Thinking, Intelligence, and Language

Intelligence

The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use our knowledge to adapt to new situations

Intelligence is whatever the intelligence test measures.

“School smarts”

Conceptual Difficulties

Most psychologists believe that intelligence is a concept and not a thing

When we think of intelligence as a trait we make an error called:

Reification

Reification

Viewing an abstract immaterial concept as if it were a concrete thing

Controversies about intelligence: Despite general agreement among psychologists about the nature of intelligence two controversies remain:

• Is intelligence a single overall ability or is it several specific abilities?

• With modern neuroscience techniques, can we locate and measure intelligence in the brain?

(g)

General intelligence

The idea that general intelligence (g) exists comes from the work of:

Charles Spearman (1863-1945

• helped develop the factor analysis approach in statistics

Spearman proposed that general intelligence is linked to…..

Many clusters of skill/abilities that can be analyzed by factor analysis

Examples of Spearman’s proposition of factor analysis and general intelligence

• Vocabulary examinations and paragraph comprehension examinations

  • are a cluster that helps define verbal intelligence

• Other factors include:

  • spatial ability factor

  • reasoning ability factor

L.L. Thurstone’s seven clusters of primary mental abilities

1. word fluency

2. verbal comprehension

3. spatial ability

4. perceptional speed

5. numerical ability

6. inductive reasoning

7. memory

Howard Gardner proposed a theory of multiple intelligences:

The idea that there are different types of intelligences that are independent of one another

Proposed multiple intelligences include:

Linguistic, mathematical/logical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal (social understanding) intelligence

Sternberg theorized that there are three types of intelligence:

• analytical intelligence

• creative intelligence

• practical intelligence

analytical intelligence

similar to that measured by psychometric tests- being good at problem solving and other academic challenges

creative intelligence

the ability to gain insight and solve novel problems- to think in a new and interesting way

practical intelligence

dealing with everyday tasks, such as knowing whether a space is large enough for your car

Psychologists define intelligence tests as…

a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with others using numerical scores

Test construction: For a psychological test to be acceptable it must fulfill the following three criteria

1. standardization

2. reliabilty

3. validity

Reliabilty

a test is reliable when it yields consistent results

To establish reliability researchers use different procedures

• split-half reliability

• reliability using different tests

• test-retest reliability

Split-half reliability

dividing the test into two equal halves and assessing how consistent the scores are

Reliability using different tests

using different forms of the test to measure consistency between them

Test-retest reliability

using the same test on two occasions to measure consistency

What does reliability of a test not ensure?

Validity

What does validity of a test refer to?

What the test is supposed to measure or predict

The the different times of validity

• content/face validity

• predictive validity

content/face validity

refers to the extent a test measures a particular behavior or trait

Predictive validity

Refers to the function of a test in predicting a particular behavior or trait

Stanford-Binets Intelligence Scale (5th Ed)

• derived directly from Alfred Binet’s first intelligence test

• items are age ranked

• appropriate for ages 2-85+

• measures 5 cognitive factors

What five factors does SB5 measure?

• Fluid reasoning

• Knowledge

• Quantitive reasoning

• Visual-spatial processing

• Working memory

Fluid reasoning

tests remaining ability

knowledge

assesses person’s knowledge about a wide range of topics

Quantitative reasoning

Assesses ability to solve problems involving numbers

Visual-spatial processing

measures ability to put puzzles together, measures copying

Working memory

Measure short-term memory ability

Chronicle age

Person’s age in years

mental age

average intellectual performance

Deviation IQ

Scores based on a person’s relative standing in their age group

(WAIS-IV)

Adult intelligence tests that rates verbal and performance intelligence and ability

(WISC-IV)

• downscaled version of the WAIS-IV

• for children from 6 years to 16 years, 11 months, 30 days

The 12 subtexts of WAIS-IV

• similarities, vocabulary, information, comprehension

• Block design, matrix reasoning, picture completion

• digit span, arithmetic, letter-number sequencing

• symbol search, coding

• visual puzzles, figure weights, cancellation

Gifted

Score greater than 130 on IQ tests, only 2% of population

Genius

Score greater than 140 on IQ tests, only 1% of the population

Cognition

thinking, gaining knowledge, and dealing with that knowledge

Basic unit of thought

mental images and concepts

mental images

picture-like mental representations

Concepts

idea representing a category of related objects or events

Language

words/symbols and rules for combining them, that are used for thinking and communication

Mental rotation

mentally rotating an image or object

Positive instance of concept formation

dog=dog

negative instance of concept formation

dog=cat

conceptual rule

guideline for deciding whether objects or events belong to a concept class

Conjunctive concept

objects defined by having two or more common features

Relational concept

how an object relates to something else or how its features relate to one another

disjunctive concept

objects that have at least of one the seven possible features

Prototype

Ideal model used as an example of a good concept (e.g. a robin)

denotative meaning

exact definition of a word or concept

Connotative meaning

Exact definition of a word or concept

Semantic differential

measure of connotative meaning

Propaganda

the spreading of ideas, information, or rumors for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

Faulty concepts

inaccurate concepts, leads to thinking errors, social stereotypes

mechanical solution

achieved by trail and error or by rote learning, best left to computers (long division)

Solutions by understanding

states the requirements for success but not in enough detail for further action (research hypothesis)

Heuristics solutions

Strategies of identifying and evaluation problem solutions, and reduces the number of possible alternatives to consider

Three kinds of heuristics

• representative

• availability

• affective or forecasting

Representative heuristics

judging the likelihood of things or objects in terms of how well they represent/match a particular prototype

Availability heuristics

Whatever increases the ease of retrieving information increases its perceived availability

Affective heuristic or forecasting

tendency for people to overestimate how events will make them feel in the future

Insight solutions

When an answer appears suddenly in problem-solving (“a-ha” learning), based on reorganizing a problem

Nature of insight (3 selections)

• selective encoding

• selective combination

• selective comparison

Selective encoding

selecting information that is relevant to a problem while ignoring distractions

selective combination

connecting seemingly unrelated bits of useful information

Selective comparison

comparing new problems with old information or with problems already solved

Functional fixedness

inability to see new uses (functions) for familiar objects or for things that were used in a particular way

fixations

tendency to repeat wrong solutions and to “fixate” on them or become blind to alternatives

Confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that confirms a personal bias

emotional barriers

inhibition and fear of making a fool of oneself or of making a mistale

Cultural barriers

belief that fantasy is a waste and feelings and humor have no place in problem solving

Learned barriers

taboos: staying with conventional uses

Perceptual barriers

habits leading to a failure to identify important elements of a problem

What does thinking in humans rely on?

Language

Encoding

translating information into symbols that are easy to manipulate

Semantics

study of meanings in language and words

• meaning is influenced by context

• meaning can influence our thinking

• meaning can influence out perception

Phonemes (about 44)

basic sounds

Morphemes (100,000)

smallest, meaningful units

Words (1,025,109)

Meaningful units

Phrase (a lot)

Composed of two or more words

Sentence (infinite)

Composed of many words

Grammer

set of rules for making sounds into words or words into sentences allows us to communicated with and understand others

syntax

consists of the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Productivity

ability of language to generate new thoughts or ideas

Babbling stage

beginning at four months, infant spontaneously utters various sounds, like ab-goo, babbling is not imitation of adult speech

One word stage

beginning at or around one year, child speaks one word at a time and is understandable

Two word stage

before the second year, child starts to speak in two two sentences, called telegraphic speak

Longer phrases

following the second year, children start uttering longer phrases with syntactical sense

When do children start employing humor?

early elementary school