and sign language to communicate
The Hart-Risley study (1995): The “30-million word gap”
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Longitudinal study of language exposure for children from birth to age 3 in
3 socioeconomic cohorts: professional, working class, or poverty
Findings?
 Huge difference in amount of words heard on a daily basis per hour
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professional families utter approx 2,100 words/hour
working class families—1,200 words/hour
welfare families—620 words/hour
So what?
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high correlation between vocabulary size at age three and
language test scores at ages nine and ten in areas of vocabulary,
listening, syntax, and reading comprehension. Question: How does
this relate to Whorf’s linguistic determinism theory?
Intelligence: What is it, what shapes it, how is it measured, and who
cares?
Discussion question: What does it mean to be “smart”?
A. crystallized vs. fluid intelligence: What’s the difference and how does
one acquire them?
a) crystallized= verbal skills and knowledge base
b) fluid = the speed of reasoning skills
B. divergent vs. convergent thinking: Which is more important or
“smarter”?
a) divergent: creative, thinking outside the box, experimentation
(Think Einstein trying to understand the nature of the universe and
energy)
b) convergent: synthesizing and analyzing all available information
to draw conclusions (Think Sherlock Homes trying to answer “Who
done it?”)
c) Intelligence tests, LSAT, GRE measure convergent thinking
C. book smart vs. street smart
D. emotional/social smart vs. ideas smart
Intelligence: What is it, what shapes it, how is it measured, and who
cares?
What’s your IQ?
•1 to 24 - Profound mental disability
•25 to 39 - Severe mental disability
Retardation = score lower than 70
•40 to 54 - Moderate mental disability
AND difficulty living independently
•55 to 69 - Mild mental disability
•1% of population
•70 to 84 - Borderline mental disability
•More boys than girls are
•85 to 114 - Average intelligence
mentally retarded
•115 to 129 - Above average; bright
•Causes? Chromosomal
•130 to 144 - Moderately gifted
abnormalities, brain injuries,
•145 to 159 - Highly gifted
exposure to toxins/teratogens
•160 to 179 - Exceptionally gifted (Genius level)
•180 and up - Profoundly gifted
How do we come up with the numbers? 30-minute VIDEO: Understanding
Psychology—Testing and Intelligence
How do we come up with IQ numbers?
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Alfred Binet—grandfather of intelligence testing
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mental age—the age that corresponds to level of cognitive performance on
certain tasks
 e.g. an 8-year-old should be able to solve certain types of reasoning
problems; an 8-year-old who surpasses this level of reasoning might
have a mental age of 10 or 11 while an 8-year-old who is unable to
perform at this level might have mental age of 6 or 7
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How do we determine mental age?
 Devise problem solving/reasoning measurement tools to determine a
person’s mental age and how well he/she will do in school
 Anyone see any problems with this?
Lewis Terman—father of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test
WIlliam Stern designs formula to determine a person’s intelligence in
comparison to the general population at that age: IQ (mental age/
chronological age) * 100
More ways to come up with IQ numbers...
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Weschler tests—most widely used today to determine intelligence
 WAIS (for adults)
 WISC (ages 6-16)
 WPPSI (ages 4-6)
Each Weschler test consists of subtests that reveal a person’s mental abilities
(via a deviation IQ score based on normal curve) in the following areas:
 verbal comprehension
 perceptual organization
 working memory
 processing speed
Today there are dozens of different IQ tests
available
How do we know a score has any value?
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Is the test standardized (questions deemed too easy or hard thrown out)
and/or has it been restandardized (made harder to account for increases in
scores)?
Do the scores fall onto a normal curve of distribution? (For IQ, 1 standard of
deviation is 15 points—this means majority of population (68%) tests between
85 and 115 on IQ tests)
What was the purpose of the test?
 measuring fluid or crystallized intelligence?
 measuring achievement (mastery of knowledge or skill) or aptitude (ability
to learn something new)?
 was it a speed test or a power test?
How do we know a score has any value?
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Consider this: SAT and GRE have approx. +.5
and +.3 predictive validity for success in college
and grad school
Does the test have reliability?
 same test yields same results (test-retest, alternate- or equivalent-form, or
split-half)
Does the test have validity? Is it testing what it purports to be measuring?
 content (does it test all relevant content? e.g. if you were taking a test to
see how much you have mastered all of the disciplines of psychology, it
needs to test you on more than Freudian theory)
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face (is it measuring something that is relevant to what the score is trying to predict
about the test taker?)
criterion-related
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predictive (does the test accurately predict a person’s future abilities in a career or
academic studies?)
concurrent (accurately measures what a person is like now)
construct (high positive correlation between predictive results of one test and another
that has already been proven accurate)
Why is intelligence testing controversial?
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Danger or reifying IQ
 People see score on 1 test as defining a person’s intelligence
Possible cultural bias in tests
 People try to make correlation between race and IQ without considering
socioeconomic factors
 stereotype threat studies demonstrate that black test takers and female
test takers perform differently based on race/gender of test giver,
race/gender of other test takers, expectations of how their race/gender
will perform on the test
Eugenicists used IQ scores and idea that IQ is heritable to justify
sterilization of low IQ people
Scores do not take into account different forms of intelligence (see theories
of intelligence on next slide)
Theories of intelligence:
academic/cognitive & social/emotional
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Charles Spearman
 g (general intelligence)—general level of intelligence that underlies all levels of
intelligence (mathematical, verbal, spatial, etc)
L.L. Thurstone 7 clusters of primary mental abilities
Guilford: there are100 mental abilities (invented terms convergent and divergent
thinking)
Gardner’s multiple intelligences
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8 levels of intelligence including not traditional measures of movement, musical, inter- and intrapersonal
Sternberg’s triarchic
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analytical, creative, and practical (street smart)
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Salovey and Myer, Goleman EQ (emotional intelligence)
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Why are EQ and MI controversial in the field of intelligence theory?
Is intelligence nature or nurture?
How heritable is IQ and why is this a controversial question?
• Twin studies show higher similarity in IQ scores for monozygotic twins
than for dizygotic twins—does this mean IQ is highly heritable? (That
most of the difference between any 2 people in IQ scores is due to
differences in their genes?)
• Flynn effect: Over the past 100 years, IQ scores within 20 countries
have increased between 10-25 points (e.g. a 10-year-old today scores
on average higher than a 10-year-old did 100 years ago)
• argument for environment—education, increased standards of living,
nutrition--being key influencer in IQ scores (and thus low heritability
for IQ)
Is intelligence nature or nurture?
How heritable is IQ and why is this a controversial question?
• Is the 10-15 point difference between African-Americans and
Caucasian-Americans on IQ tests attributable to genetic differences
OR environmental differences OR testing bias?
• Gains in IQ test scores demonstrated with Head Start and early
intensive education and nutrition (like Milwaukee IQ study) show
IQ differences between the races can be overcome with proper
interventions
•
Adoptive children’s IQs correlate more with their BIO
parents’ IQs than their adoptive parents’ IQs
Development and intelligence
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Does early talking correlate with early reading?
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Does early reading (by age 4 or 5) correlate with future high performance on aptitude
tests?
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Yes
Does performance on intelligence measures at age 4 predict future aptitudes?
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NO!
YES!
Are intelligence scores fixed or malleable?
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Both!
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IQ is highly malleable in childhood and influenced by nutrition, educational opportunity,
exposure to language, etc.
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By age 7, people’s scores stabilize—your mental age will increase, your crystallized
intelligence will grow, but your aptitude will likely remain similar for the rest of your life
 e.g. +0.86 correlation between performance on math SAT and math portion of GRE
The brain anatomy of intelligence: Is the secret of Einstein’s intelligence
within the cells and structures of his brain?
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Does size matter?
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Correlation coefficient between brain mass volume and intelligence scores = +0.4
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As we age, brain volume decreases, nonverbal IQ test scores decrease
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Richard Haier’s studies (2004) show positive correlation between volume of gray
matter (neural bodies) in brain and intelligence scores
What causes larger volume brains to develop?
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Experience, interactions with the environment
 rats deprived of social and environmental stimuli develop thinner, lighter cortexes
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neural plasticity—brain’s ability during childhood and adolescence to adapt and grow
synapses
Does it matter which areas of one’s brain have more volume?
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Einstein’s brain was NOT larger than average person’s however his parietal lobe 15%
larger than average adult’s
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Einstein also had more glial cells than average person
The brain anatomy of intelligence
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Frontal lobe
 active when people are doing verbal and spatial reasoning on
intelligence tests
Who’s smarter: the tortoise of the hare?
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Speed does seem to matter
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Earl Hunt (1983) experiment correlates verbal IQ scores with speed of memory
retrieval
IQ and speed of processing perceptual information +0.4 correlation
Speed of neurological processing/reaction time on simple tasks
positively correlates with IQ scores
Quick Quiz: What do you know about creative intelligence, testing, and
intelligence and gender?
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Use your notes and each other to try to answer the
questions on your handout
1. People who make outstanding creative contributions to the arts or sciences are most likely
to
A) be unusually sensitive to criticism of their ideas.
B) receive above-average scores on standard tests of intelligence.
C) show signs of savant syndrome.
D) be strongly motivated to attain fame and fortune.
2. The components of creativity include
A) impulsivity and empathy.
B) expertise and a venturesome personality.
C) competitiveness and dogmatism.
D) imagination and extrinsic motivation.
3. Whenever Arlo reminded himself that his musical skills could earn him fame and fortune, he
became less creative in his musical performance. This best illustrates that creativity may be
inhibited by
A) emotional intelligence.
B) a venturesome personality.
C) the g factor.
D) extrinsic motivation.
4.
A)
B)
C)
D)
Aptitude tests are specifically designed to
predict ability to learn a new skill.
compare an individual’s abilities with those of highly successful people.
assess learned knowledge or skills.
assess the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
5.
A)
B)
C)
D)
The final exam in a calculus course would be an example of a(n) ________ test.
aptitude
achievement
standardized
general intelligence
6. Assessing current competence is to ________ tests as predicting future performance is
to ________ tests.
A) intelligence; standardized
B) aptitude; achievement
C) standardized; intelligence
D) achievement; aptitude
7. The test that provides separate verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and
processing speed scores, as well as an overall intelligence score, is the
A)WAIS.
B) Stanford-Binet.
C) SAT.
D)Emotional Intelligence Test.
8. When a person’s test performance can be compared with that of a representative and pretested
sample of people, the test is said to be
A)reliable.
B) standardized.
C) valid.
D)normally distributed.
9. Dr. Zimmer has designed a test to measure golfers’ knowledge of their sport’s history. To interpret
scores on it, he is presently administering the test to a representative sample of all golfers. Dr.
Zimmer is clearly in the process of
A)establishing the test’s validity.
B) conducting a factor analysis of the test.
C) standardizing the test.
D)establishing the test’s reliability.
10. Dr. Benthem reports that the scores of 100 male and 100 female students on his new test of
mechanical reasoning form a normal curve. From his statement we may conclude that
A)the average male score was better than the average female score.
B) the students were simply guessing at the answers.
C) the average score on the test was 50 percent correct.
D)relatively few students’ scores deviated extremely from the groups’ average score.
11. Researchers assess the correlation between scores obtained on alternate forms of the same test in
order to measure the ________ of the test.
A)content validity
B) predictive validity
C) normal distribution
D)reliability
12. Dr. Bronfman has administered her new 100-item test of abstract reasoning to a large sample of
students. She is presently comparing their scores on the odd-numbered questions with those on the
even-numbered questions in an effort to
A)determine the test’s validity.
B) determine the test’s reliability.
C) standardize the test.
D)factor-analyze the test.
13. A test has a high degree of validity if it
A)measures or predicts what it is supposed to measure or predict.
B) yields consistent results every time it is used.
C) produces a normal distribution of scores.
D)has been standardized on a representative sample of all those who are likely to take the test.
14. A college administrator is trying to assess whether an admissions test accurately predicts how well
applicants will perform at his school. The administrator is most obviously concerned that the test is
A)standardized.
B) valid.
C) factor-analyzed.
D)normally distributed.
15. On which of the following tasks are females most likely to perform as well or better than males?
A)playing checkers
B) reciting poetry
C) playing video games
D)copying geometric designs
16. Compared with boys, girls are ________ capable of remembering objects’ spatial locations and
they are ________ capable of detecting odors.
A)more; less
B) less; more
C) more; more
D)less; less
17. In solving math computation problems, women perform ________ than men. In solving math
reasoning problems, women perform ________ than men.
A)worse; worse
B) better; better
C) worse; better
D)better; worse
18. Among children with a very low level of verbal ability, there are ________ boys than girls; among
children with a very high level of math problem-solving ability, there are ________ boys than girls.
A)more; fewer
B) fewer; more
C) more; more
D)fewer; fewer
19. On which of the following tasks are males most likely to outperform females?
A)speed-reading
B) interpreting literature
C) learning a foreign language
D)mentally rotating three-dimensional objects
20. The average intellectual aptitude gap between graduating White and Black college graduates has
been observed to ________ during their years in high school and to ________ during their years in
college.
A)decrease; decrease
B) increase; increase
C) decrease; increase
D)increase; decrease