Thinking, Language,

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Thinking, Language, Intelligence

• The best way to have a good idea is to have lots
  of ideas.
• Linus Pauling

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Thinking

• What is it?
• Manipulation of words images
• Cognitive psychology
• Studies how the mind
• Organizes perceptions
• Processes information
• Interprets experience

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Concept Formation

• Concept
• A mental grouping of persons, places, ideas,
  events, or objects that share common properties
• Priming
• When one concept is activated, others nearby in
  the network are primed

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Concept Formation

• Prototype
• Best representative of a concept
• Ex Sport
• Football
• Basketball
• Golf
• Chess
• NASCAR

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Problem Solving Strategies

• Trial error

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Problem Solving Trial Error

• Identify problem
• Car wont start
• Gather information
• Outta gas? Dead battery?
• Try a solution
• Not outta gas, so Ill dry off the wires
• Evaluate results
• Car starts - yeah!
• Car doesnt start - try another solution

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Problem Solving Strategies

• Trial error
• Algorithm
• A systematic, step-by-step problem-solving
  strategy, guaranteed to provide a solution
• Heuristic
• A rule of thumb that allows one to make judgments
  that are quick but often in error
• L K C C O
• Insight

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Water Problem
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Problems with Problem Solving

• Mental set
• The tendency to use a strategy that has worked in
  the past
• Functional Fixedness
• A tendency to think of objects only in terms of
  their usual functions, a limitation that disrupts
  problem solving

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Problems with Problem Solving

• Confirmation Bias
• The inclination to search only for evidence that
  will verify ones beliefs
• Belief Perseverance
• The tendency to cling to beliefs even after they
  have been discredited
• Anderson (1980)

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Decision Making

• Try to make best choice from alternatives
• Utility value of given outcome
• Probability likelihood youll achieve it
• Representativeness Heuristic
• A tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event
  in terms of how typical (how similar to the
  prototype) it seems
• Availability Heuristic
• A tendency to estimate the
• likelihood of an event in terms of
• how easily instances of it can be
• recalled

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Language

• Formal system of communication
• Spoken,written, and/or gestures
• Between 5,000 and 6,000 languages, worldwide
• Most languages also have many dialects

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Properties of Language

• Semantic
• There are separate units in a language and these
  units have meaning
• Phoneme basic building block of spoken language
• Morpheme smallest unit that carries meaning
• Generative
• Combing language in novel ways
• Displacement
• The property of language that accounts for the
  capacity to communicate about matters that are
  not in the here-and-now

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Structure of Language

• Grammar
• The rules of a language
• Syntax
• Specifies how words can be arranged
• Semantics
• Specifies how meaning is
• understood communicated
• Transformational grammar
• Any one thought can be expressed
• in different ways

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Language Acquisition

• Birth
• Cooing, crying, gurgling
• 4-6 months
• Babbling
• 12 months
• First words
• 2 yrs up
• Telegraphic speech
• Overextension

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Language Acquisition

• No one disputes the stages of language
  development
• But there are two main questions in terms of what
  it all means
• Is language acquisition a product of nature or
  nurture?
• Which comes first language or thought?

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the answers

• Is it nature or nurture?
• Skinner vs. Chomsky
• Skinner Children learn language the way animals
  learn mazes
• Chomsky The brain is hard-wired for learning
  lang.
• Critical period
• During the first few years of life, we are most
  receptive to language learning
• What comes first thought or language?
• Both sometimes children use words to communicate
  what they already know and sometimes they form
  concepts to fit the words they hear

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Linguistic Relativity

• The hypothesis that language determines, or at
  least influences, the way we think

Eyeglasses
Dumbbell

• Hyde, 1984
• Wudgemaker story he she he or she they
• Males equally good regardless
• Females better in she stories, worse in he
  version

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Intelligence

• the test of a first-rate intelligence is the
  ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at
  the same time, and still retain the ability to
  function
• F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Intelligence

• What is intelligence?
• The capacity to learn from experience and adapt
  successfully to ones environment
• Reflects how well we function
• Francis Galton
• Believed that intelligence was inherited
• Based intelligence on
• Muscular strength
• Size of your head
• Speed at reacting to signals
• Your ability to detect slight differences

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Binet-Simon Stanford-Binet Scales

• Binet-Simon scale (1905)
• Assigned mental age based on items correct
• Stanford-Binet
• Lewis Terman at Stanford (1916)
• Added items suitable to adults
• Converted scale to a single score
• IQ mental age x 100
• chronological age
• This doesnt work for adults was adjusted

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The Wechsler Scales

• David Weschler
• Intelligence is
• The global capacity to act purposefully, to think
  rationally, and to deal effectively with the
  environment
• IQ ratio breaks down as we get older
• Deviation IQ
• Compares scores to the mean of peer group
• WAIS
• Measures intelligence for late adolescence
  through adulthood
• Two parts verbal performance subtests

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Issues to Consider in IQ Testing

• Standardization
• The procedure by which existing norms are used to
  interpret an individuals test score

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Distribution of IQ scores
68
Mental Retardation
Mentally Gifted
95
100
115
85
130
70
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Issues to Consider in IQ Testing

• Standardization
• The procedure by which existing norms are used to
  interpret an individuals test score
• Reliability
• Degree to which test gives consistent results
• Validity
• Does the test measure what it
• claims to measure

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Factor Theories of Intelligence

• Spearmans G factor (1904)
• Proposed that general intelligence (g) underlies
  all mental abilities
• Factor analysis
• A statistical technique used to identify clusters
  of test items that correlate with another
• Thurstones Primary Mental Abilities
• 7 factors which correlate but not enough to
  represent 1 underlying factor
• Verbal comprehension, word fluency, number
  facility (math), associative memory, perceptual
  speed for stimulus recognition, reasoning, and
  spatial visualization

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Factor Theories of Intelligence

• Triarchic theory of intelligence
• Robert Sternberg
• Analytical
• The mental steps of components used to solve
  problems
• This is what traditional IQ tests assess
• Creative
• Intellectual and motivational processes that lead
  to novel solutions, ideas, artistic forms, or
  products
• Practical
• The ability to size up new situations and adapt
  to real-life demands

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Gardners Frames of Mind

• Multiple intelligences
• There are seven types of intelligence
• Linguistic verbal aptitude
• Logical-mathematical mathematical aptitude
• Spatial ability to visualize objects
• Musical ability to appreciate the tonal
  qualities of sound, compose, and play
• Bodily-kinesthetic ability to control movement
• Interpersonal ability to understand people
• Intrapersonal ability to understand oneself

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The Nature Nurture Debate

• Natures influence on IQ
• Identical twins reared together are more similar
  than fraternal twins reared together
• Siblings who grow up together are more similar
  than unrelated individuals who grow up in the
  same house
• Children are more similar to their biological
  parents than to adoptive parents
• Nurtures influence on IQ
• Prenatal care, exposure to alcohol and other
  toxins, birth complications, malnutrition in the
  first few months of life, intellectual
  stimulation at home, stress, high-quality
  education, the amount of time spent in school
• Head Start programs (and those like it)

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Extremes in Intelligence

• Mental retardation
• IQ below 70
• Difficulties with
• Self-care
• School / work
• Social relationships
• Four categories
• Mild, Moderate, Severe, Profound

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Causes of Mental Retardation

• Cultural-familial
• Inadequate mental stimulation
• Poor diet, little or no medical care
• Genetic defects
• Down syndrome
• Brain damage
• Fetal alcohol syndrome
• Hypoxia

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Mental Giftedness

• IQ above 130
• MENSA
• Limits membership to top 2 of population
• Sidis Fallacy
• Contrary to popular belief, geniuses
• dont tend to burn out at early age