Chapter 8 - Summary Psychology: Themes and Variations PDF

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Chapter 8: Cognition and Intelligence 8.1 Turning Thoughts into Words Language is a crucial part of human life. It allows us to communicate simultaneously with each other. Coming in different styles and dialects, language helps define us. Although it may seem “natural,” there have been debates concerning what way we learn and acquire language and speaking skills. Language is what distinguishes humans from other living creatures.  The behaviorist theory, endorsed by B.F. Skinner, asserts that language is learned through imitation and reinforcement. They assert that by controlling reinforcement, parents encourage proper pronunciation and meaning of words.  The nativist theory, endorsed by Noam Chomsky, asserts that people learn language by learning the rules of a language. It proposes that humans are equipped with a language acquisition device (LAD), which is an innate mechanism/process that facilitates the learning of language  humans learn languages because we are biologically enabled to.  The interactionist theory assert that a combination of biology and experience make important contributions to language development.  The human brain is hardwired to look/listen for sound patterns that make up language.  With our unique minds we have the ability to learn more than one language. Bilingualism is the acquisition of two different languages. While speech development might be hindered, overlapping languages usually yield a slightly superior vocabulary than monolingual children. o They are likely to have trouble with language processing speed and verbal fluency, which is the ease one has when thinking of words.  The linguistic relativity, endorsed by Benjamin Whorf, hypothesizes that one’s language determines the nature of ones thought; different languages lead to differing worldly views.

8.2 Problem Solving There are several different types of problems presented to us on a daily basis. There are lots of ways that we can solve them. 

There are many types of problem solving, which are action efforts to discover what must be done to achieve a goal that is not readily

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attainable; one must go beyond given information to overcome obstacles and goals. Jim Greeno categorized it into three classes: 1. Problems of inducing structure in which the person must discover relations among parts of the problem. Series completion and analogy problems 2. Problems of arrangement in which the person must arrange the parts in a way that meets the criteria. Anagrams and string problem. 3. Problems of transformation where the person must carry out a sequence of transformations in order to reach a specific goal. The ways to achieve the goal aren’t always obvious. Water jar and hobbits and orcs problems. What we are solving problems, many times we encounter barriers that keep up from solving problems efficiently. o Some problems contain irrelevant information, which helps lead people astray when solving problems. Many people began focusing on what isn’t important rather than what really matters. Endorsed by Sternberg, effective problem solving requires you to attempt to figure out what info is/isn’t relevant before continuing. o Functional fixedness, the tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its common use. The root cause of it lies in the fact that human typically overlook the small parts of a problem that end up being crucial parts. o Rigid thinking also come in when people insist on using a mental set, which is when people insist on using problem-solving strategies that have previously worked Abraham Luchins. Effective PS involves getting all of the constraints but assuming none. Sometimes after getting stuck on a problem, people have a burst of insight, which occurs when people suddenly discover the right answer after struggling with it; an “aha!” moment. Another PS strategy is trial and error, which involves trying possible solutions and discarding ones that don’t work. Only typically effective with few possible solutions. Many people use heuristics, which are guiding principles used in PS and decision making: o Subgoals, which are intermediate steps towards a solution. Solving the problem in parts as opposed to the whole thing at once. Tower of Hanoi because you have to get one part of it before you can do the others. o Analogies are useful because you can find connections between other problems that help you solve the one at hand. Using the test to do the test. o Changing the presentation of a problem may be useful because a different format may make it easier to understand and therefore solve. You can represent it verbally, mathematically, spatially, etc.  Buddhist Monk Problem

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If stuck on a problem it may be best to take a break, as they can lead to incubation, when new solutions surface for a previously unsolved problem after a period of not consciously thinking about it. Researchers have found that culture may lead to different thought styles. Richard Nisbett found that people from the eastern world (Asia) use a holistic cognitive style, which focuses on context and relationships between elements, and westerners (Europe/America) use an analytic cognitive style, which focuses on objects and their properties. Eastern = Whole Western = Parts

8.3 Decision Making The decision-making process is not as simple as we may imagine. The process of thinking that we go through is complex. Rather than our decisions only depending on what we think, they are widely influenced by outside factors that cause us to think and make inferences about something. 

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Decision making involves evaluating alternatives and making choices among them. Research by Herbert Simon suggests that people don’t necessarily live up to the systematic and rational decision making that they pride themselves on. o Simon eventually came up with the theory of bounded rationality, which asserts that people tend to use simple strategies in decision making that focus on only a few details about the available items, often resulting in irrational decisions that are less than optimal. Cognitive biases distort decision making. Barry Schwartz argues that people are often overwhelmed by an abundance of choices that end up effecting the decision-making process. Choice overload often leads to post-decision regret because the amount of choices makes people struggle with the choice that they really prefer over another. There is question about whether people make decisions about the way they think consciously or if they rely more on unconscious intuition. A study by Ap Dijksterhuis concluded that conscious DM prompted more satisfaction when the questions were simple, however when deep, the UDM was more often used and produced more satisfaction. o Lead Dijksterhuis to develop the deliberation-withoutattention effect which suggests that people make better choices when if they don’t devote careful attention to it. When asked certain questions that you have to guess about, you are participating in risky decision making, which involves making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. o Availability heuristic involves basing an estimated probability on information that you already have or a related personal

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estimate. May lead to a bias if your data is infrequent or if you have trouble recalling how often it occurs. o Representative heuristic involves basing the estimated probability on how similar it is to a prototype of that instance. This heuristic often leads people to make guesses or inferences about objects.  This comes in when base rates are in question. When it comes to making guess about themselves, people tend to overlook themselves when applying a stereotype out of the “it won’t happen to me” mentality. o The conjunction fallacy occurs when people estimate that the odds of two uncertain events happening together are greater than the odds of either event happening alone. Some people make assumptions about something because they “fit the description.” Often based off of stereotypes. Humans may or may not live up to the cognitive abilities that we give ourselves for, but part of that may be because people who make studies about it make the study/questions more complex that the mind is able to comprehend/understand to give accurate judgement about the results. o Gerd Gigerenzer asserts that this depends on the “fast and frugal heuristics,” meaning that in DM, most organisms lack the cognitive ability to consider all of the facts before making a decision about something. AKA intuitive thinking.

8.4 Measuring Intelligence Intelligence testing became a thing a little more than 100 years ago. It was originally used to test a child’s mental ability but soon, with the help of several scientists, tests came out that would work for adults as well. Different tests study different kinds of intelligence, however controversy has sparked regarding the appropriate times to use them. 

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Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created the Binet-Simon Scale, which they used to successfully measure a child’s mental age, indicating whether or not the child displayed the mental ability typical to the chronological age of that child. Years later, Lewis Terman re-evaluated Binet and Simon’s work and created a revised version of the original test called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, which was based on William Stern’s intelligence mental age ×100 . quotient, chronological age o Today, it remains one of the world’s most widely used tests. Davis Wechsler created the first IQ test designed for adults.  Average scores were at 100

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o Percentile scores indicate the percentage of people who score at or below the score obtained. Reliability refers to how consistent your measurements for that test are; reliable tests yield similar scores upon repetition. Validity is the ability for the test to measure what exactly it was designed to measure, however it’s a little more complex in measurements. IQ tests done measure all of the necessary factors about a person. Robert Sternberg and colleagues determined that verbal intelligence, practical intelligence, and social intelligence were also important categories as well. People who score high on IQ tests are usually CEOs of companies.

8.5 Hereditary vs Environment  

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Tests and studies have determined that both genes and environment influence a person’s intelligence. Twin and Adoption Studies have helped scientists come to this conclusion. o Twins are genetically similar to one another, especially identical twins, and yield a more similar intelligence score. Children get about 50% of their intelligence from their genes (parents); that heritability can fluctuate over the life span. o Adopted children, while getting some biological hereditary influence, showed getting part of their adopted parents intelligence based on the environment they were raised in, helping to assert the environmental theory. The Flynn Effect was the named dubbed for the observation that we as a people are smarter and managing high IQs than the people in our area were decades before. Although environment and genetics impact a person’s IQ, it has been found that socioeconomic status can impact it as well; limited resources for schooling, etc. cause a deprived environment not allowing said person/child to get all of the necessary “brain juice” needed to be able to yield a certain score....