Lecture 8- Thinking and Intelligence

Cogitative Psychology

-How do we learn and remember?

-How do we experience affect perception, reasoning, and judgement?

-What is thinking and how do we think?

-How do we make decisions?

-What is ‘intelligence’ ?

-What is language? How does it differ from other forms of animal communication?

Cogitative Science

Views the brain as an information- processing device.

Thinking and Mental Imagery

-Thinking involves imagining (e.g. visual, auditory, visual)

-We create mental representations in our mind of scenes, objects, faces, voices, songs, etc.

Concepts

Are mental groupings of things, into distinct categories (e.g. trees, vegetables, cars, musical instruments, professors etc)

Prototypes

Are “ideal” representatives of concepts.

Schema

-Is a network of interconnected groups concepts.

A ‘Dual System’ of Thinking

System 1=Fast, effortless and automatic.

-Our default system!

-Often used for quick, “decisions” and judgments.

System 2= Slow, effortless and deliberate.

-Demands concentration and attention.

-Physiologically arousing (e.g., increased hear rate, blood, pupil dilation etc.)

Heuristic

Is a problem solving rule-of-a-thumb.

-A mental, “Shortcut”

-Heuristics allow us to make quick judgments and ‘decisions’ about requiring extensive analysis

-Heuristic are fast and efficient, but not always accurate or reliable.

The Availability Heuristic (What comes to Mind First?)

Is the tendency to judge how often something occurs based o how easily examples of it comes to mind. (E.G., how “available” to our memory those examples are)

Emotional and The Availability Heuristic

Emotionally-arousing content increases activity in the amygdala, which can

1. Activate our attention.

2. Strengthen the formation of basic associations.

3. Enhance the consolidation of hippocampus dependent.

The Representative Heuristic

The Tendency to assign something new (E.g., a person or thing) to pre-existing concept (or prototype) based on how representative we think it is of that concept (or prototype)

The Conformation Bias

We pay attention to things we already think we know about selectively ignore things that:

1) We don’t know about

2) Are contrary to what we know.

Cogtative Science

Views the brain as an impartial information processing model.

General Intelligence

-Argued that a general intelligence factor (g) is related to “book smarts” and creativity in solving abstract problems.

-Observed that high scores on one cognitive ability (e.g. numerical) tend to be highly correlated with scores other congnitive abilities (e.g. verbal, spatial, etc)

The Intelligence Quotient (IQ):

Most famous test is the Stanford- Binet Intelligence Scale:

-Developed by French Psychologists Alferd Binet.

-Binet’s original test was intended to identify children in French School system in needs of special education.

-Binet’s test sought to measure, ‘mental age’ (MA) relative to ‘true age’ (TA)

-Standford psychologists Lewis Termen later adopted and revised Binet’s test to create the first “IQ” score.

Characteristics of IQ:

-With certain caveats, IQ tests are good predictions of academic achievements, job success, health and longevity.

-IQ is correlated within individual across their lifetimes.

-Twin studies suggest that IQ has both genetic and environmental influences.

-The Genetic and environmental influences.

(The genetic (heritable) component appears to be very strong.)

Robert Sternberg: ‘The Triarchic’ Theory of Intelligence:

-Argues that intelligence has 3 components that are independent of each other.

-E.G., we can score high on one but not another.

-Holds that ‘g’ only captures one aspect of intelligence

-”Analytical Intelligence”

-Practical experience and a lifetime of solving problems also matters!

-”Practical Intelligence”

Emotional Intelligence (EI):

Is made of two primary factors:

1) Our ability to recognize control and express our own emotions.

2) Our capacity to empathize with others and understand their emotions.

-Highly predictive of success in navigating the social world, including conflict resolution and leadership potential.

Grit- Angela Duckworth

-Is defined as resolve and perseverance in the pursuits of goals.

-A child who has ‘grit’ has greater chance of Long-term success in school and life.

-Intelligence matters, but is not as reliable a predictor or grit.